Friday, December 28, 2007

Mmmmm I'm hungry

Food photography. Not usually my cup of tea. Working at the Palo Alto Weekly I usually have to shoot food shots every once in awhile if the intern isn't around to shoot it. I hardly give the food stuff a second thought, shoot the food on the plate, make it look somewhat appetizing, finito -i'm out of here. Last week I had a food assignment for the new hoite toite Italian place opening up in Menlo Park and I thought I'd start to see how I can play around with the umbrella and strobe instead of window light to show more texture, especially since the shoot got rescheduled to the later evening. I'll be honest, the chef and the owner were just downright rude to me. They kept questioning why I was there, what paper I was with, why I needed photos, and they kept making me wait even when I had told them exactly what I needed hours ago on the phone. A half hour later after standing around just wanting to get back to the office so I could load the photos and leave, the chef finally prepared these dishes for me to photograph. I used the umbrella and really tried to balance in the warm glow from the candles on the table. I'm pretty happy with these two shots, and I'm really glad I decided to shoot the dessert from above to really show the contrast in colors. If I had had another strobe I would have used it on the left side of the plate as well to really wash out the shadows. Using the strobe expanded my choices, and I do have to say that the food shot was a fun one to work on despite the a-hole manager and chef I had to deal with.

Harsh light in a challenging atmosphere

For this assignment I was covering a program being implemented at one of the high schools trying to get troubled kids interested in different courses other than the required math, science, english, etc. to keep them in school and show them different types of opportunities for college. The program teaches them all about shooting digital video and how to edit it into movies and shorts. I really tried to track these kids down actually shooting a movie, or even working in groups on their movies, problem was they were all finished and having their finals the next day. We needed the photo ASAP and it couldn't wait till they got back from winter break. So, I went to their final, got some photos of the kids doing last minute edits from their computers. It ended up just being shots of people staring into computers. Ugh. So, I pushed myself to think more creatively, and decided to shoot the teacher. I came up with a concept to project one of the kids' completed movies on a screen, have the teacher stand in front and somehow get the overflow of the projection onto one side of his face, and flash the other side of his face with the strobe. It sounded great in theory. And eventually I would have got there. But I had five minutes with the guy in between his classes and the 30 or so kids were all just staying there in that dark room chattering away and kept bugging me with, "why are you taking his photo?" and "who are you?". So, originally I flashed him with direct strobe with a diffuser. I thought the light was too bright and I wanted more ambient from the projection. I kept fiddling around and decided to try the umbrella. The umbrella washed out the whole mood. In the end I just kinda gave up because he had to get back to teaching. But when I got back to my desk, I found this image, and it really grew on me. It was just a test shot, so it explains the harsh light and why he's not looking into the camera. But it ended up showing his character the best, and I kinda like the harshness...though I would have like the projection to shine on his face a little. And I would have picked a different projection to use if I had the time. And I should have moved that awful "congratulations" sign away. Anyways...onwards!

A first start

After spending hours reading many of the posts on Strobist, I decided to take my new-found courage of using strobes and put it to use. Now, I've done the single light strobe off camera set-up before, but the last time I remember doing it well was when I interned at The Recorder in 2005. Since then my confidence has been lacking. So, after receiving a photo request to cover two local women who have started their own business creating chic reusable shopping bags, I decided to dust off the ol' light stand and umbrella. Lucky for me the ladies were all done up because they had had a TV interview an hour or so before my shoot, and were already giggly and in good spirits. I suggested we get a nice photo in a supermarket, preferably the produce aisle to go with the whole "being green" motif. I ended up having them stand back to back with their bags by the veggies flashed with an umbrella on my right. Hokey looking? Sure. And I could have dialed down the ambient light a little more or adjusted the strobe so it looks more natural and less strobe-y. And what's with the weird color cast in the back? I really need to practice getting better white balance readings or using flash gels to compensate. But definetely a more dramatic step above just having them pose in front of the grocery store with natural sunlight (yawn).

And So It Began...





Earlier this month I was feeling pretty dismal about my work. I kept getting assignments I felt were a joke and a waste of time. Another head shot - boring. Another photo of kids at the school -been there done that. Another photo of construction- for the love of God stop already! I was losing my focus and was frequently aggravated by the seemingly lame photo requests I kept getting. But then while surfing the net in between assignments one Tuesday I came across one of Jim Merithew's columns on Sportsshooter in which he interviewed photographer Kevin German about how he got out of a slump, and I quote,
"It got so bad, that I finally decided that I had to let it go. And so I did. I forgot about contests. I forgot about pressures. I forgot about other peoples' expectations. I forgot about photography. I focused on my subjects. On the people I was meeting and the cool things I was getting to see and do. I focused on the external and let go of the internal. I started to enjoy myself. And I started to see the world anew."
German's words really sparked inspiration in me, and I suddenely realized, what the heck am I whining about, I have such an opportunity here to play around and define my style. I need to stop my blubbering and start taking good photos I'm proud of again. Then I came across Strobist. The single most influential website for me this year -and that's saying something since I only discovered it a week or so ago
. I have such great things to say about it, but namely after finding it, I feel that I've been reborn in a way. So I stopped bitching about the fluffy "Christmas in Menlo Park" photo story I was thrown, and started to seek out some pretty cool Christmas photos. Sorry I'm posting this all AFTER Christmas.

2008 - A new year, a new blog

Greetings! Thanks to all visiting my soon-to-be-awesome new blog. Now some of you may be wondering, ah, Veronica, didn't you have a blog, one in which you posted maybe three entries on? To answer your question, yes indeed I did -the now defunct Photos From The Bay and Beyond. It started out with good intentions but quite frankly, I just got too lazy and too unmotivated to do anything with it. But now after discovering the wonderfully helpful and awe-inspiring Strobist (i'm going to post a link to it somewhere around here) and new-fangled love for experimenting with my photography, I've decided to give the blogging another go. Why the name "Light Lab and other adventures" you ask? I figured this will be the place to post all my successful and horribly embarrassing experiments with my photography and new approach to using strobes - it is a place of experiment and constant adjustment in an attempt to achieve better photos and to push myself to be creative. Plus I thought the name sounded snazzy and I'm relishing the old days when I actually developed photos in an actual lab. Ahh, I can remember the sweet smell of fixer on the fingers....
Though my emphasis here will be to mainly attempt to gain greater knowledge of strobes and interesting lighting effects, I may sporadically post things related to assignments at the paper or my own projects. I defineteley have some cool self projects I want to start working on, the hardest part is willing myself to get off the couch on the weekends to go out and start shooting them. I welcome all feedback, please if something sucks, or just doesn't work, tell me about it. I can only get better as a photographer when people don't hold back and will tell me when a photo blows. thanks for checking in to the Light Lab!