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photography

one word photos

Jul 1st, 2008
by Jim Reverend.
15 comments

A few days ago I asked for one or two word ideas for photographs. Something abstract to allow me some creativity, yet defined enough to be a challenge. Some fantastic words were provided. Oddly, almost everyone gave exactly two words. I got more words than I could possibly take in one day, so I’ve stretched this project out a bit to give myself more time to accomplish it.

These are the words I have so far. If I missed any, I’m sorry. Most of them came through Twitter and Text Messages, so they get lost easily. Please give them to me again if I did.

If you’d like to add to this, please leave a comment.

Em: Quiet. Glistening.
Justin: Ursine. Renal.
Jess: Beautiful. Carefree.
Nic: Angular. Angry.
Mary: Pricey. Steamy.
Whitney: Irreverent. Felicity.
Mario: Buxom. Penguin.
Ian: Sensual. Being.
Morgan: Hi. Dark. Bounce. Here. Why. Smile.
Sara: Tasty. Messy.
Tony: Ominous. Evil.

motivation and commitment

Jun 12th, 2008
by Jim Reverend.
8 comments

Part of me wants to think that I’m just lazy. But if I really look at it I start to see that really, I lack motivation and commitment. I realized this after reading a post from a friend having a similar problem.

Look at yesterday. I got up at 6:30. I got caught up online, did a little work, wrote, edited a photo, and got myself ready by 9am. I walked to breakfast then walked to work. I was there by 10 and worked until 7pm taking only 45 minutes for lunch. After work I drove to dinner. Then I took some photographs of the city, drove around a bit, and ended up at the hotel by 10pm. I went to bed reading at 11:30 and spent the time in between online. While I could certainly stand to cut back on my time online, it’s not like I’m even a little bit lazy. I do plenty of stuff. I just lack the motivation to do the things I know I should do that also tend to be time consuming or require some form of commitment.

At least for the first year or so, my goal is to take photographs of Celeste every month on or near her month birthday. For a photographer one quick and easy photoshoot at home should be no problem but, somehow, I keep putting it off. Two weeks from now she’ll be 6 months old and I still haven’t even come up with an idea for her 5 month photos. I did take her 3 month and 4 month photos but I still haven’t printed them or mailed them to anyone. The only reason they are edited is because my mother-in-law forced me to do it while they were here. Something so simple and rewarding shouldn’t be difficult to convince myself to do.

Look at all the abandoned photography projects or photo adventures. With the projects, I just keep saying I’m working on them. For the photo adventures, I always have a good excuse. I can find the time and I certainly have the energy. It must be motivation that keeps me from doing these things.

I think I actually have the opposite of motivation: anti-motivation. Maybe you could even call it inertia. I think it is fueled, in part, by a fear of commitment. These larger projects have so many aspects to them. They require planning and dedication. There are people who expect them and are waiting patiently for them. There is something in my head that clicks in all the wrong directions and pushes back on these things. I think I’m afraid of letting myself or others down so much, that I don’t even bother to get started. Give me a series of small tasks to perform today and I’m fine. Give me a larger task to accomplish over a period of time, and somehow, it never gets done.

I have great time management skills. And I’m more than capable of managing very large projects with intricate time lines and rushed due dates. I do this all day every day at my day job. But, when I get home, some how that all shuts off.

At work, the reward for accomplishing large projects on time is obvious: a paycheck and the promise of more work. However, at home, it’s harder to find motivation to make these personal commitments. Most of the people I know undertake projects that benefit themselves and possibly their immediate family. Going beyond that is rare. This isn’t a complaint at all. It’s just the way it is. But the projects I undertake are generally intended to impact more than just myself. I think that maybe the reason I find it so hard to commit to this work is because the rewards are not nearly as obvious.

So I’m looking for help. Someone to share a project with or someone with a goal of their own so we can keep each other in check. Someone offering a reward (silly or serious) for the completion of a project. Or someone to monitor and praise my progress during a project.

Here’s what I’m working on: Skins editing, summer camping trip, celeste monthly photos, wet/water shoot with model, website redesign and migration, sensual anonymity (more models and more photos), rural night photography, clean studio shots of random objects (hi tech catalog type work).

sleping alone

photo schedule – the first week

Apr 27th, 2008
by Jim Reverend.
3 comments

A few weeks ago I laid out a plan to help me better vary the kind of photograph I was putting out there. It certainly wasn’t simple or easy, but I felt like I could do it.

Last week doesn’t count thanks to the fact that I was out of town and without the technical means to publish a photo thanks to my stupid laptop. So let’s look at the week before that and see how well I did.

Breaking Out – This falls into Non-Landscape. If I were very lenient with myself, this might also be considered Other Portrait.

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a schedule

Apr 14th, 2008
by Jim Reverend.
5 comments

Despite the ever decreasing amounts of free time I have these days (it was bad even before the baby) I feel compelled to force myself to continue to create and explore. I think a forced schedule is the best way to accomplish this. While it doesn’t produce outstanding results every day, forcing myself to produce something — anything — often leads to more creativity, more streamlining of work, and, in the end, better work and more of it.

My Self Portrait Project is a good example of how well this works. In that two week span, I produced an image almost every single day. At least half of them are among my most popular images. Of course the other half are pretty trite and uninspired. The two sort of go hand-in-hand.

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seeking: stark raving lunatics

Apr 4th, 2008
by Jim Reverend.
9 comments

After reading Where are all the goddam photos, something in my head clicked. Not that photographers need a new way of doing things — I’d figured that out already — but that I wasn’t the only one in this same situation trying to do this same damn thing.

Every day I see Photographers making it big. And every day I see photographers loving the craft, doing what they can, and not even trying to make it. But I didn’t realize how many people there are out there in my exact same situation. And most of them aren’t photographers.

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quick update

Apr 3rd, 2008
by Jim Reverend.
6 comments

I’m short on time, so you get a quick update.

Celeste was 3 months old over a week ago and I have yet to take her 3 month photos. Bad Daniel. Tonight, maybe. I hope.

From today until Monday we are buuuuuuuusy: Two dinner dates, two lunch dates, a nice little roadtrip with friends, a coffee gathering, a small gathering at our place, church, a crap swap, and a housewarming party — roughly in that order. And, of course, a whole bunch of work stuff too. This is a good thing, though. I like being busy and I like seeing my friends. I’m not complaining at all. Even if my lawn has to go untreated for one more weekend (though, I hope, maybe, I can squeeze it in on Saturday). Holler if you need some plans too.

I finished our taxes! Between a small penalty that I didn’t expect from when Jess quit her job, a whole lot of confusion surrounding the difference between a Traditional IRA and a Roth IRA, and a very poor record keeping job on my part last year for business expenses, we’re getting only half of what I expected back. No bueno.

I’m in the process of the great budget redesign of 2008. Yes! It will be so memorable, in fact, that my great-great-great-great-grandchildren will tell stories over an auto-safe-camp-fire with the hum of cooler-outside-air and no-more-bugs in the background telling how the Great Papa Daniel once managed to live like a king, put his family in the lap of luxury, entertain no less than four girlfriends, shower his friends with dinners, parties, and gifts, and do it all while only working 3 hours a day as an unpaid volunteer at an animal shelter. Oh yes. It will be THAT grand.

For the photo-tech people, Lightroom 2.0 beta is out [via Thomas Hawk]. If you own 1.0 you can enjoy the beta until August ’08. If you don’t you can still take a nice 30 day test drive. It’s a little buggy, but it is a beta. I love the new feature set which includes a limited set of localized changes and multiple monitor support. It’s not as awesome as LightZone, but, with the image management parts built in too, it’s hard to pass up.

Send me love today. I’ll need it.

inspired

Apr 1st, 2008
by Jim Reverend.
4 comments

(NOTE: Many of the links you find in this post will lead to images that are potentially Not Safe For Work. The post itself is safe the links in it may not be. That being said, I do not believe any of this to be offensive, pornographic, or even overly sexual.)

Scott Church (scottchurch@LJ, The Art of Scott Church) recently visited Dallas. In fact, I think he may even still be here. While our photographic styles and subject matter are most often quite different I find much of his work to be an inspiration. And, from time to time I see a photograph of his that strikes me as something I’d enjoy creating.

One of the first photos he posted taken in Dallas, a candid really, I find incredibly inspiring. A woman wearing pants and an unzipped long sleeve shirt, topless underneath, applies paint by hand to a large canvas propped against the wall of what appears to be a kitchen. In the foreground is a topless toddler with paint spread accidentally on her pants and stomach. A portion of a table is visible left in the frame, and under it is an errant juice cup. From this topless painter to her, presumably, topless daughter, to the juice cup rolled under the table — this image reaches out to me. I feel like I belong here, in this warm, open, family.

Later, he publishes another incredible image. It is a moody, monochromatic image of a young woman in front of an abandoned, wooden walled building. The out-of-focus foreground grasses, darkened sky, and blurred hair give a fleeting feeling of movement, with two bare-branched trees framing the whole scene. Again I feel like I am there. I feel like I am breathing this moment in. Despite the uninvited feeling an abandoned building and thoughts of trespassing can bring, this image makes me feel as though I am very much invited and a big part of this single slice in time.

This work is yet one of many things that inspire me.

I’m driven to create more, experience more, build more, dream more, and share more, despite the obstacles that constantly present themselves. And I’m inspired to bring as many beautiful people as I can along with me for the journey — as subjects, as fans, as patrons, as co-conspirators.

Thank you to Scott Church, and others like him, who continue to dream, and create, and share with me. And thank you — all of you — for being a part of this with me.

Of course, Scott’s Journey ended in a bit of trouble with the law. Hopefully they won’t be too hard on him. If they saw these images the way I do, they’d have let him go without a second thought. (Ha. April Fools!)

High Speed Sync / Auto-FP

Mar 21st, 2008
by Jim Reverend.
No comments yet

I’ve been doing some research into High Speed Sync (aka Auto FP in the Nikon world) and its effects on maximum flash distance.

Essentially, in these High Speed Sync Modes, the Flash is staying “on” (actually, it’s just pulsing really fast) for the entire time of the exposure. Despite the fact that with HSS, we’re talking about very fast shutter speeds, a usual flash duration can be even faster than that. Sometimes as fast as 1/10,000 second. Because of the way a focal plane shutter works, the faster your sync speed is, the less light from the flash is getting through the camera at any one time. This means that increasing your shutter speed by one stop effectively reduces your maximum flash output by one stop. However, as long as you are working at ranges where you are not required to use maximum flash output, this may not mean there is any change in flash intensity in your situation. With TTL metering, your camera’s brains will figure that out for you, and if you’re manually metering, you can just increase the flash intensity.

But, it’s good to know exactly what effect using HSS will have on your maximum flash distance. Of course every flash will be different depending on its output and reflector/diffuser characteristics. On average, your flash’s range will be reduced by about 1/2. However, this is largely dependent on the amount of ambient light you’re trying to balance with. I’d like to offer a real world example however, it seems that non of the primary manufacturers are producing spec sheets for HSS Flash. I have been able to find what I think is a spec sheet for the Sigma EF-500 Super DG, so, that’s what I’ll use.

A quick glance at the specs shows that engaging HSS cuts the 105mm Guide Number from 50 to 25 at 1/250s. Put another way, you lose 1 full stop of power. Or, another way, you cut your maximum flash distance in half. From that point on however, assuming you’re adjusting your aperture along with the shutter speed, the maximum distance remains basically constant.  If you’d prefer some real numbers, read on.

The EF-500 Super DG has a guide number of 50m at ISO 100 when zoomed to 105mm. On a bright sunny day, we know that proper exposure would be f/16 for 1/100 second. To exactly match this with our flash, we’d need our subject to be 3.125m away. Adjusting our shutter speed to 1/250 (a common sync speed limit) leaves us with an aperture of f/10 and a distance of 5m. Now, let’s say we really want to shoot at f/5.6, proper ambient light exposure would require a shutter speed of 1/800. Here’s where things start to change. Our flash has a guide number of 14.0 at 1/800 and zoom at 105mm. At f/5.6 our range is only 2.5 meters, or 1/2 of what it was at 1/250. In other words, if we were using our flash at MAXIMUM power before going into high speed sync, the only way to widen the aperture would be to bring the flash closer to the subject by 1/2 which isn’t exactly what we’re going for here. To continue the exercise, however, let’s say we actually want to shoot at f/4 now. That would be a shutter speed of 1/1600 to match ambient light. Our flash has a guide number of 9.9 at 1/1600 and zoomed to 105mm. This gives us a maximum range of 2.475 meters. Not quite the 2.5m we had before, but not nearly as bad a bite as our first initial hit.

Now let’s imagine we aren’t working at maximum range to begin with. Let’s go back to our original scenario but let’s put our subject at a distance of 2 meters. Before engaging HSS, we’re shooting at f/10 and 1/250 just like before. At f/10 and our subject at 2 meters our flash is more powerful than we need and we’d have to decrease the power in order to maintain this aperture. Now, to get an aperture of f/5.6 we decrease our shutter speed to 1/800, just like before. Our maximum distance of the flash just like before is 2.5 meters at 1/800. We’re still well within range of our subject however, if we are manually adjusting the flash output, we will have to turn it up some since we’re closer to our maximum than we were before. Now, taking the final step from before, we’re shooting at f/4 and 1/1600. Our maximum distance is 2.475 meters which means, again, we won’t have to get any closer to our subject and will simply have to increase the flash power a little if setting it manually. In fact, as long as we intend to keep the same overall ambient exposure, once we take that initial hit, our distance is basically unaffected.

Special thanks to Michael Moore, an incredible wedding photographer from Ontario, Canada, for pointing me in the right direction.

Radio Popper

Mar 19th, 2008
by Jim Reverend.
10 comments

Radio Popper is the new kid on the block when it comes to wireless radio strobe triggers. In fact, they are so new you can’t even buy the product just yet. But, when you can, the promise the difference will worth the wait. And I, for one, believe them.

There are basically two product types Radio Popper is offering. The first provides wireless TTL flash. Yes, you probably already have this if you have modern equipment and mated flashes. However, you don’t have it like this. With the exception of 1 or 2 very expensive 3rd party options, to my knowledge, all of the big names in camera technology handle wireless TTL flash using IR. This works great if all of your flashes are close by and you have a line of sight to each of them. When you don’t, or if things change, this fails drastically. Radio Popper is changing that. You’ll still need your modern equipment and mated flashes. Radio Popper will sit in between your camera and those flashes and retransmit those IR signals over RF. This means that, suddenly, they’ll work through walls, behind your subjects, when not visible to the camera, and from very far away — up to 500 feet away. To my knowledge there is currently no other product that does this in this way and, when considering all options, no product that does this in such an inexpensive way. The cost is $175-$225 per transmitter or receiver. You’ll need one transmitter for the camera and a receiver for every flash you intend to use.

The second product being offered by Radio Popper has been on the market for quite some time. Radio Popper is just doing it cheaper and better. For photographers looking for wireless flash triggers who don’t need the TTL features, there have been three options on the market before now.

First, the expensive PocketWizard. They can fire both strobes and camera, work from a great distance, and fire every time. These are standard equipment for many photographers. They run $180-$300 per transmitter or receiver.

Second, is the dirt cheap eBay and Gadget Infinity Radio Slaves. They fire strobes, work for about 300-500 feet, and fire about 80-90% of the time depending on closeness and batteries. These are standard equipment for most amateur photographers and those who aren’t willing to plunk down the PocketWizard cash. They run $15-$25 per transmitter or receiver.

Third, is the middle ground. Lots of manufacturers have made products ranging from $50-$150 per transmitter or receiver that falls somewhere in between the functionality and the reliability of the above two options. I know of very few people actually using them, however.

Piggybacking off the requirements and research for the Wireless TTL model above, Radio Popper will be offering a non TTL variety capable of a 2000 ft range and promising much fewer misses than that “eBay Radio Slaves” for $25 per transmitter or receiver. With this, the usability, affordability, and reliability of this product will have all jumped leaps and bounds.

Finally, even if you aren’t a fan of wireless TTL, the wireless TTL version will be capable of syncing at very high shutter speeds which means that overpowering the sun just got a lot more possible.

Products are slated for release in the Summer of 2008. I’m counting the days.

not a good day

Mar 17th, 2008
by Jim Reverend.
No comments yet

I took today off as well knowing I would want to spend some time with Jess and Celeste to make up for the weekend as well as getting my bags unpacked, all my equipment cleaned, and my images at least mostly processed.  It’s not starting off well.

First, I realized that my mobile blogging method wasn’t working and, what’s worse, that it was leaving HUGE posts filled with gibberish in my journal. I still haven’t figured out why it broke or what it’s trying to do. I think I’m giving up.

I’m also fighting with metadata between the 3 different applications involved with managing my large photograph collection. Lightroom isn’t always updating the XMP on disk, my other applications are expecting that it will, there’s constant conflict between the two, and everything is just not fun.

On top of that, I think my data/backup drive enclosures are screwy. I’m regularly having to unmount them, power cycle the enclosures, and then remount the drives to get them to be responsive. I’ve also seen a few bits of corrupted data here and there. Not good.

Once these problems start to weigh on me, all the problems I’ve already pushed aside start to show their face in my mind again.

I need to get to Wolf and get my long lens repaired. Without it, I don’t have one.

Somehow, another of my commonly used lenses managed to break yesterday as well. The zoom ring no longer functions. Thankfully, I have two prime lenses and a wide angle zoom that I can use in place of this lens, though it isn’t as convenient. I need to contact Sigma/Competitive Camera and see if it’s still under warranty from Sigma and, if so, see if this damage is covered. I can’t think of anything I could have done to it to cause this. It must just be bad luck.

While I really like the backpack I bought for this past weekend, it’s too large and too rigid for my uses as a daypack/travel pack. I end up keeping 80% of my gear attached to the straps and belt of the backpack and the actual pack itself remains mostly empty. Lugging around a huge backpack that’s mostly empty is just silly. It’d be great for a warm weather overnighter, so it might be worth holding on to. I’m just not sure. I might have to go back to REI and see if I can find something else I’d prefer.

Jess and I were supposed to take Celeste for a nice walk by the lake early this morning, but Jess isn’t awake yet and I don’t have the heart to wake her myself. Even if she was awake, I don’t know if I could pull myself from this data nightmare knowing it was left in this very vulnerable state.

I hate it when all these little things just stack up until I feel like I’m going to collapse.

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