I have a headshot session booked for later this week, so I decided to try out some lighting ideas. Since I didn't have a model, I had to improvise, so I shot myself.
I recently picked up some more studio strobes, so this was a good chance for me to run them through their paces. The shoot was also made easier by a generic camera timer/intervalometer that I picked up a little while ago.
This week, I did a shoot with Team Amstellardam, a filmmaker team with a short that's about to hit film festivals.
We shot at the American Beauty Mill in Dallas, which used to be a flour mill warehouse but is now lofts. There really wasn't a bad place to shoot throughout the building, so we made the most of the day shooting in various locations.
The team had some great ideas on how the photos should look and collaborating with them made the day go smoothly. The outside shots were a little tough on account of the cold weather, but I think the excitement of the shoot got us through that!
For the shots around the table, I went for a modified version of the snooted flash shots used by British photographer Nick Turpin, as seen in this video. Without having assistants pointing the flashes, I went with four flashes on stands and a much less restrictive snoot than seen in the Nick Turpin video. This gave more of a spotlight look than a "shaft of light" look.
For the outdoor shots, I went with my trusty (and simple) setup of cross lighting with two Vivitar 285s. Coupled with Quantum battery packs, the Vivitars really can't be beat for 90% of what I shoot. More on that in a future post!
All in all, it was a fun day of shooting and I'm happy with the way the shots turned out. I'm looking forward to the future success of Team Amstellardam!
Last month, I had the pleasure of shooting promo shots for local band One Red Martian. We did a number of different setups. The first had the band sitting around a table playing poker, then they were sitting at a bar. Then I got some shots of them in a hallway, but not before we headed outdoors to Fair Park. 
Today I downloaded Holographium for my iPhone. I've been taking long exposure shots for a while, so naturally this piqued my interest.
I imagine that the larger screen of the iPad would make for more interesting photos, but the iPhone version is still fun!
The Double Wide bar here in Dallas asked me to shoot a photo for their ad in a local weekly that would run during the week of Halloween. Instead of highlighting a part of the bar that's there already as I have done in previous ads, I decided to set up a spooky scene right on the bar. 
Cara and Patrick are big fans of the State Fair, just as I am, and they wanted to shoot their engagement photos there. We spent most of the day on the Midway soaking up perfect weather and trying to win stuffed animals at the games. 
As I've mentioned before, I love shooting at the State Fair, so when one of my favorite local bands wanted to do promo shots at the Fair, I jumped at the chance.
I'm not sure we got exactly what they were looking for, but we had a good time trying! The band wanted shots that showed a crowd as a blur, with the band in focus in the middle. In order to do this in camera like I wanted, it meant the band had to stand still for a long exposure shot. The guys were troopers as we spent about an hour taking photos that had them standing perfectly still for anywhere from 8 to 20 seconds at a time. An on-camera flash through a Ray Flash adapter filled in the foreground and helped freeze the band.
All in all, a fun shoot and I look forward to working with the band again in the future.
This is a photo of the gear I used for the Ray Johnston photo shoot.
In the messenger bag I have two camera bodies (5D and 20D) , three lenses (50mm 1.8, 17-40mmL, 70-200mm f4L), a 580 EXII flash and a Ray Flash adapter.
In the two bigger boxes I have two Norman LH2500 heads and two Genesis 200 heads, plus all necessary cabling. In the small box, I have two Vivitar 285 flashes, wireless triggers (two Radiopopper transmitters, four receivers) and all cabling and correction gels.
My top secret weapon of storage is the golf bag ($19 at a thrift store) that holds four light stands, plus Quantum batteries for the Viv 285s, my light meter and about a half-dozen umbrellas of various sizes.
Packed like this, I was able to load everything in my car in two trips.
I recently did a shoot for the Ray Johnston Band as Ray was in need of some new promo photos. With no real direction from the label management as to what look we were going for, I decided to keep things simple. We set up on the stage at Sons of Hermann Hall in Dallas, and did some outside shots about a block away from there. 
I haven't been doing photo of the day for the past few days as the same photos keep popping up. Then, this one got a number of hits. It's a photo of a lawn sprinkler at my parent's house in Plano.
I had just bought a 1937 Rolleicord on eBay and this is from the first test roll.
Those Rolleis are great cameras!
Recently, I did a photo shoot for director/editor Joe Harris that involved recreating a shot of director David Lynch. The original shot is above on the left, my final shot is on the right. Looking at the lighting, the key light seems to be almost directly above the subject and if I was to guess, I would say it was a beauty dish. Based on this quick assessment, I decided to try to shoot Joe with just a single beauty dish. I left the grid on my Norman beauty dish and started with just this single source. I'm still waiting to get a nice heavy duty boom stand for my strobes, so the beauty dish was on a straight light stand and angled as far down as I could get it. This meant that the dish wasn't in the same place as the original photo, but even so, it was making the eyes too dark so I added some fill light using an on-camera flash with the Ray ring flash adapter set on a very low power setting (between 1/64 and 1/128). 
An iPhone shot taken at the Double Wide - where I seem to spend most of my down time.
This photo has been the most viewed for several days in a row now. Another one from the Double Wide Wig Party.
The Wig Party photos are still favorites on Flickr, but this one popped up the other day. It's from 2006 and was taken with my old point-and-shoot Sony. I remember this night at Club Dada - Carter Albrecht was playing with the band and Paul Simon was standing in the back with a bodyguard. A lot of people were coming up to him and telling him how much they appreciated his music - it was a pretty good night.
My photos from the Double Wide Wig Party continue to be popular. I managed to get some good photos at this event since just about everybody was in costume or at least in a wig. This set on Flickr has been one of the most popular with more than five thousand views.
This photo has a lot of views and is part of the very popular set that I took at the Double Wide Wig Party.
I'm hoping that the set I put up after the Labor Day Pool Party will be as popular!
Friday's most popular photo is this shot I took of Will Johnson and Ryan Thomas Becker at Renfield's Corner in Uptown. Will played an amazing set and I decided to get a photo of him with Ryan afterwards since they look similar.
It was a little awkward for all involved, but they were champs about it!
This photo is from the counter-protest that happened in response to the Westboro Baptist Church visit.
The church's first stop was the Holocaust Museum in downtown Dallas. About 150 counter protesters showed up to show off some creative signs.
Today's photo comes all the way from 2006 - back when my only digital camera was a little point and shoot Sony.
It's not the greatest photo of Dallas, but it seems to be popular with the search engines.
Today's photo is from a recent show by the local band Bobgoblin, easily one of my favorite bands. They put on a great show at the Kessler Theater in Oak Cliff and debuted a new song from an album they're currently working on. Can't wait to see them again and here more new tunes!
In an effort to post on my blog more often, I've decided to post an entry for the most popular photo from my Flickr photostream every day.
It's usually a pretty recent photo, but this one is from back in 2007.
I remember this night very well - Shibboleth had played at Sons of Hermann Hall and the DART rail was under construction. The white car in the picture made a wrong turn and ended up stuck in the construction.
Not sure why people are looking at this one again, but it's a nice blast from the past!
Last week, I decided to try using the Ray Flash ring flash adapter along with off-camera flashes - something I wanted to do in a studio setting but haven't had a chance to do yet. I used this setup at the Double Wide Parking Lot Pool Party, which took place in the parking lot of a local bar. I set up three off-camera flashes, which were triggered by Radio Poppers. The transmitter was plugged in to the PC port on my 5D, which left the hotshoe available for a 580 EXII with the Ray Flash adapter.
Ideally, the ring flash would provide fill, maybe 1 stop below the off-camera flashes. In a studio setting, this is easy to do since the lighting remains constant. Running around the parking lot, I set the ring flash to E-TTL, letting the camera determine the flash level. Since the light was different depending on where I was, the flash level wasn't consistent, but it always looked quite good.
The ring flash gave great fill-in light from the camera direction and with a little tweaking in Photoshop gives a lot of depth to the photos.
I plan on trying this setup again in a studio setting.
I've been using the Ray Flash adapter quite a bit since receiving it last month. I've basically been using it in place of the Sto-Fen omnibounce diffuser that I normally would throw on top of my 580 EXII for run-and-gun type events.
To that end, I've found it gives a much better quality of light than the omnibounce, although it does away with the possibility of bouncing flash. What I like most about it is the directionality of the light. I like to use wide angle lenses and zoom the flash so it only lights a part of the frame - the Ray Flash seems to shoot the light straight out, so it does this automatically.
I have found that using it with the flash on manual helps a lot, although you have to adjust for changes in distance on the fly, which I've been able to do pretty quickly. Also, the zoom should be switched to manual, since on auto, the flash wants to match the zoom of the lens. When the flash zoom changes, it alters the amount of light being focused into the adapter, so TTL shots can be all over the map as far as exposure. I've found that zooming my 580 EXII to 70mm gets the most out of the flash. Having said that, TTL has worked surprisingly well for me with the adapter.
I still haven't had the chance to use it as a fill for other off-camera flashes, but I'm hoping to try that soon. From what I've seen of using it on its own, I think it'll look great for that purpose.
Another fun thing to do is to pull the Ray Flash forward when using a wide angle lens - which is what I did for this photo of Kim Finch, owner of Doublewide. I've shot a couple of these shots, where I have people get really close to the flash and actually hold it with their fingers showing. I've found this only works with the flash set on manual - around 1/64 works at 800 ISO at f4.
It's fun and silly, but it gets people engaged in the photos and they always like the results.
The only thing I don't like about the Ray Flash is that it has me answering questions about it every time I bring it out. People ask what it is, what it does, etc. It is great to get people talking and makes you more memorable, so there is that, I suppose. If you're trying to fly under the radar and be inconspicuous, however, this is not the right tool to use.
Overall, this was a great investment, I think it's worth the money I paid for it and I look forward to using it to its full potential.
Today I braved the (small) crowds and headed to Lower Greenville Ave to shoot some people on the street. Finding a location was tricky - my setup was some white seamless on a North-facing wall. I found a spot and that worked for about 15 minutes - a group of girls on bikes showed up and parked their bikes in such a way that my backdrop was useless. I moved on, but wasn't able to find another spot suitable.
Not exactly an overwhelming number of shots taken, but it was a fun little trip.
Last summer, I took a panoramic shot by the lagoon at Fair Park and turned it into a planet in photoshop. Today, Dallas is covered in a blanket of snow, so I thought I'd make another planet.
It turned out really well, so now I have a Fair Park planet for two seasons.
