Still Life - working with strobes

This past week in class we worked with some single monoblock strobe lights and set up different lighting styles to see the effect that it has on photographing still life. Each of us brought in a few items to photograph and we had four stations set up. We had one that was an overhead softbox on a white seamless background that produced a very diffused soft light with smooth transitions from highlights to shadows. The other one was a strobe from the left side with a grid on a gray background that produced some really hard light and sharp contrast. There was another softbox set up but this one was from the left side and then the fourth set up was a strobe bounced off an umbrella from the top left on a black background. As an added set up there was a single strobe with some diffusion material right on the strobe head that we used for some portrait shots. Next week we'll be working with some models and I am really looking forward to that. In the meantime here are a few shots I took in class.

Evening with Jay Maisel and Gregory Heisler

Had an incredible time last night at Ironworks Studios with an event put on by Marc Koegel of Vancouver Photo Workshops featuring two highly acclaimed photographers Jay Maisel and Gregory Heisler. Both of them are in town to conduct workshops of their own but this was a lecture open to both the students and the public. Each of them presented some of their amazing photos and shared some of their insight about commercial work and personal work that they've done throughout the years. They were both incredibly funny and down to earth people with some truly inspiring photos and I am so glad that I went. Please check out their work when you have a chance. Here are some shots I took from the evening. The lighting was very dim so I used the trusty 50mm 1.8 and cranked the ISO all the way to 3200 for most of these.


Here is Marc introducing Gregory Heisler

Gregory Heisler outside chatting with us during the break

Jay Maisel

Jay and Gregory during the question and answer period

From the Garden

Took the 50mm 1.8/f out to a backyard garden and got these two shots. I like the depth of focus and background blur on these shots. I turned the aperture wide open and was using manual focus and by this I mean I basically turned the focus dial all the way to the closest focus point and then moved the camera in distance wise till I had the point I wanted in focus.

Cathedral Grove

On our drive back from Tofino to Nanaimo we pass through the MacMillan Provincial Parks and amongst the park is an area known as Cathedral Grove where huge towering Douglas Firs, Western Hemlock, Grand fir and Western Red Cedar trees are. This area was struck by a huge storm in 1997 and many of the toppled trees are still laying around but the natural forest has continued to grow and all around you is the sight of nature regenerating itself. Here are some photos from Cathedral Grove. There is one tree in particular that is supposed to be the largest tree and measures more than 9 meters in circumference. It's the first picture in this series and to see it in person is amazing. It's HUGE!

More from Tofino

Here are more shots from Tofino. These were mostly taken nearby where we were staying at the Long Beach Lodge Resorts. The area is called Cox Bay and it was about a 10 minute walk outside of our room that opened up right onto the path to the beach.

Tofino

Just got back from a great weekend in Tofino which is on the Northwest coast of Vancouver Island. This area boasts as being one of the premier surfing destinations on the west coast believe it or not. It is also home to some of the most scenic beaches and shorelines. Our stay there was incredibly relaxing and watching the waves rolling in was almost hypnotic. I have lots of photos to run through but here is one to get things started with more to follow.

Long Beach

Here are some more

HDR - Served up RAW

Last night for my Intermediate Photography class that I am taking at Vancouver Photo Workshops we had a field trip out to the Vancouver Art Gallery were we attempted to capture some shots to later process into HDR photos. It was mostly a cloud free evening so the skies weren't as dramatic as they could have been but we did our best. Tried several different shots and also did some long exposure night shots as well. All of the shots taken were shot in RAW and processing them afterwards was very time consuming and took a lot longer than when I had tried doing HDR with jpegs. I guess this was the result of huge file sizes and amount of information in each RAW file.