Thursday, May 6, 2010

Things to do in the desert

Went to the desert with Lyz, Melissa, Kat, and Ren this past Saturday. Here are my take-home notes for the desert:

-it's bright as hell
-it's windy as hell
-the Prius is not an off-road vehicle
-a large reflector can be a kite
-only drive as far as you're willing to run on foot (just in case something happens)

So we were at an undisclosed location in the Lucerne Valley. It's undisclosed because I really don't know where we were. I mean, I couldn't find it by myself since I was driving with the directions provided by Kat and Lyz.

Here are some pictures from that day. I'm still working through the rest:






Interestingly when I look through these retouched pictures I think to myself, "Are those my pictures?" Sure feels like I'm changing again...

Can you tell how I lit each picture?

7 comments:

  1. lit by an sb900?

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  2. That depends on which picture... actually I don't own an SB-900 and though I own 3 SB-800's none of the above pictures are lit with an SB-800 :)

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  3. If I were a betting man, I'd say you used a beauty dish and possibly a reflector and amped it up to overwhelm the sun on the outdoor desert shots. On the b&w shot, it looked like you cranked up the aperture to f/22 or something to get that depth of field.

    The indoor shots, I'd guess you used a combination of your beauty dish (or some kind of strobe from the sharpness of the shadow) aimed really low and on a lower setting on one side and a reflector on the other side for light fill.

    ... am I close?

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  4. If I may, I think you are changing. I think your photos are more dynamic in the baroque sense. By the composition of your shots, you are leading the viewing to things that are outside the shot. For instance, the last image here, the subject is a off center (rule of thirds) and her whole body is oriented toward the right despite the weight of her posture is to the left.

    I think this tension makes that picture. I could be wrong here but didn't notice you using this technique much before.

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  5. Thomas! Good guesses, except maybe the shadow in the B&W indoor shot was deceiving because that's not really a shadow... it's just the wall. I responded to your post with a new post ;)

    As far as changing, yeah there are definite subtleties with my framing, composition, cropping, etc. glad you noticed ;) Certainly I am pleased with some improvement but I feel like there's so much more to be done! That being said, I'm more satisfied with the recent batch of images than I've been in a long time. Cheers! :)

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