Profunditea Photography

lookers

admin — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 00:33:10 +0000

Gentleman and I headed up to Lookout Mountain for some fresh air and a quick get away from the house this afternoon. I really like the way these turned out; the lighting was absolutely perfect and yet again I didn’t have to do any post processing.

Here’s a little Colorado peaking through the trees. Not bad for only having 60mm worth of zoom on me at the time.

studio lights

admin — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 18:25:04 +0000

For quite some time now, I’ve been researching what kind of lights I should purchase for my mobile studio. I can’t afford anything really nice, but I am well aware that there are less expensive alternatives if I just take the time to look. I’ve been a fan of the strobist and really like the idea of using my external flash as a slave/strobe. My only dilemma with this is how much my personal equipment needs a diffuser.

Enter the softbox.

I like softboxes much more than umbrellas. They’re easier to use (imo) and I feel they’re overall better at evenly distributing light. I was searching on craigslist for used equipment when I came across (imagine clouds parting and heavenly voices ahhh’ing) the ALZO FLIP FLASH BRACKET SOFTBOX KIT; a very cool and versatile piece that I have decided I will own some day. Oh yes, I will.

This package is a small softbox that connects to your external flash and then to a bracket that holds your camera, portrait or landscape, and then (if you want) will mount to your tripod-no extra bulbs, stands or power sources. This makes me very happy.

But first, I decided, I must learn to use my external flash as another light source.

If there’s one thing I love about myself, its how absolutely predictable I am. I was raised by pack rats, so I keep everything (for the record, I get rid of useless junk… mostly). I went to my drawer of manuals and warrantees and pulled out Oly’s manual (Olympus E-3) as well as Fancy’s (aaand I named the flash after a Reba McEntire song, an Olympus FL-50R).

I got really excited when I realized that my camera will remotely talk to my flash without any cords or remote controls. And when I finally figured out how to get Oly and Fancy to talk to each other, I chose my dog as a subject to test it all out on.

Things I’m happy about: its lit properly. There’s no blow out, the dof is decent, its framed well and I didn’t do a single post process function other than resize and tag. I still need a significant amount of tweaking to make images fantastic (I think the white balance is off), rather than just close to clinically correct, but I’m one step closer to getting there. After all, there’s no point in breaking all the rules if you don’t even know what they are in the first place!

ceiling

admin — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 21:26:53 +0000

This is the ceiling in my office. I am not ashamed to admit that sometimes I turn out all the lights, lie on the floor and stare. The right side was done by the previous owner, I think my office was the daughter’s room. The left side was done after I moved in and realized that I had an old pack of the same set in my craft box. I kind of like that you can see the residual light in the fan in the center of the image.

have a seat

admin — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 22:46:41 +0000

light

admin — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 22:14:11 +0000

After spending some time with David Schmidt of 211 Photography, I have been trying to train my eye to be more observant to light and lighting my subjects. The perfect opportunity to try some of David’s suggestions came up this weekend when I had my niece over. I’m very happy to say that the only post processing I did on any of these images was a bit of a vignette for effect.

I must have taken a thousand images while my niece and my pup were snuggled on the couch watching Sponge Bob when it finally occurred to me that “hey, maybe I should pay attention to the natural light I have right now,” particularly because the shots with the flash were washed out and ugly. And, “oh! look at that, the kid isn’t lit, but the dog is! Maybe I should take a pic of the DOG!” Well, what do you know, I got a good picture…

The first day my niece was here, I was chasing after her with the camera and ultimately very frustrated with the images I was getting. the whole camera was set on auto everything because I wasn’t sure I could change things up fast enough to catch her in action. Somehow David’s words must have sunk in because I put the camera on A priority and showed Emileigh the front window With an “Ooh! Look how cool!” and a finger pointed outside to nothing, she got really excited and I got a really great head shot.

There’s this amazing phenomenon that happens to all that live in my humble abode. The instant a television turns on, we all turn into zombies; it doesn’t matter what’s on, we’re all instantly glued and glazed. SpongeBob was no exception. I cued up a few episodes for my niece and my husband, my dog and I, along with Emileigh, couldn’t take our eyes off my laptop… well, maybe enough for a picture.

I love images like this one or several reasons. I’m rather drawn to the way that snaps looked when I was a kid. I love the warm white balance and candid feel to them. And I’m almost to the point of figuring out how to do them on purpose. I put the WB on daylight and followed the little one around a bit until she started getting tired. It just so happened that the sun was coming in from over the mantle window right into the camera, so I snapped to see what I’d get…lucky for me the lensbaby is a manual focus and I’m pretty slow in the moment.

re-inspired

admin — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 03:16:42 +0000

After watching STS-130 lift-off from my cozy home office in Denver, I started geeking out again over the space program and decided to go back through my images from STS-129. Its interesting to go back with new eyes and see that even though my images are certainly not exposed the way I’d want them to be now, they really weren’t as bad as I had originally thought.

best tour guide ever

This man was the best tour guide ever. He truly was a space junkie; he’d read everything about the space program he could get his hands on and he had tons of fantastic stories about hanging with astronauts and the like.

vehicle assembly building

The day of the launch we arrived at KSC around 6 in the morning. Entrance into the compound was encouraged that early but they weren’t bussing us out to the causeway until 10. We decided to take another lap around the Saturn V and ISS complexes. It was wonderful. There was hardly anyone there and we had the guides to ourselves!

tranquility module

This would be the bum end of the Tranquility Module, aka node 3, which is currently in the back seat of the Endeavour, docked on the ISS… in orbit!

node entrance

I actually took this picture of an ISS node because it looked like a video game and I wanted to draw it for a comic book or something equally lame.

bald eagles

This image was pretty much an “oh shit, bald eagles!” shot. I took it from the bus on the way back from the ISS complex. Merritt Island is an ecological sanctuary and the NASA freaks are very proud of the eagle’s nest that has been there for over 40 years

film

admin — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 04:18:46 +0000

A few more images from the archive, all these are done on medium format cameras or 35mm film

revisit

admin — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 03:58:49 +0000

I’m cleaning out an old website and came across some older portraits I’ve done. Click the title for more images.

libration

admin — Fri, 01 Jan 2010 18:38:30 +0000

I’ve photographed the moon several times now with my 300 mm lens and gotten some fairly fabulous results considering the fact that I do not have “top shelf” equipment. So when we had a blue moon last night, I figured I’d shoot it for grins and giggles. I was pretty excited when I noticed that craters Tyco and Copernicus were in very different locations from the image I took in September when most of California was on fire. With two of my own images I was able to visually confirm lunar libration. I’m sure this is no big thing to other people, but the realization of what I unwittingly did got me pretty excited. Unfortunately I wasn’t in as good of a position to photograph the moon lower on the horizon, so last night’s image isn’t as good as the one from September; plus the giddeous phase gave me some gorgeous shadows to work with then as well.

Sept 09

Dec 09

footprints

admin — Sat, 26 Dec 2009 20:02:52 +0000

Last week I went on a short drive up Guanella Pass with my aunt Deb and grandma Oriole. We couldn’t drive all the way to the top due to road closure but it didn’t seem to matter because all three of us are photography nuts and were stopping every hundred feet or so to take pictures.

My aunt is a nature junkie much like my good friend B. The two of them share this amazing ability to attract or be aware of things most people just walk by without noticing. My aunt is unswayed by the fact that she doesn’t have the latest and greatest photography equipment and manages to get phenomenal and close up images of wildlife with only a 300mm lens and the most exquisite amount of patience and love in her heart.

It wasn’t until my trip to California that I started to appreciate really good landscape and nature photography. And I never thought much about foot prints in the snow making a good photo either. But when we were out walking around and my aunt squeaked at some tiny little mouse prints, I decided to give it a go. Even though I feel as though my images could have been much better, I realized that it was because I’m largely emotionally cut off from nature and that is what shows in the photography.

There’s a much deeper connection here that would require far more space to explain than its probably worth. Suffice to say that I believe strongly that there is a key here to my journey in making me whole again.