On-Camera Flash And Small White Room

Last week I had a chance to participate in an open photo shoot organized by Terry Jorgensen at The Bulb Studios. It was my first time to shoot in a studio with those big mono lights with their big soft boxes. The first shot I took with those big lights made me drool over them and makes me wanna get myself some of those lights too. I will someday.

Okay let's get back to the title of this post before I get carried away with those big lights introduction. What I really wanted to share and concentrate on was my favorite shots that I was able to take outside of the studio, actually it still inside the studio but away from the big lights -- the reception area of the studio. The reception area that was about, maybe 10 feet by 30 feet with a ceiling height of about 10 feet also. What was great about the reception area was it's painted white all over -- the walls, floor, and ceiling. One more thing, the entrance to this area was a glass door that allowed lots of light to enter into the room.

Model: Cathy Frey

The photo above was shot in the reception area. The reception door is on my left (model's right) side. I had my speedlite on my camera and from what I've learned, direct on-camera flash isn't really flattering at all. I have been practicing how to bounce flash with on-camera flash and I believe this is one big accomplishment for the little speedlite. I bounced my flash towards my back angled up about 45 degrees. This filled up the room with light scattering all about and bouncing all around the walls and ceiling and floor and created this big soft light source. As a result of this, the shadows behind the model and the motorcycle was almost eliminated and created a wrap around light on the subjects. As I didn't have much experience with big studio lights but have ample experience on bounce flash, I was able to get this awesome shot! Below is another shot on the same setting.

Model: Cathy Frey

At the opposite end of the studio entrance was the reception desk and it had a stair case on it's right side still painted white. Again, I was able to use it as my "own" small studio with only having my speedlite as the light source. I applied the same technique as I have done above but tweaked the angle of the flash.

Model: Stephanie Gaña

In the photo above, I believe the flash was toward my back-right hand side. On the next photo, the flash was on the opposite side as the model change positions, I had to adjust the direction of the flash. If I didn't change the direction of the flash, I would've lit the model's hair instead of her face.

Model: Stephanie Gaña

I was able to make good use of the white walls and on-camera flash using bounce flash techniques. I have to thank Neil van Niekerk for his tutorials on flash photography techniques. I did quite learn a lot from his blog on the use of on-camera flash bounce.

The rest of my photos from this photo shoot session can be seen here: Heroes & Villains Open Photo Shoot by Terry Jorgensen.

Again, thanks Terry for the spot and opportunity.

Flowers Delight!

Over the weekend, my wife together with my two daughters and I, went to church early and ate out for breakfast as I wanted to go to the Orchids Festival that was just recently concluded last March 7, 2011. These were taken at the Quezon City Memorial Circle where the festival was held.

I wanted to be early so I can still have soft natural light and didn't want to use flash in this occasion. Indeed the day was blessed with magnificent light. I really like taking photos of flowers under ambient light. Flower photography is my first love in photography and I can't wait to get myself a true dedicated macro lens for this (but it has to wait for awhile).

So let me share some of my favorites which I am very happy to share with you along with some description of the photo.

Here's an orchid where my intention is to focus on only one or two blossoms and let the others in the cluster blur in the background. Though the other blooms are blurred, it retained it's general form, shape, and color suggesting that the only focused bloom is part of a group and not a solo.

f/3.2, 1/200sec, ISO 200

Here's another bloom where I intentionally took a shot of the top part only of the cluster and show the color and the remains of the previous night's rain on them.

f/3.2, 1/640sec, ISO 200

A close-up shot (not a macro) of a bloom from a cluster of orchid blooms where I intentionally shot only one to reveal the patterns and color of this particular bloom. Actually, if you can look closely, there seems to be an alien's face (similar to movies -- big eyes, small mouth, and probably a third eye on the forehead) there in the pattern.

f/3.2, 1/320sec, ISO 200

This particular bloom is quite interesting for me as this variety is very seldom seen. The common color of this bloom is pink. I am actually trying to grow the common variety of this in our garden.

f/4.0, 1/125sec , ISO 200

I remember that this is my second shot from the series of photos that I have taken from this trip. My wife actually spotted this particular bloom for it's peachy color. The shallow DOF was intentional as I wanted to introduce dimension to the flower. I hope I achieved this. :)


f/2.8, 1/125sec, ISO 100

Ain't that delightful? Thank you for viewing. I hope you were enjoyed the photos as I enjoyed taking photos of them.

Share your delight and mine by sharing this blog entry to your friends.

Cheers!

Happy New Year!!!

A Happy, Prosperous, and Wonderful New Year to all!!! 2010 was surely a challenging year and I'm sure that 2011 will be one too.

I just realized that I had no entry last December 2010. I did take lots of photos to share but I guess I was too much preoccupied with my beloved kit lens losing it's AF (Auto Focus) function in the middle of a birthday celebration. Oh well, it gave me a chance to take full control of my camera this time: I'm in Manual Settings plus in Manual Focus!

I guess it's not too late to share some of my favorite shots during the holidays:

Close Encounter with Exotic Birds at Residence Inn, Tagaytay

Santa Claus

Of course some Fireworks

  

And our very little own Firworks display in our front lawn the night of 1.1.11 for the kids

Again, Happy New Year to all!!!

Stuck At Home

Having on-call duty work gets me stuck at home apparently just to avoid connection issues. Wife and kids are out and I'm really stuck at home. It's both a bad thing since I'll be stuck at home and a good thing as I got a chance to practice on my product photography without staying up until the wee hours of the night.

Here's a preview on my practice.

On this practice session I came to realize that my watch have a lot of scratches on the bands. I actually get to see the gritty dirt too. The glass part though doesn't have much scratch that are visible and that's a good thing.

Photographing shiny things like this by the way is very challenging as it is important to take note of the reflections that can be seen like your face, your background, your camera lens, and many more things.

Talking about lens being reflected on the watch face especially the camera lens, a telephoto lens will help in this case, but since I only have the kit lens I have to position the camera where the reflection won't be seen.

I quite miss shooting these things.

Spring Time

It felt like it was spring time this morning. Looking at the lawn filled with weeds reaching at most 5 inches due to the onset of rainy afternoons. Not only the weeds are thriving but also our flowering plants in the lawn. Though I think the flowers are a bit struggling due to the weeds.

Despite of this situation, the flowers are in bloom. The leaves are green and the flowers are bright.

The photo looks like a field of wild flowers. Some are yellow, white, orange, and even red. Add to that the tall weeds that makes it really a field of wild flowers. I guess what's lacking is the bright blue sky.

What made more feel like spring time is that the lawn had several visitors taking advantage of the flowers in bloom. There were several butterflies frequenting the lawn. I guess about three of this specie presented below.
Another specie of butterfly was also in the garden but wasn't able to take a photo of it as didn't rest much on the blooms long enough and it/they was/were relatively small than the ones in the photo.

The edges of the wings of this butterfly are jagged. It looks like strong winds or something else damaged the wings.

Even this butterfly have jagged wings, it's still beautiful and it's not always that these lawn visitors let me take a photo of them enjoying the wonderful blooms.

I think I would like to have a butterfly garden but I'm not sure if it's the right time as I feel the rainy season is just around the corner.

Well, I guess that gives me some time to research and get to know more about having these beautiful winged creatures that enjoy the blossoms.

I have sighted a couple of dragonflies too but didn't have the patience to follow them around in the hot sun. I think I had enough chasing with the butterflies.

That's it for my spring time -- or I should say my spring day!