Photo by: Viele Geischter.

This photo of some football (soccer) players posing together came out of the recent uploads section of Flickr. It’s a great illustration of how to take a quick posed shot outside in the afternoon: find some shade! Look in the background (or in the other pictures in the photostream) and you’ll notice it’s a very bright, sunny day. Put the three lads out in the sun, and they’ll be squinting and have some harsh shadows all over. Instead, they’re sitting in the shade and they’ve got some nice, soft light all around them. One problem with this is your background (if it’s in the sun) will usually get blown out, so don’t expect to get a lot of definition out of it. It can also help to throw in a little bit of fill light from a flash, but you don’t want to over do it.

Photo by: yangmc.

I chose “Flower” today out of the popular tags on Flickr. Not really sure why. But after some lackluster photos, I came across this one. Not especially awe-inspiring, but nice and technically sound. I really love the depth of field and sharpness here. The subject (the plant in the focus) is really crisp and sharp. The rest of the image is more or less completely blurry and out of focus. When you’re doing macro work like this, you need to have a shallow depth of field; otherwise the subject won’t stand out against the background. That means a quick lens and the ability to focus on a macro level and get in close to the object itself.

Photo by: Laurent.GL.

Found this image in the “Night” tag on Flickr. Cool shot. I love the reflection of the buildings coming off the water. If you’re thinking of taking night pictures like this, then there’s one thing you need to understand: it’s all available light, so it’s all long exposures. In this case, the image was taken with a 2 second exposure. I wouldn’t hand hold that if I were you, so a tripod is definitely necessary. This leaves the shutter open long enough for the distant lights of the city to burn into the image. There’s also a relatively small aperture (f/8.0) which gives you a decent depth of field; that’s pretty normal for landscape/architectural work.

Photo by: D.R.A.C.C.A.R.D.s.

Found this snapshot in the recent uploads section of Flickr. In some ways, not a lot going on to attract attention – it’s basic available light, shot with a point and shoot. But I really like the composition. The wooden beams in the background create some nice visual interest, and the skewed angle at which the picture is taken adds to this. Compare it to some other pictures in the photostream, with a head-on approach and much more simple composition, and you’ll notice the difference. Good example of some fundamentals that are sometimes more important than gear and other techniques.

Photo by: pixelpills.

Today I browsed through the “Party” tag on Flickr. I wasn’t expecting all that much, cause party photos are typically made really ugly by a pop-up on camera flash. I shudder every time I look through people’s Facebook photos and see those party pictures. But this one was different. It’s a long exposure, using available light, to allow the scene to be lit by ambient lights (i.e. the candles and the lamps in the background). The subject is the candle, which lights itself, but you can make out a little bit of the party in the background. Very cool effect, and nice attention to detail.

Photo by: Sangudo.

Last night, I got some new lighting equipment and I wanted to test it out. Since my wife rarely humors me, that left… the cats. The trouble with cats is that they don’t sit still and let you take their pictures, making it really hard to light them. So this morning I thought I’d look through the “Cats” tag on Flickr and pay homage to the patient photographer who caught a cat in a calm moment. In this case, the kitty is sitting in a bag, and it looks like the light is coming in from a kitchen window to camera right. The other problem with cats is that they like to get into tiny places that block out the light – like my kitten who wanted to jump in a box last night instead of chilling on the floor.

And, for the heck of it, here’s a picture I took of my kitten Finn last night while playing around with the new stuff.

This was lit with a single light, camera left about 45 degrees. I triggered it wirelessly with the Opteka radio triggers that I wrote about yesterday. I shot a Vivitar 285HV through the new Honl traveller8 softbox (which just came in the mail yesterday). At this point, Finn finally decided to cooperate and sit still on the pillow long enough for me to focus the camera…

Photo by: ayeyister.

I stuck with yesterday’s theme and kept sifting through the “Portrait” tag for something interesting. There’s a color version of the same picture in ayeyister’s photostream, but I initially saw this black and white one and I thought it was nifty. It’s a self portrait, and the hair and facial expression are priceless. I’ve seen a couple of my students when their hair was like this, and no way in hell were they gonna let me take their picture. So kudos for that bit of bravery.

It looks like the picture is lit from camera right. You can see the shadow falling across her nose on the upper left part of her face, and there’s also a catch light in the bottom right part of her eye. I’d guess a window, as the light wraps around kind of softly. But it could also be a lamp I suppose. Curious now…