Strobalicious

In continuing with off camera flash...I took my work to the streets. Okay well not the streets really but to the rice patty fields. I saw a couple of photos that had a cool sunset or sky in the bg, black foreground, but with a lit subject that really tickled my interest. I wanted to mimic this and practice a bit so I gathered up my gear and drove out to the fields and set up my lights and tripod. Still, I only had 1 flash at the time connected via pc sync cord and yah........again it must have slipped off about a dozen times. Anyways after a few shots I started to get the hang of this. This is far from magic but with 1 flash and it being my first time out, I think it turned out okay. I created something I've never created before in photography and that got me stoked.

I feel like there is so much to learn. I always thought photography was simple. Find something cool, get your camera and take a picture, but I'm learning that you have to do a lot of work, studying, setup, etc........just to get 1 picture. On top of that, you have to learn the 'other' half of photography....post processing and that's never ending. Soooo, you put in all that time and you want to show it to the world right? To do this, it takes time because you have to post them on blogs or photo sites like flickr, picasa web. Get this, all this for no $$$ on the back end. Well not yet anyways. If you really wanna make $$ you have to then post your pictures on stock photos sites, submit to photo magazines and that too takes time! To wrap it up, the whole process takes a lot of time and dedication. I can see a lot of people just quiting ........not take pictures for a few months cause things get busy in their lives. The way I think about it is........photography is like a big piggy bank. You put in and put in and over time the bank gets heavier and someday, when its full... it'll break open and you'll get huge rewards. Well, who knows how big the piggy bank is though.....gotta wait and see!

Strobe'n on my mind.

Slowly, all the pieces of the puzzle are starting to come together and this off camera strobing has started to get really interesting. At the time I shot these photos, I shooting with my 40D, a Nikon SB-26 attached with a really long sync cord. I think the flash ran me about $60 bucks and the cord $10 so all in all I have 1 off camera strobe for about $110 with a light stand...not bad I'd say.

These are test shots I did in my living room just to play around and get familiar with lighting and what not. I chose to shoot in front of my living room window cuz I wanted to play around with a strong blacklit source and flash. At first I fired about 10 shots and they all looked crap. I wasn't getting what I was hoping for (although I usually never do with flash photography), but with a swift click, I set my camera on M mode (A mode was blowin the deal) and continued to play around. I was deliberately trying to blow out the background to create an all white background and use flash to fill in the face and create shadows. After about 20 minutes of running back and forth changing the power setting on my flash...I was able to produce something that I didn't mind too much.

Dood, being the camera guy and being the test dummy sucks massive ballz especially when the sync cord would just keep slipping off. Why in the hell did they design it like that? It doesn't even click in. Makes no sense. Engineers can turn 0's and 1's into digital information but can't design a plug that plugs in? Well whatever.... Stay tuned because there is more to come!