Lightning

I spent the hours of 12:00am-3:00am on the side of Hiway 200 on Sunday morning. I drove a crazy 35 mile shortcut between Superior, Montana and Hiway 200 (dirt road all the way with gravel, rocks, weeds and downed trees) looking for a good place to shoot the stars. I need a great foreground to showcase the star trails. Instead I ended up with these pictures. The storms circled my position and only landed two raindrops on my equipment. Traffic was intermittent but when I tried to shield the lenses from headlight glare I shifted the alignment and ruined the star trails. Better luck next time!

More Studio Time

I skipped out of computer lab since I already had the assignment done and crashed Group E's Studio time. Two of the bays were unoccupied so I set up shop. I photographed the clothes with the same set up as the last studio time--lowest power on the two lights twelve feet away and shooting through umbrellas. Then moved to the bottles and vegetables. I needed more light for those objects and used the 5' octolight (softbox), fill cards on both sides and front to kick light into the labels and tomatos. Bottles are tough.

Studio

My model could not get off work to arrive in time to take pictures so I spent the time shooting what was on hand. I worked the lighting (three lights, one pointed away to bleed off power, power pack dialed all the way down, shooting through unbrellas on the other strobes that were placed about 12 feet back from the scene) until I could get down to f2.8 and a shallow depth of field to isolate certain features of objects. I also shot some film pictures with the lights and will have to run out to get the pictures developed. (I could use the facilities at the school, but that would require permission and lessons beyond the regular schedule--and closing part of the hallway.) The two film pictures are in my binder. The dog pic was left over on the roll from April or May and the stars were shot at the same time as the the picture below. More pics in a few days.

Star Trails Success

I spent the hours from 11:30pm-1:20am last night shooting the stars. I drove forty miles west of Missoula and found a dirt road that had plenty of shoulder space for my car, cameras and tripods. The picture is a composite of 126 30-second exposures compiled in Photoshop. Hopefully I get something like this from my film camera too as it was exposing at the same time.

New Pictures on Website

Posted the Midterm Slideshow to my website. Received some good feedback on the images. One instructor commented on the difficulty of the shots and that the regular pics should be cut. The other instructor expressed that several pics would look good printed and framed on the wall, but advised I cut the regular shots and pare down the total. Seems fair to me.

Posted some new Visual Studies mimic shots for an assignment. Copied style of Imogen Cunningham for the hand/camera pictures and tried the Eugene Atget's empty streets reflected in the mannequin's view. Not quite enough mannequin showing.

I also composited four pictures to mimic pictogram style.

Our group had optional studio time today from 2-6 pm. Nine of us took advantage of the equipment to practice studio skills. I shot on Monday during Group D's optional time as did three others from Group A. Today I spent shooting my lunch, some bottles (which we could not open in the studio) and outside portraits. Attached are three samples. The biggest problems to solve in the lunch setup was how to keep the root beer foamy and overcome the shadows/reflections in the glassware. After stirring the drink over and over we ended that setup. Three lights (overhead softbox, left side light to cover the background and right side light to shoot into the bottle and glass.

The bottle difficulty was the reflection from the dark front of the studio. We wrapped the camera area in more paper to cover the dark area, and placed cards in the cardboard box to reflect light on to the dark areas. Same three lights to try to cover all of the angles.

We had about 25 minutes left for outside practice. We set up an umbrella and had the battery power pack to flash the stobe. I should have pointed the umbrella down a little to create a catchlight in Kristiana's eyes.

We scouted Lee Metcalf Wildlife Preserve and the Stevensville Balloon Festival on Saturday night. The organizers put one balloon up for short lift-offs for the kids. A band kept the picnickers entertained while several photographers scoured the grounds looking for pictures. Attached are pictures of the mission in Stevensville.

Rita picked me up at 4:40am. for the sunrise at Lee Metcalf. See my website for more pics and a sunset over Missoula. 600 pictures today. Need to increase my selectivity/quality and reduce the quantity.

32 more images are up on my website for you to view. Check the Glacier July portfolio for the new photos. We spent Thursday and Friday in Glacier National Park camping and hiking to the lakes. Bear Grass was everywhere as it is the cycle year for it to flourish. Most pictures are labeled for location or people. The star trails picture looks like a good start (ISO 800, 5 minute exposure, 52mm & f5.6) but the fire was too close and the trees would have been blown out with a longer exposure. I should have stitched several 5 minute shots together and would have had a grand circular trail. It was cloudy the next night.

New pictures are up on my website under the Augusta Rodeo Weekend portfolio. Please go here to see the series.