Week 17 (April 23rd - April 29th) | Pictures 28 & 29

I decided to go back to some OCF this week. I've been really focusing on macros lately and haven't played with my artificial lighting much.

The more I take pictures, the more I realize that light is easily 95% - or more - of what makes a good picture, regardless of the subject. Be it natural or artificial (I love both and have a long way to go before I master either), light will make or break an otherwise perfect image.

I wanted to do something high key this week. It's probably high key enough that it wouldn't print well, but it was nice to do something really bright for a change.

I tried the glass with some white wine in it and it killed the effect. The wine was in the glass looked okay, it was the background that didn't work. The wine was diffusing the light enough that the background had a large shadow on it. This would have been a perfect time to use 2 lights - the primary light for the glass and then a second light used as a fill. So that was a big failure, but the wine made some tiny bubbles when I poured it and I did like how those pictures came out.

The glass, sans wine:



The bubbles:



Camera: Nikon D700 (settings identical for both images)
Lens: 105mm f/2.8 macro
Aperture: f/5.6
Shutter Speed: 1/250
ISO: 200
Flash: Flash: SB-800 off camera, manual, 1/8th power
Exposure: manual

Setup was a speedlight shot through a white umbrella at a 45 degree angle, white poster board for a background, and a white piece of foam core as a reflector to help light the far side of the background. Setup picture here.

Week 16 (April 16th - April 22nd) | Picture 27

I sit here at the very end of week 16 and I have nothing to show you.

I contemplated just letting the week go. I have at least a half dozen friends I should be emailing back instead of worrying about this blog. But I opted against skipping a week because this wouldn't be a challenge if it was easy. (God bless the people who have 365 blogs - I do not know how on Earth they find the time.)

I contemplated trying to find some way to light my wine glass without taking the energy to go to the basement to get my reflectors and lighting gear. I opted against that - because I'm just too darn lazy tonight - and most nights lately for that matter. (The glass was full at the time it was considered a candidate but is now empty . . . soon to be refilled and emptied once again before bed.)

So I decided to sit here, drink my wine, and trudge through my LR catalog to see what pictures I took in the last week. On the plus side, I took a tremendous number of pictures - several hundred. But they are all of my little boy. Great for mommy and family memories, but that doesn't help me one bit for my photography blog.

There were literally 4 images I took all week that were not of my child. They were all of our Japanese maple tree that I sit under when I take his picture outside. None of them are anything special, but this one was the least bad of them all. I hate the composition. (Hello random focus.) But I love the colors and the sun peaking through.

If I'm being honest - I failed this week. The point of this challenge was to go out and find something to shoot. Not to schlep through my catalogs at the end of the week and hope to find something worth sharing. But my small victory is that I am sharing a picture. And I really hope to do a better job in coming weeks.



Camera: Nikon D700
Lens: 105mm f/2.8 macro
Aperture: f/5.6
Shutter Speed: 1/500 (As I mentioned, I was taking pictures of my toddler. 1/500th wouldn't have been my typical choice here if I had thought about it . . . )
ISO: 1250
Flash: none
Exposure: manual

Week 15 (April 9th - April 15th) | Picture 26

Gah. It's been a bad week. A really bad week. And I'm not happy with my picture this week, but since it's one of the only non-child pictures I took, here you go.

(If you don't like bugs, look away.)



Camera: Nikon D700
Lens: 105mm f/2.8 macro
Aperture: f/4.8
Shutter Speed: 1/250
ISO: 8000 (!)
Flash: none
Exposure: manual

I'm in a general funk lately. The personal blog hasn't been updated in ages, and I'm just feeling very uninspired. I'm going to try my best to keep this blog up. We shall see.

Week 14 (April 2nd - April 8th) | Pictures 24 & 25

Remember the flowering tree from last week? Those buds have completely flowered out and we have a beautiful display of white puffy blooms to admire from our kitchen window. And if the weather promises to stay this nice, we'll even get outdoors to enjoy it soon. However, taking a macro picture of one of the blooms is next to impossible - the wind is always blowing and even if it wasn't, I'm not the most steady shooting over my head. So I snapped off a small twig of blooms and decided to compose in a more controlled environment - our kitchen. MUCH easier.

My two favorites:



Camera: Nikon D700
Lens: 105mm f/2.8 macro
Aperture: f/4.8
Shutter Speed: 1/250
ISO: 800
Flash: none
Exposure: manual



Camera: Nikon D700
Lens: 105mm f/2.8 macro
Aperture: f/4.8
Shutter Speed: 1/320
ISO: 1600
Flash: none
Exposure: manual

I composed the second shot in front of a window. It's definitely not something I would normally do, since there is very little distinction between the flower and the background. But it's fun to try something new, and I actually really like how it turned out.