The ghost of the silo is bored...

This painting with light assignment was a group project. We we sent out armed with flashes and flashlights to show something with light that would not be seen during the day by normal light. Our group headed out to Hinkson Creek to photograph dead gnarled trees and an abandoned silo. After experimenting with a few ideas, we ended up with this.

Caption:

Look really close. There are two of our ghost. She's hiding in the back, and blending in with the grasses. I'm pretty happy with this photo. We all had a role to play, and I think everyone did a good job. The silo and the grass look really firey, which is what we were going for. Look below for a diagram. I notice they get more sketchy as time passes.

Single Flash

So we tried out some single flash this time.Basically, we had to overpower the existing light. As a result, it was tough to get a good photo using direct flash. All in all, it seemed to go very well. Here they are first the diagram, then the photo, and the caption:

Bounce Flash: Lauren Young, president of the MU Ballroom Dance Club, pauses to think through the footwork while helping Cameron Olsen with a Cha-cha routine during the club's weekly beginners' class on Sunday, Oct.18, 2009 in MU's Mark Twain Ballroom. As president and member of the club for four semesters, she helps teach the beginning students, but teaching the lead can be confusing. "I have to think about the guy's part because it's the effectual opposite [of the women's]," she said.


Direct Flash: Beginner dancer Madeline Komes checks her partner Andrew Bunge's footwork while they practice American style Cha-cha at the MU Ballroom Dance club's beginners' class on Sunday, Oct. 18, 2009, in MU's Mark Twain Ballroom. Both started learning ballroom dance this semester. For Komes, ballroom is an extension of years of competitive dance experience while, for Bunge, it's an experiment in "being a renaissance man." He practices Pretto's principle that one can do 20% of the work to get 80% of the results. "I'll do this for about a year. Then, I'll move to something else, like martial arts," he said.

This assignment is a demonstration that practice makes…better, at least. Originally, my idea was to go to the renaissance fair on the Fairgrounds, but I realized that there was probably too much light for me to overpower and that the content would probably look unnatural with direct flash, but while I was at the fairgrounds, I saw that they were having roller derby later that night. As a former women’s rugby player, I have an affinity for rough female dominated sports. So I decided to try it. When I got there, I realized my first problem: the ceiling was too high. I thought I could use bounce flash off of the walls and some white mattresses that had been taped up against them (see the first few shots), but the strobe wasn’t strong enough for how far away from the wall they skated. So, for the first shoot, the photos were primarily direct flash with a few bounce flash attempts off of my white sweater (also failing).

One of the biggest difficulties I had with this first shoot was that the strobe just wouldn’t fire sometimes. I’ve figured out now that it was that the strobe needed to recharge, but as you can see, I kept trying. Also, I had the camera programmed to shoot series of photos so it fired without the flash sometimes if I held the shutter down. Otherwise, it was just a practice in avoiding distracting shadows.

My second attempt went much better. I knew that Mark Twain Ballroom has reasonably low, white ceilings. The lighting isn’t the greatest, but that was an advantage since this was all about overpowering the existing light. I did mostly bounce flash since I had done primarily direct flash before. I have to say that I like it much more. In general, I brought the TTL down by 1½ since my flash tends to shoot hot. I shot almost all of the bounce flash having my three center fingers for bounce onto the face. I think it turned out well, and I did better with the direct flash this time too. I angled it further down, adjusted the head of the flash, and powered the flash down further. I focused mainly on one girl, Madeline Komes, who interested me, and her two dance partners. This also had to do with access since she was on the end of the line, so I would have the most flexibility with lighting her. I also shot the teacher, the president and a few interesting happenings. I’m rather pleased with the results.

Humility doesn't mean you have to be small...

I reviewed a multimedia flash project run on the Chattanooga Times Free Press called "Humility in hard times". It tells stories of people whose lives have been affected by the recession as well as of those who lived through both the Great Depression and the recession. This concept is very compelling, and the content could work great for a project. Comparing the history to the present in this way can help us to gain some perspective and guidance in dealing with these issues.

This topic was well-suited to a flash project as the project has two chapters (one each for the recession and the Depression). And has four stories in each chapter. Additionally, the “about” link has an interview with two of the four creators

When navigating to the page, the first problem with this project is immediately clear. The entire project was made too small. The text is barely legible. It’s unfortunate because there is clearly much more room on the Web page, and I’m sure the text is very compelling. Furthermore, the text is white on black serif. Being this small, it becomes hardly legible. The banner is done successfully in a sans serif that should have been used throughout the whole project.

The project works design-wise. The visuals are given the most real estate while there is a space for explanation underneath. The thumbnails for the other four stories line up vertically on the left and the navigation for other parts of the project are located at the bottom left. Quotations from each section run across the top in a banner like area. The only problem is that there is too much real estate given to this area.

Additionally, there are too few visuals to warrant creating a flash slideshow. In many there are only two or three portraits. They don’t tell us much more about the story or the person. It think it would have been better to have either only one photo or at least enough so that they could change every three to five seconds.

Overall, very interesting concept but could have been executed better.

Bathtime, studio style

So, we had an assignment to shoot metal and glass in the studio. I picked glass. Pretty early on, I had thought about doing a bath theme but it was more based on the visuals in the Dove, Go Fresh commercials; however, as I played around with the idea, I decided that I would prefer to focus on relaxation rather than wakening. I still wanted bold colors, but I kept them cool. This particular interpretation went through a few variations before I ended with this one involving the sponge, the flower in the bottle, and the soap scattered. I liked this for its touch of whimsy. It's a somewhat classic still life, but I think the soap makes it look more like a sketch. So, here's the picture:
Lavender scented bath beads lie piled next to a hand-blown glass bottle holding a Stargazer Lilly on October 7, 2009. All of these items demonstrate that relaxation can go toward a good cause. The sponge, a natural sea sponge, was bought at Makes Scents while the lilly was bought from Allen's Flowers, both local mom-and-pop stores in Columbia, Mo. The bath beads and the glass bottle are both fair trade items found at World Market.

Lighting this was interesting. The concept of the light table is simple. light the entire thing more or less evenly. However, getting the ratio right for the bottom was kind of difficult because I kept getting halation with despite changing ratios. Moreover, lighting the flower, the candle and the sponge without getting any specular highlights on the photo was a challenge. We ended up using all four lights, a piece of black paper, and a lot of extra stuff like snoots and barn doors. Here's the diagram for the final picture:

Using flash and java to optimize the photographs

While I was looking for photographer’s websites, I came across New York photographer Eric Ryan Anderson’s awesome portfolio, found at ericryananderson.com.

First of all, he gets points for putting his contact information in the page’s title with his name. Also, he keeps the design simple with a black and white all-caps sans-serif theme. The tabs are easily accessible at the top left of the page and follow a logical order by presenting the portfolios closer to the inside of the page and the moving toward the “about” and “contact” tabs. The portfolio tab has a drop-down drawer—a design element that I’m usually prefer because it keeps the page clean (though I’m not a huge fan of the black outline around this drawer). In this drawer, he has several different categories to choose from, which helps to organize the viewing experience. The photographs in these sections take up the majority of the screen, which is ideal.

The “about” pages are simple and to the point. The “contact” page gives the user several options for getting a hold of Anderson, having a form along with his phone number and email. I also like that he added a journal, (basically, a blog), but it would have been better if he had kept the navigation and the look more cohesive with the rest of the website.

One thing I absolutely love about this portfolio website is the number of options that he gives the user. Through creative implementation of flash and java script, he has enabled the user to click forward and back through the photographs or view them as a timed slideshow. The arrows appear when the user hovers over the photograph. In addition, he has a drawer to the right of the photograph that displays a vertical row of thumbnails when the user hovers over a dot. The user can scroll up and down by mousing in the preferred direction. Also, he has another box for caption information that pops up when the user hovers the words “Image info.”

The best thing about this interface besides easy navigation is that the photo is never permanently blocked. My only critique is that it may be beneficial to be able to click once and have the drawer stay open and again to close it. This would be better for the user, but it could distract from the photograph. All in all, I love this interface and would like to implement some of the concepts in my design (once I know how to do it).