Stuff white people like

A while back I was introduced to a blog called "stuff white people like."

Christian Lander, better known by his penname "clander," has the unique ability to point out things that the typical white person may like while simultaneously causing the reader much laughter.

I read a recent post about sweaters.

One of the highlights from his post:

"When you approach the subject from the perspective of age, it’s essential that you combine very young and very old white people in the same group. This is because young white people think it is very cool to wear clothes that are popular with senior citizens. The most popular example of this is the cardigan sweater, which is essentially a wool jacket with less buttons. An old white person might combine this sweater with a button down shirt to provide himself or herself with valuable warmth in the winter months, but a young white person will combine it with a t-shirt to create a ‘layered look.’ This not only allows them to show others that their personality features as many layers as their clothes, but it’s a chance to show people that you own not one but two cool items of clothing."

You can read the full post (in all it's light-hearted humor) here.

Product photography

I bought a new external hard drive recently. 500 GB.
On an unrelated note, who knew that Coke came in tallboys?

white on white

Shot white on white last week. Usually people choose static objects, like plates and such. The reasons for this are two-fold. One, once you get the object in place you have to determine how to modify the lighting. For example, you would see that you need a reflector to open up the shadows here, or you'd need a gobo (short for "go between" which basically blocks portions of light) there. Maybe your object is casting a strange shadow on the backdrop or catching an unflattering glare from one of the softboxes. Shooting an object that is not moving helps to set-up correct lighting that will not change.

The second reason that it is wise to use a static object is because we are shooting 4x5 film. Imagine a negative that 4"x5" that is inserted in a large-format camera, complete with bellows and frosted glass that you must look into whilst beneath a black cloth, and that is what you would find us doing. The film is expensive to buy and to process so we generally only use 4 sheets per shoot. This means that we spend over 60 minutes setting up everything and then we take 4 shots of it on film and hope they came out correctly. All that said, I did not choose a static object.


Milk!

Half and half, to be exact, as that is all they had at the gas station near class. It was very yellow and as the day wore on, became very rank. This assignment, though shot on color film has to be converted to BW in order to take out yellow color casts (lucky me!). I haven't got the film back yet, but these are some shots that I took with my digital just to make sure I had the lighting ratios correct.


The set-up. Stephen (my assistant in class) cut the bottom out of the milk carton so that we could mount the carton on a stand in order to preserve the focal plane. Then he poured the stuff through.


And we had to clean up after every test-shot and every shot and then do the whole thing over again. Imagine warm half and half and the aroma it was creating.


This was the actual shot. I'm behind the large-format camera and another classmate is taking this digital shot. Notice the large softbox over head.


Another shot of the set-up. That's me behind the camera!

Summer school

Summer is here! Maybe not technically "here," but it's the time of year when its 100 degrees outside everyday of the week, and the sun doesn't go down until after 9pm. In other words: my favorite time of year!

I'm blessed that I am not committed to a 40-hour/week job, so I have more time for playing Rev and enjoying the sunshine... well, almost. This summer I have committed to 9 weeks of summer school. While meeting 3 consecutive days a week from 8-5 doesn't seem like fun, it has it's perks. For one thing, I have access to a versatile photo studio space. I'll be posting my class assignments for all to enjoy.

As a review, lets look at how my previous experience with lighting.

Semester 1 in Photo classes, barely learning about lighting patterns and the small studio set-up only had tungsten lights (eek), hence the yellow color cast.


Family event, first use of strobes (outside of the classroom). As you can see, I had no idea what I was doing with the background light... it's very "hot." Other than that, not too bad considering I didn't know how to use a light meter back then.


Semester 1 in Photo classes had just ended. I had to do some company portraits for a Christmas card using available light (in this case fluorescent lighting) and my limited knowledge of using reflectors. Of course, as I had no assistants, I had to use myself to check lighting and set-up the shots.


Semester 2 in Photo classes had just commenced. Again, company portraits. This time for the company website. By this time, I had a little more understanding of lighting patterns, but still no grasp of how to control the background light (see hotspot under my left arm). And again, I had to use myself to check the lighting. Love the haircut!



Semester 3-Summer school. My first assignment was "Basic Portrait" and we basically did portraits of eachother in class, just to familiarize ourselves with the basic lighting patterns. Here's my classmate, Stephen, lit using a "short loop" lighting pattern.

Father's Day

It's been a while since I've posted thanks to the start of summer school and the assault of various work deadlines. Now that I have a moment to breathe, I'm making two posts in one day. Here are some "Father's Day" pictures. These were taken as part of our "Advanced Portrait" assignment. I've very grateful to my two models. I was warned ahead of time that children will only cooperate for 5-10 minutes, and thus you must have everything set-up perfectly beforehand. Well, Rev was in good spirits for the entire 90 minutes that I had them in the studio. Hard to believe.





This was taken in the same shoot. I was trying to emulate a photo of JFK I had come across. Last time I will do this shot... the lighting set-up took about 45 minutes. Think several lights and several gobo's.


It didn't help that my assistant was a different height than my model, so when we set-up the lights on the assistant, it was all thrown out the window when the model sat in. Luckily, we all tried to stay light-hearted. Here's my assistant (i.e. my classmate) helping me set-up lighting. Another helpful classmate jumped in at the last minute. Hah.