photography – Page 4 – If we had a Marriage, These Would be its Thoughts

NASA Apollo Pictures

October 5, 2015 5:40 pm

Last week NASA released a bunch (over 10,000) of original images from the Apollo missions on their Flickr account. They’re all Public Domain images so anyone can download the originals and use them for anything they like. I flipped through and picked out my favorites and cleaned them up. I’ll probably get some nice canvas prints made of some of them when Canvas Press has sales.

Here are my top 10 after cleaning them up. I’ve uploaded my full versions so you can download them yourself if you want to make a poster or canvas print or something. Clicking an image will open the full-size version, which you can then save to your computer using right-click -> Save image…

A Light in the Dark

September 28, 2015 7:34 pm

I wrapped an LED around a button battery with a little material to keep it separated so you push on it to turn the LED on. Then we took turns waving it around while camera took a picture with a long exposure.

Heather’s work was usually very…nuclear:

We encouraged her to move around more:

I tried to write my name, but my spatial awareness is apparently not great:

Jess did better with her contribution:

Lunar Eclipse 2015

September 27, 2015 8:41 pm

We and a few families from Church went to a local park and climbed a hill to try and get a decent view of the lunar eclipse tonight. Despite having had nothing but clear skies for about 9 months we managed to have clouds covering the eastern sky, and only the eastern sky, this evening. We waited around for a while and did manage to get about 5 minutes where we could see the moon. I had had plans to try and make a nice timelapse image as the moon came up over the horizon, but that didn’t work out.

Here’s the best shot I managed to get:

But at least we got a chance to hangout with friends for a little while and we did get to see something.

Of course, after the eclipse ended the sky cleared up perfectly:

These were just using my Pentax K-7 with a 200mm lens, nothing special.

And here is some of the group that was up on the hill watching:

Family Pictures

July 11, 2015 6:15 pm

I decided to make use of my new photography lighting equipment and took some family pictures today. Originally it was going to be a little photo shoot for Corinne, but that rapidly expanded. Unfortunately, I wasn’t planning on taking a full family picture so I didn’t have the tripod and remote out and configured. So don’t have one of the whole family, but we’re all in there in some way or another.

It was tough trying to get Heather and Corinne looking in the same direction at the same time with something amounting to a smile on their faces. I resorted to tickling Heather as she’s reached the age where asking her to smile results in bizarre grimaces.

Here are some of the best shots:

And the other shots that came out well:

I look like I’m trying to steal Corinne or something…

Let There Be Light!

July 2, 2015 10:46 pm

I saw a deal on Slickdeals yesterday for this entry-level studio lighting kit from Cowboy Studio. For $45 it comes with 3 light stands, 2 white umbrellas, 3 light & umbrella holders, and 3, 45-watt CFL daylight bulbs (~225-watt incandescent equivalent). I certainly wasn’t expecting professional quality components, but they’re better than what I had for staging a picture (which was nothing but my off-camera flash).

First, I’m quite pleased with Amazon. I placed the order Wednesday afternoon with 2-day shipping, and it arrived Thursday morning. Can’t argue with that.

Second, I’m quite pleased with the products. Definitely worth $45. Many of the components are plastic, rather than metal, but I even so they seem pretty sturdy. For hobbyist use they seem like they’ll be fine.

Heather, as usual, was super excited to find out what was in the box that arrived this morning, so I told her she could help me test out the equipment after work.

So here are a few test shots. The only lighting used was from the kit. I’ll probably get a shoe mount to hook up my flash with one of the umbrellas at some point so I can get more power and a faster shutter speed; or maybe just some brighter / more-directional lights.

The setup for these photos was 2 lights behind an umbrella in-front of her to the left at about eye-level and the 3rd light & umbrella below, behind, and to her right.

Really decent soft lighting!

The first picture is Heather’s natural face when I ask her to look at something. Not sure why she looks so sad. Afterwards Jess came in and got Heather laughing. Since she’s moving around so much the images aren’t as crisp, but that’s where the flash would help. She also stood up, so the lights on the left were now below eye-level, so her eyes ended up shadowed in this next picture since her head is tilted back.