For some time now I was playing with light. Contrary to Iza I very much like using flashes as much as I can. I like the flexibility they give you to balance lights around the set. Up until today we had only one SB-800 and there were multiple occasions when I felt like I need more power to achieve what I wanted to. Most of the time I was able to get satisfying results with silver reflector or even with pop up flash on our camera (equipped with Soft Screen). But there are situations when there is nothing that can replace that missing flash. in the past when we had bigger projects (like our holiday cards) I was just borrowing set of studio light from a friend of ours. But for day to day playing with images it’s just to cumbersome (and becomes old pretty fast). So I’ve decided that it’s high time to buy next flash. After weighing in several options ranging from cheap no name flashes from Eastern hemisphere, through several ‘general brands’ manual and TTL flashes to the very top of my wish list which is occupied by SB-900 I settled in on SB-600. There are several factors that helped me choose. The biggest probably was the fact that SB-600 is a part of Nikon’s CLS family and can be slaved to SB-800 (or to our D300 working in commander mode). That gives me many options to play with the light without having to move around – everything happens remotely.

Of course that new toy had to be tried as soon as possible. Iza came up with an assignment to photograph some glasses with sparkling wine. Here is how it came out:

We put the glasses on top of the small sheet of acrylic which gave us this nice reflection. One flash was standing behind the table casting high power light on the background while another one was directly above the glasses shooting through diffuser partially covered with black blocking layer to keep acrylic sheet from becoming totally white. Iza’s idea of dropping strawberry into one of the glasses added some nice final touch to the picture.

Browsing through the Internet there it usually doesn’t take long to get hit by photographers’ mantra:

“Calibrate, calibrate, calibrate!”

So very soon almost every wannabe pro gets to the point ‘I need a color calibrator!’ thinking that the very second he or she calibrates their hardware it will magically transform them into great shooters. That obviously is not the case. There is however one situation when having a calibrating device is in my opinion a must. It when you have two (or more) monitors connected to the same computer. There isn’t many things more annoying than seeing your picture changing colors when you push it around your desktop between different monitors.

So few weeks ago I spoke to Santa and he was kind enough to bring us this neat device:

It’s called ColorMunki and it’s supposed to solve all color correcting problems you may ever encounter. It’s power comes from the fact that unlike most other devices available on the market it’s actually fully functional spectrophotometer. Which means that it can measure not only monitors (or other light emitting devices) but is also capable of measuring passive colors like those on image you just printed out.

But the most important feature for me is monitor calibration.

How does it work?

I won’t describe whole process in detail here as there is plenty of tutorials around the web (even detailed video on YouTube). Instead I’ll just stick to what I do and don’t like in this little device.

The most important positive thing about it is… that it works. Which only at first may seem to be obvious but from my previous experience with different color calibrators it not always is so. And I don’t mean that you can’t calibrate the monitor using them. You can, but it closer resemble engineering process than quick and painful task you can don every Monday to make sure your monitor profile is up to date. And the software bundled with ColorMunki does that job perfectly. The software checks your monitor’s current setting, asks you to adjust contrast or brightness level if needed (usually you have to set them during initial calibration, then they don’t change that much if you don’t touch them) and then does it’s job in a matter of seconds. No unneeded options (those are hidden if you really want to play), just few clicks and your monitor is done.

What I do not like about it? The most annoying thing is the device’s design. As you can see on the picture it’s built as a rotating ring/button/circle inside bigger enclosure. You’re supposed to turn the whole inside ring between different steps of calibration process. The problem is that one side of that ring actually works as a button activating currently selected function of the device. I find it very difficult to turn the ring without pressing the button. You have to constantly remember about it otherwise the software will try to start it’s job while the device is obviously not ready causing errors to pop up. The other thing I’ve notice is that it’s very important to reset any possible monitor settings to the factory defaults, otherwise you may get strange results. That thing was actually mentioned on the X-Rite website’s but I’ve read that after I was done with the job.

In the end it took me less that 45 minutes to calibrate all four monitors we have and now we can make great picture (year right) and repeat after the rest of the gang:

“Calibrate, calibrate, calibrate!”

Inspired by some food photography blog that Iza sent me link to I’ve decided to take advantage of the moment (Christmas feast, remember?) and practice some food photography. Picking something to shoot wasn’t all that hard – there is plenty of interesting dishes on the table. But I’ve chosen Kutia. It’s traditional eastern Poland (so eastern that it no longer is Poland) dish made out of wheat, poppy seed and a lot of nuts, almonds and raisins. Back then it was a highlight of Christmas table. As a side effect it has really nice texture which you can play with while shooting.

This week Digital Photography School in their Weekend Photography Challenge wanted a photo of shoes. Or more. Somehow not thinking long one particular shoe came to my mind. My cycling shoe. Then the question was how to present it to extract some of it’s purpose – cycling action – in the photo. I’ve decided to use rear sync flash while pedaling on the bike. I thing it came out pretty decent:

For as long as I remember, I wanted to have nice, huge pictures hanging on walls all around our house. And almost as long, the biggest obstacle in achieving it was, yes you guessed it right, the price. Framing services around here would simply kill my budget with the number of pictures I’d like to hang.

But when we took some very nice photos of the airplanes there was no other option but to look for a solution to properly exhibit those that we printed out. Personally I’m kind of minimalistic kind of guy. I like frame-less mounts the best. Well, maybe second best just after thin aluminum frame. I just love those. It’s probably because at one point I was working for a company that were selling them and I could play with them first hand. Since then, I’d sell myself for nice, cold piece of anodized aluminum.

Te got to the point. After spending enormous amount of time on the Internet I found a supplier that offers aluminum frames in chops. By their definition a chop is a pair of frame elements of the same length. To build a frame you need to chops, one as long as the long edge of your picture, and another one as short as the short one. Something like this:

The advantage of such model is that you are not constrain by predefined frame sizes. As you can order any chop size between 5″ and 40″ in 1/8″ increments you can pretty much build any frame you want. Not thinking much longer I placed an order and not too long ago I got everything I needed.

Today I gathered all needed parts (chops, hardware, a clear sheet and of course, a picture):

All required tools:

And started building the frame. To build one frame you need two (mentioned before) chops, four sets of pieces to join chops in corners, four spring clips to hold picture and (at least one) hanger.

I started building frame by inserting corner sets in both longer pieces of frame:

Remembering to insert hanger in one of them:

Then I connected two shorter pieces with one of the longer ones (the one without the hanger) to make a U shaped bottom of the frame:

Then it was time to cut acrylic sheet to the size. Using aluminum ruler and regular utility knife I carefully cut the sheet:

There is no need to cut all the way through – the acrylic nicely snaps like glass along the line if it’s just marked with the knife. Then I peeled the protective foil off of it:

And making sure the correct non-glare side is outside, I inserted it with picture into U shaped piece of frame:

Then closed it from the top making sure everything fits square and tight. At this point I locked the picture in frame using spring clips:

Made sure the hanger is exactly in the middle:

And the frame was done and ready to go on the wall:

The whole thing took me less than 25 minutes including time needed to take those photos. And here is the best part – total price for 10″ x 20″ frame was less than $15. Hard to beat that!

Today we finally went to local Antique Car Museum. Old cars have something that makes me stare at them for hours. Probably it’s because back then nobody cared about them being aerodynamic, efficient, economical (not that there is something wrong with it). They were literally dripping chrome. One of the long forgotten details are hood statues. Here is one found on 50’s Cadillac:

Looks like Spiderman, doesn’t t?

Recently I find myself experimenting more and more with situations where you can shoot your subject by it’s reflection. Sometimes it’s just face in the mirror, sometimes it’s flower bouquet. Using mirror allows me to get some nice depth of field effects. This photo shows the car my brother went in to church for his wedding last week. It’s nice vintage British automobile with side mirrors mounted way ahead on the fenders. Today such thing probably wouldn’t pass pedestrian safety test, but back then nobody really cared.

It used to be Tomasz guest Saturday, but he seems to be too busy with his flying to care to photograph, and to post. If you are interested in his pilot’s endeavors, you can check his blog here. Luckily, I have some of his photos in my Lightroom catalog, and I want to go back to how the the series started and just post them in his name . This image was taken when we visited Iowa State Fair a couple of week ago. He was trying for a while to achieve the effect that you can see the little blur on windmill wing, showing it is moving. It seems like there is some of it on the photo, and a small plane adds interest to the photograph.

I took this photo while spending couple of hours with my brother at the local airport. Mind you, ‘the airport’ in this case is a little bit of overstatement, but it has some hangars and a runway .

What is interesting in this photo is the light on top of the tail fin. It’s strobe. Very bright and very fast strobe. It blinks about 5 times per second with 2-3 seconds between series of blinks. This one was the very first time I was was able to caught it on picture, ever.

Plus if you look closer you’ll see that my brother (who was at the controls) was actually flying at this moment about six inches above the ground.

Another take on windmills. Whenever I see them, I cannot resist. I know there are windmill farm in Northern and Western Iowa, but usually when we drive by, there is no time to stop by. This time, in Wisconsin, we took a longer route through farmland, just to stop and photograph. I chose this one, after Lightroom processing, for today’s blog.