Much too long.

More than a month between posts? Much too long.

Simultaneously, there has been a lot and very little happening in my photo life. I've been going strong with my 365 project (today makes photo number 343). Not too much longer now! Even though I see the number and I know I've been doing this almost a year, I can still hardly believe that it has been a year since I started it. Lately I'm feeling very guilty about it though, because I've submitted so many cellphone photos. They are still photos, so they do count, but they're not exactly my best work.

On the whole this project has taught me a lot about my creative process, my willingness to commit to a project, my ability to persevere when things get difficult and what kinds of photos I really want to share with the world. When I look through the photos, I'm definitely not proud of them all. And it's not just the cellphone entries. A fair amount of my dslr photos are very lackluster. Most of them I wouldn't have normally chosen to share with anyone. Even though I've almost come to despise this endeavor, I am extremely glad that I decided to do it.

I've come across a few ideas that I'd really like to flesh out, and that aspect alone has been absolutely worth it. I now have a whole year's worth of ideas to extrapolate on at later times if I so choose. That's pretty great.

In even better news, my laptop has been recently upgraded! Still the same casing and processor, but there's a new (and much larger!) hard drive and now I have 4 gigs of RAM. I am so very happy. The day after I arrived in Ireland my hard drive told me it was too full to continue to add photos to my Aperture catalogue. This made me very sad. Now, five months later, I can finally add the rest of my pictures! This is a serious setback in the overall process of having a completely searchable database, but at least I have the space now. I can thank my mom for this, it's her big Christmas gift to me :)

As you may recall, between now and my last entry, I have also had some (mis)adventures with my SB800. It decided to take a huge dump on me and stop working. It was awful. So, I sent it off to Nikon. $130 and about two weeks of waiting later and it was returned to me. They didn't tell me what was wrong with it, it was just noted that "major parts" were replaced. *shrug* It's working now and that's what matters. Although, last night I thought it was broken again. Imagine my horror and sadness. I did not react very well to the fear (crying was involved) that I'd have to send it to Nikon again.

Really, it would appear that I just happened to buy a total shit pack of batteries. I put five in and the flash popped once.... then no more. "Hm". So, I put in five new ones. Flash popped once and then... no more. Commence crying. I gave one last shot, put in five more new batteries and... it worked? I was baffled and relieved. I have a pack of 36 Energizers from Home Depot and a lot of them haven't worked very well. As long as my flash is working though, that's what matters.

I have taken my new found appreciation for my SB800 and turned it toward my shiny silver umbrella quite a bit. Tonight's photo saw my TTL cable in action while I held the SB800 into the umbrella. The light is so nice and I have hardly begun.

-MJ

Under the boardwalk, an experimental shoot.

So I had this grand idea in my head of a fabulous shoot I could do under the boardwalk in Poulsbo. Well, maybe not fabulous, but certainly interesting and fun. My inspiration came from this photo. Whether or not you or I like Kristen Stewart, I find the setup to be enjoyable. I decided to go a different route though and use a male model.

This is my friend Mikus, recent graduate from Full Sail University and an avid bass player. While he was a fun and interactive model, for various reasons I did not produce the effect in my photos that I was going for. Not contrasty enough? Not enough light/light sources? Bad angle, even? I have photos from the shoot that I like and that I'm happy with, but I would certainly like to try this again with a different approach.

That was my setup for almost the whole shoot: one SB-800 through an umbrella. I usually shoot reflective and not through, I just thought that for a change I'd try shooting through. I'm not entirely sure how much of a difference that made, I should have put the backing on and tried reflective. I experimented with the flash zoomed all the way to 105 and all the way wide, both with the dome diffuser on and off. For a couple of shots I took the umbrella off the stand and hand-held a diffuser disc about a foot in front of the flash with my free hand. None of this created the effect I was going for.

Finally I decided to ditch the stationary flash and bust out my TTL cable. This was both better and worse. Better because when it worked, it worked really well. Worse because when it didn't work, it looked like on-camera flash.

I decided that I wanted to make the best of the afternoon, even if I wasn't able to produce the photos I originally sought out to create. I've read before that getting caught up in your original vision can cloud your ability to see a fantastic new photo.

Today's shoot saw more experimentation with EV settings in-camera and through the flash. It was fascinating how rapidly the photos changed based off of the slightest tweaks. Today's shoot also had me wishing for a set of pocket wizards. I don't normally have issues with my SB-800 "seeing" the pre flash from my camera, but I was trying new things today and the sensor on the speedlight wasn't nearly as close to me as it usually is. It was certainly fun to have the flash NOT go off... *grumble*. To top of it off it was pretty bright out so the LCD screen on my camera was of almost no use in determining if the flash popped or not.

More shoots lead to more experience, and more experience leads me to better photos. I'm really happy with the photos I have, but I'm disappointed with the photos I didn't take, the ones that I was aiming for in the first place. The original vision didn't stop me from going in a new direction though, so I'll take that victory.

-MJ