Self Portrait

Self Portrait, originally uploaded by Venn Diagram.

Well, here I am - trying out a bit of over-the-top portraiture on myself. I was wondering how well I could control two different colours and it turns out to be less difficult than I thought. One flash to the left, on my face through a home-made snoot, one behind me painting the wall (which is cream in reality). This took an age to get the red light in the right place, the number of nearlynearlynearly shots I took is quite staggering, but I got there eventually. I would have liked a little more sharpness on the eye, and there's a fairly bad piece of cloning in there somewhere, but I think it's OK for starters.

I'm thinking I need some drinking straws, then I can give my snoot a honeycomb. Not sure whether that'll make a huge difference, but I'm enjoying the make-and-do approach and think it's worth a pop.

Strobist: 430EXII camera left with a red gel, 360AFD behind, pointed at the wall with a green flash. Both set to 1/16th if memory serves...

Strawberry Towers

Strawberry Towers, originally uploaded by Venn Diagram.

I think I've caught the stacking bug. After seeing a rather impressive apple/lime combination, I went to search the fridge for stackables.

Straberries are easier than potatoes, it turns out, though they tend to be shorter lived. This set lasted a couple of seconds after the shot before plummeting to the earth.

I'm most happy with the choice to leave the foliage on, though this was more of a technical decision, it makes for better stacking...

For simplicity's sake, no backlighting this time, just two flashes with Sto-Fen diffusers - 1x 430EXII to the left, about 6" away and set to 1/16th, the 360AFD to the right, probably three feet away and also at 1/16th.

A nice drop of red

A nice drop of red, originally uploaded by Venn Diagram.

Revolutionising the blog! Just discovered that I can link my flickr account to my blog and transfer pictures directly. It's great, not only does it save me time, as I don't need to upload twice, but it also saves storage space somewhere, and hopefully the planet.

Last night's (only mildly drunken) shot of a glass of wine. It took a few glasses until I got the right one, you see.

Strobist: 360AFD through the background, 430EXII above camera left through a snoot. Had initially thought they'd both be at 1/16th, but on looking remembered that the 360AFD would have reset itself and so I've got full power. That explained a lot, I thought the light was a bit weird at the time...

Flickr

This is a test post from , a fancy photo sharing thing.

One potato, two potato, three potato ... four?

I'm at home, working, today and wanted to take something quick to keep the momentum up. I'd seen a fantastic image of some stacked biscuits last night, posted by one of my contacts on flickr and became convinced that the same thing with potatoes would be both groovy and fulfil my need for speed.

Let me stop the train here and say that if you've never tried balancing potatoes, you should go and try it now... I'll still be here, but you need to have some empathy for the next bit.

Potatoes are near impossible to balance, it turns out. Maybe I should have realised that, I don't know, but it was a joke. Took a good twenty minutes to get these babies balanced, and there was no way I was going to mess it up by trying number four.

Sorry, this is about lighting, not potatoes - for the background I took a sheet of A3 card and cut a hole to slip my 360AFD flash through, with my old Sto-Fen diffuser on the front (it fits, score one for Jessops, the same head shape as my long-departed Vivitar flash). The flash was lying side-on with a pile of books to bring it to the right height to fit through the hole. Distance to potato, about 5cm (say 2"), I guess. The idea was to try and get a bit of a halo going on, though the white background has killed any rimlighting, I suppose. If you look closely, there is a bit of a colour difference around the 'taters to the further out background.

At head height, camera left (so above camera, I was shooting at table height) the 430EXII shooting into a silver umbrella, must have been all of one metre away. Both flashes set to 1/16th. All done while balancing potatoes. Well, to be honest I got the shot set up with one potato, then spent the time balancing the others with the cable release in my hand in case it worked.

End of story - for what is a pretty simple shot, it took an age to set up. I think I'm going to start shooting Lego next, it must be easier.

STACKING IS THE NEW BALANCING!

A note on Nissin

I also tried out a Nissin flash unit today - the CTR-301 just wouldn't trigger it - the CTR-301 units were functioning fine, but the flash just wasn't playing. Then, when I came to remove the flash, it seemed to have glued itself into the hotshoe of the receiver, cue several anxious moments between myself and the shop guy - I didn't want my receiever to break, he was kind of keen his flash stayed in one peace. We all got away safely... eventually.

Remember that I said two flashes would be peachy? Well, my second CTR-301 receiver arrived yesterday, so I scoured the high street this afternoon. You know what? There's not much choice, and if I wasn't so impatient, I should have gone to the 'net, but hey.

Eventually, I settled on a Jessops own brand, 36 guide no. flash that will allow manual setting down to 1/16th. Cut the next few hours out, home I come and decide to have a play - here you can see a photo of the Romanesco my fantastic wife picked up last week as "something I might like to shoot". Nice.

The shot here is the 360AFD behind left through a snoot (at 1/16th) and the 430EXII to camera left around 90 degrees, shooting at 1/16th through a green gel. I picked up the gels at a DJ/lighting shop in town, cost £2 for a red, amber, green and blue set - the sort of thing you see in the front of disco lights, add a spot of blu-tak and there you go.

New toys!

Flash trigger #2 arrived today, so now I need to get flash #2 (tomorrow?). Jessops have a guide 40 flash for Canon that might do the trick, but will probably check out Jacobs too, just in case.

New trigger is v2.0 of CTR-301, it says "TEST" instead of "TSET" on my mk. 1.0. It rattled too, but did work, so not too worried about it. Got a shot planned at work, but need to negotiate permissions - hopefully more news next week!

So here's image #1 - well, it's not strictly #1, I've taken thousands of images, but this is the first genuine attempt to do something interesting - I've attempted to add rimlighting to this cactus. The results are not so good, with only one flash, I had to reflect the light from the back down onto the front, but at least you can see the flesh in this one - the first few were black.

Valuable lesson learned - another flash would be peachy.

Start of something new...

Well, here we are at the end of a day, and maybe the start of something new.

I'm starting out using off-camera flash, a totally new area for me, and I thought I'd like to record what I think. Primarily so I can check back later, but that's me - selfish.

Where will this go - maybe nowhere, but who knows....