Bringing it to an end.

Well I am ending this photo a day project. I'm having a hard time finding people to work with on a regular enough basis but its to be expected in a small town like Bemidji. The other thing is I noticed the quality was kind of wavering. I would rather post one really good photo a week then seven mediocre. I want to thank everyone who has been following this for the last few months and keep checking back cause I will still be posting images a couple times a week.

Day 77

Another file image that I tried the High Pass Filter with. Lighting on this is a single SB-800 camera left with a CTO gel and the camera set to tungsten. One thing I don't really like about this technique is the halo effect it has at times.

Not for the faint of heart.

Had to break into the files again. But here is one from last summer when I was out in Wyoming. Been playing with the High Pass Filter some more and its been kind of hit or miss but this one was a hit.

Always learning something new.

I had been trying to figure out how to get images like you see in the Nike ads. I always thought it was as much about the lighting as it was about the post processing but its about 25% lighting and 75% post. The nice thing is that the post processing is so simple, its a feature called the High Pass Filter. Its just a matter of making a layer, desaturate it, add the High Pass Filter and then combine the layers. The place where I learned to do it was on the Strobist blog

As far as the image itself goes I shot this with a 70-200 and had 3 SB-800s camera left and a silver reflector camera right.

A day in the Winds

This is a rare thing for this blog, I haven't put a lot of my landscape images up on here. This one was taken while on a backpacking trip to the Wind Rivers Mountains in Wyoming. I got a lot of great images but the trip got shut down by the mosquitos and it would take a lot for anyone from Minnesota to cancel a trip due to mosquitos. I'm surprised I still had any blood by the time I made it back to the car.

For this image I bracketed for 5 exposures and then manually combined them in Photoshop for an HDR image, I actually did that last fall for use in a gallery show that I had. But as with all art you learn to use your tools better and I have since learned a few little things in Photoshop that allowed me to tweak it more to my liking.

Got to love a country bar.

A little way outside of Bemidji there is a little bar called Jammers and from the outside it looks like your typical country bar but then when you go in you are hit between the eyes with all kinds of lights and a very eclectic decor with a bit of a hippy vibe, you almost forget your in northern Minnesota. At least till you see the Bobby Orr pinball game in the corner. Minnesotans are have a love for hockey that is only rivaled by Canadians, some might even go as far as call it an unnatural love.

Day 72

Sometimes when images I shot just aren't working the way I thought they would when on location I'll set them aside for a while, in this case a little over a year. Then when I go back to them they start to jump out at me cause I am looking at them with fresh eyes so to speak. This image was shot with a 12-24mm lens with a flash off camera left.

In the drivers seat.

This was a very simple image I had a flash on the steering wheel pointed back at Lara to make it look like it was just the light from the instrument panel.

Day 70

I asked my friend Lara about doing some shots sitting at the wheel of her car and she made the suggestion of shooting her reflection in the mirror as she put on lipstick and mascara I loved the idea so we ran with it. For this image I had the flash sitting on the dash of her car so it almost looks like the light coming from the dials. The orange light on the background is the headlights against the wall of the building.

Last one from the play.

This is one reason I like digital. The sensor picks up so much detail even in the shadows, if I had been shooting film there wouldn't be any way to get Jeremiah to show up at the top of the stairs.

More from Wait till dark.

First thing I realized when I got up this morning was that I forgot to post a new photo for tuesday even though I had one ready to go.

Love new toys.

New gear is always fun to get and play with and it had been a while since I got something fun. This new piece of gear is the Light My Fire fire starter. One swipe and it unleashes a nice little shower of sparks. On my first test with a bundle of dryer lint as kindling it went up in flames with the first strike. I know its not much of a photo for the blog but I thought the shower of sparks would look cool and I think I was right.

Wait Until Dark

This was my friend Jeremiah's (guy on right side of frame) first time back on stage in like two years so I had to show up for one of the performances. I really enjoyed the show and one of my photos from the blog, February 3rds image, made it onto the set.

Just thought this was cool

I've been watching this new show on the History Channel called "American Pickers" and one of the guys on it has a thing for old bikes. When I was at a play last night I saw this old bike up on the bar and it was getting some cool light reflecting off of it.

Mike in a box

Who uses a phone booth these days? Well this one is pretty much for decoration but Mike felt the need to use it. This was just a quick grab shot from the bar, my friend Lara pointed it out to me and I fired off three frames and this was the sharpest since it was at like 1/6th of a second.

KD Floral

Today I got the chance to shoot a quick photo with my new friend Raechel Schwarze who is the owner of KD Floral in Bemidji. I wasn't sure what I wanted until about an hour before the shoot. I have also been playing more and more with Photoshop when processing my images and while this is all from the same exposure it has almost looks like a composite. As far as the lighting goes I had one SB-800 tethered to the camera via an SC-17 cord. I was able to hold it with my left hand and still get it over to camera right to light her face. And for a change I had the flash set to TTL instead of manual and was really happy with what the camera came up with for the exposure settings.

Day 62

Things have been kind of falling apart for me around here lately to the point I haven't even in the mood to shoot which almost never happens. I am stoked however to head over to Duluth this coming weekend to work with a woman that owns a dance school.

This image is of a dancer I got to work with on my last trip to Las Vegas. Since I flew out there and had actually gone out to shoot climbing photos I didn't bring reflectors or scrims just my flashes. Do this image I used two SB-800's camera right held by my cousin who was working as my assistant for the day.

Raiding the fridge.

For this image I had a flash tucked back into the fridge pointing towards the back so that the light could bounce around the inside and soften up a bit before it hit Kelly. After doing a few test shots I was having problems with losing big parts of her legs to the shadows so I added a second SB-800 on a table top stand to the counter behind her to kind of edge out her legs and back.

Getting ready for spring!

I had been thinking about getting the bike out and going for a ride lately, today was a nice warm day and I needed a photo so this is what I came up with. I had tried rigging a camera to my bike for a while but never got it to work this well. My biggest issue was worrying about wiping out on the ice. I attached my camera to the bike with a Bogen Magic Arm and used my 10.5mm fisheye to get that ultra wide look.