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Author Topic: Take a picture once a day, whether you need to or not  (Read 1138328 times)
RhyssaFireheart
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Reply #3430 on: May 06, 2018, 09:13:56 PM

 Thumbs up!

Yegolev
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Reply #3431 on: May 07, 2018, 07:43:04 AM

What's it like living inside the Bladerunner movie?

Why am I homeless?  Why do all you motherfuckers need homes is the real question.
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Teleku
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Reply #3432 on: May 07, 2018, 09:02:24 AM

Meanwhile, the street next to my house in nearby Laos.


"My great-grandfather did not travel across four thousand miles of the Atlantic Ocean to see this nation overrun by immigrants.  He did it because he killed a man back in Ireland. That's the rumor."
-Stephen Colbert
Yegolev
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Reply #3433 on: May 07, 2018, 09:21:59 AM

Air conditioners, outdoor barbecue, seems fine to me.

Why am I homeless?  Why do all you motherfuckers need homes is the real question.
They called it The Prayer, its answer was law
Mommy come back 'cause the water's all gone
Viin
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Reply #3434 on: May 07, 2018, 12:59:52 PM

Not a good picture, but a good place! Got some time on a dirt bike in Moab this weekend:

- Viin
rattran
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Reply #3435 on: May 12, 2018, 06:28:15 AM

I like how the fire has it's own stop sign. That's good city planning.
IainC
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Reply #3436 on: May 12, 2018, 08:55:00 AM

I went to the big park today in the centre of town.

There was a water monitor defending his fish from a bunch of opportunistic ravens.

IMG_2505.jpg by Iain Compton, on Flickr


IMG_2509.jpg by Iain Compton, on Flickr

Some kind of ibis

IMG_2522.jpg by Iain Compton, on Flickr

And a kitty

IMG_2527.jpg by Iain Compton, on Flickr

- And in stranger Iains, even Death may die -

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Khaldun
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Reply #3437 on: May 14, 2018, 08:59:02 AM

I think you and we are going to enjoy your new photographic life.
Teleku
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Reply #3438 on: May 14, 2018, 09:04:06 AM

Always enjoy the monitor lizards running around when I'm in Bangkok.  The Ambassadors residence is right in the center of the city, with its own big green space surrounded by sky scrappers, and a full moat filled with those things.

They probably existed in Laos at one point also, but the locals probably ate them all.
« Last Edit: May 14, 2018, 09:17:01 AM by Teleku »

"My great-grandfather did not travel across four thousand miles of the Atlantic Ocean to see this nation overrun by immigrants.  He did it because he killed a man back in Ireland. That's the rumor."
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IainC
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Reply #3439 on: May 14, 2018, 11:26:13 AM

I shot a bellydance event at the weekend. It was at a tiny Lebanese restaurant in a hotel close to where I live. The lighting was terrible, the background was distracting and it wasn't really possible top move around so I was limited to a very narrow range of camera positions. I got a few that were keepers still, even if they aren't portfolio material.


IMG_2299.jpg by Iain Compton, on Flickr


IMG_2207.jpg by Iain Compton, on Flickr


IMG_1950.jpg by Iain Compton, on Flickr


IMG_1910.jpg by Iain Compton, on Flickr

- And in stranger Iains, even Death may die -

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Khaldun
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Reply #3440 on: May 14, 2018, 04:15:30 PM

#2 has great movement.
RhyssaFireheart
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Reply #3441 on: May 15, 2018, 06:36:32 AM

I agree, I really like the flow in #2 with the scarf.  Very nice!


calapine
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Reply #3442 on: May 15, 2018, 07:37:52 AM

Some shots from the balcony of my new apartment.




WOW.

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calapine
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Reply #3443 on: May 19, 2018, 08:17:53 AM

I think we reached Peak Austria here:




The picture isn't much, but caught a good moment to shoot, I think.




1) Dat Ass!  Grin

2) Note the subtle adaption of tradition: As girl you can wear Dirndl or Lederhosen now.  smiley

« Last Edit: May 19, 2018, 08:24:52 AM by calapine »

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Reply #3444 on: May 21, 2018, 03:33:04 AM

I have a backlog of shoots that I did when I was still in Slovakia, which I hadn't got around to editing. The weekend was a washout for the stuff I had planned so I worked my way through one of them. I had trouble trying to come up with a nice aesthetic for the shoot, editing it 'flat' looked crap so I went for a more vintage look with aggressive contrast curves and a bit of split-toning abuse.

The model was a girl who had been booked by a guy who wanted me to give him photography lessons. He didn't turn up so we ended up improvising.


IMG_1578.jpg by Iain Compton, on Flickr


IMG_1600-Edit.jpg by Iain Compton, on Flickr


IMG_1592-Edit.jpg by Iain Compton, on Flickr

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Sky
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Reply #3445 on: May 22, 2018, 11:21:41 AM

So I think I'm going to book my first model for a portrait shoot. Head/torso stuff. I figure I can probably book a room at the library, if I can find one dark enough (we're getting into the season where we close before dark).

I'm a fan of fairly tenebrous stuff, like the first and third of that last post, Iain. I have no idea how to set up or shoot :D My plan was to use lighting like they do at ateliers, a work light placed about 10-12' away to reduce blowouts in the highlights. I don't think there's any need to a second light for this shoot, I want to keep it simple (both for shooting and drawing/painting from the reference later).

I have a Canon t5i with the kit lens and a longer one (55-250 maybe?). I figure I'll try to get some backdrop fabric, grab my tripod and see what happens. (Wish I had that great swirly bokeh lens!)  But I'd love some advice/pointers!
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Reply #3446 on: May 22, 2018, 08:51:39 PM

When you say 'the kit lens' I assume you mean the 18-55? I'd suggest the longer lens for head and torso stuff, a wide angle will flatten features and won't be very flattering, once you get above 80mm (FF equivalent), you get a much more natural perspective. Your main problem is going to be aperture I think, both of those zooms have fairly small max apertures and they are both variable through the zoom range too. I'd be tempted to go get a nifty fifty and shoot with that - it's a $100 lens which is pretty much free in photobucks.

When you say a work light, do you mean a continuous light? You're going to have trouble getting a good exposure if so. Flashes put out a lot more light than a continuous lamp and are pretty much the only choice for lowlight stuff. I shot all of those with two speedlights shooting through an octobox reflector and a beauty dish respectively. The octobox was my main and the dish was the key light. All of the shots were shot pretty bright and I moved black points, contrast curves and exposures around in post to get the tenebrous effect. If I'd shot it dark, all of the background would be dead black shadow and there'd be no illumination on most of her face.

I'm usually shooting at 1/200s (which is the flash sync speed) and f/6.3 but I have a lot of light. If you're shooting with a single light or continuous lights, you are going to need to really open up the aperture to f/2.8 or more.

- And in stranger Iains, even Death may die -

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Sky
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Reply #3447 on: May 23, 2018, 07:30:34 AM

Ugh, I don't needs another expensive hobby  why so serious? And of course, then I get far enough to see my camera is crop frame and I should really get a 35mm lens to get the same effect of a 50mm on a full frame, see the prices of the 35mm lenses...yeah, I won't be getting too deep into lenses. But the 50mm prime sounds like a good idea, and useful for my purposes.

I also wanted to avoid getting into triggered flashes and stuff, but I needs what I needs, I guess.

My idol for portrait photography is Laura Sheridan: https://www.sheridansart.com/ She heavily retouches for artistic effect, but her stuff is so good. I want to paint like she shoots. Obviously my reference photos don't need that level of polish, since I can do it in paint, but the lighting has to be right.
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Reply #3448 on: May 23, 2018, 07:53:49 AM

You can do lighting on the cheap(ish). I used two Yongnuo 560 III speedlights. They have built in wireless triggers, you just need a wireless transceiver on your camera to make them go. The speedlights are $65 each and the transceiver is about another $35 or so. There's a bundle on Amazon that has two lights and a transceiver for $150. You'll then need two light stands ($20 each) and a couple of modifiers. These can get pretty expensive but for head shots, you can get by with an 80cm octobox around each light. In total, you're going to drop a shade over $200 but you'll have enough lighting to do pretty much anything that isn't crazy elaborate. All of my shots have been done with that set up, plus occasionally a couple of continuous lights for focus assist.

- And in stranger Iains, even Death may die -

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Polysorbate80
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Reply #3449 on: May 23, 2018, 10:39:42 AM

In contrast to Iain and Calapiine's urban homes, all I have is rainshowers moving in as I mow the back pasture (and fix the fence.  There's always, ALWAYS a rail down somewhere...)



No lizards eating fish back there, but there is a bear living down in that canyon.  I don't know what he eats; tourists, maybe.

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Bunk
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Reply #3450 on: May 23, 2018, 01:04:56 PM

Every weekend hobby photographer I have ever spoken to agrees: the nifty-fifty is the most useful lens you will ever put in your kit. Just do it.

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Reply #3451 on: May 24, 2018, 08:16:24 AM

There's a thunderstorm going on outside my apartment right now. I took photos. I've been trying to get photos of the (very frequent) thunderstorms here for a while, but either they've been right on top of me and I don't get a good angle on them or the cloud cover is complete and you just get vaguely lit up clouds.


IMG_2611.jpg by Iain Compton, on Flickr

- And in stranger Iains, even Death may die -

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Teleku
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Reply #3452 on: May 24, 2018, 08:32:31 AM

Nice.  I've really wanted to get some lighting shots here, but I just don't live in an area with a good view.  If I lived in downtown Bangkok, so much opportunity.  Also, you haven't seen anything yet.  You got here just in time for the start of rainy season.  By July its going to be endless lighting.


Incidentally, a position in Bangkok has opened up I can bid on this summer.  Not holding my breath since every other person in the Foreign service plus myself will be going at it, but may be able to join you in a year or so.   awesome, for real

Edit:  Also, can you tell me what settings you use to take lightning?  My old strategy was to set it as low of a speed as possible and let it just do a long exposure for 20-30 seconds.  Then repeat endlessly.  Till lightning happened while I was doing that.  Often too bright, but manged to get some great shots in the past.

Also Also, fuck, how do you guys take such great pictures.  I cannot seem to get the color vibrancy and clarity you people do with my SLR.  Do you do any post processing?
« Last Edit: May 24, 2018, 09:55:00 AM by Teleku »

"My great-grandfather did not travel across four thousand miles of the Atlantic Ocean to see this nation overrun by immigrants.  He did it because he killed a man back in Ireland. That's the rumor."
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Reply #3453 on: May 24, 2018, 09:39:56 AM

Everything I publish gets processed.Mostly I try and keep things to the more naturalistic end of the processing scale, but there is still a lot of editing - contrast curves, split toning, lighting balance and so on. That lightning shot above was edited quickly - took about a couple of minutes. You can see what it looks like in Lightroom here:



On the left is the edit history. I switched the tone curve from my usual one which favours highlights to a reversed one that's a bit flatter and favours shadows, so that's why there are two sets of edits for all the curves. On the right, you can see the main sliders. I didn't really touch the white balance or the tint.

The Flickr page shows the settings that I used. I had the camera on a tripod with a wired remote plugged in. I focused on the nearest building and set the drive to continuous, then set it going for a couple of minutes. 1.3s exposure at f/5.6 and ISO 200. I shot ~150 exposures, got around 5 that showed lightning and only one with the clearly defined fork.

- And in stranger Iains, even Death may die -

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Sky
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Reply #3454 on: May 24, 2018, 11:13:57 AM

Even my stuff gets a decent amount of post, and I'm usually just shooting a piece of art. Especially my work in progress shots, since my studio LED lighting is great for drawing but horrible for pics (my phone won't even take pics, too much banding). So I tend to shoot WIPs in RAW and fix blowouts and boost shadowed spots (usually cones at the top and the lower edges). I'll also desaturate to remove the lighting shift and make it closer to the white of the paper (I could wb but w/e  DRILLING AND WOMANLINESS ).

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Sky
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Reply #3455 on: May 24, 2018, 12:30:59 PM

Ok. So I'm going to be jonesing for reference soon, I need to figure out a basic setup. I don't think I really /need/ a full setup to start (this drawing was from a crappy pic I took with auto settings, kit lens, though I did have a tripod: just the single work/clamp light with an incandescent bulb and tons of bleed from fluorescents). But if I have a great model, I wouldn't mind getting a decent stock of material with her. She'll probably be available for a couple years yet (college student), but she's a med student so her hours will disappear sooner than later.

So. Assuming I snag a 50mm prime, 2 soft boxes and the trigger+ 2 lights you linked, Iain. What else do I need for setup? Stands, I'd assume; what kind of contraption would work for connecting the soft box + flash to the stand?

Thanks again, I didn't really intend to venture down this path, but if I'm going to be focusing on portraiture for a while it will pay for itself pretty quickly (vs hourly model fees to work from life, I draw slowly and paint slowerly).
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Reply #3456 on: May 24, 2018, 08:45:10 PM

The softboxes I linked in my earlier post are umbrellas so you'd need an umbrella clamp. They are $10 pieces of hardware that you can probably find at a local camera store if you don't want to wait for Amazon. The more expensive modifiers are usually designed around a Bowens mount which is what most studio strobes use (and IIRC theatre lighting). Lighting stands are also cheap and they don't need to be particularly heavy duty if you're just going to put a speedlight and an umbrella on them. Better ones are necessary only if you want to use proper strobes with bigger modifiers or if you want to use a boom for overhead lighting.

Depending on the kind of shots you want, you might or might not need a backdrop. In a permament studio, these would be on a big roll that is attached to the ceiling, but I'm going to guess that you don't want that. So you can use a folding frame which is basically two extra tall lightstands with a ridge pole that goes between them. The backdrop cloth either has a pocket seam that the ridge pole goes through, or it's clamped in place with spring clamps.  You can get them in various sizes depending on how much space you have and whether you want to do full length shots or just head and torso stuff. You might not need one at all though if you can control the ambient light behind your model and shoot with a big enough space between her and the back wall. If you set your lighting up right, you can get a completely black background without a backdrop. This shot was taken in the middle of the afternoon on my living room table in regular daylight. I just set my camera so that ambient light didn't register (1/250, f/11, ISO 200) and lit the flowers but not the background with flash.


IMG_5318.jpg by Iain Compton, on Flickr

Other than that, you'll want some interesting things for your model to interact with - seating, cushions, props, whatever. Maybe some coloured bolts of cloth to drape over small furniture to disguise it.

- And in stranger Iains, even Death may die -

SerialForeigner Photography.
Sky
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Reply #3457 on: May 24, 2018, 09:18:59 PM

Excellent, thanks! I was looking at the right clamps, wanted to be sure. I have a couple boom stands for mics, which might work well enough for starter stands. Backdrop, I'll have to run some tests and see. I could use several lengths of opaque black cloth for general setup purposes anyway (blocking light from live drawing subjects), so I'll have to look into that and see if it will fit double duty.

Props, good idea. I'll mention it to the model when we talk about costuming. For furniture I'm hoping to dig up a couple 19th century pieces. If the initial sessions go well, I'll probably take her on location to some historic sites.

So thanks again. I am going to try not to spend too much  DRILLING AND WOMANLINESS I did order the lens and lights package, on my way...
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Reply #3458 on: May 24, 2018, 10:21:49 PM

Props, good idea. I'll mention it to the model when we talk about costuming. For furniture I'm hoping to dig up a couple 19th century pieces. If the initial sessions go well, I'll probably take her on location to some historic sites.

That's another advantage of speedlights and umbrella softboxes, you can run them on batteries instead of needing mains power and they pack up small enough to carry around with you to outdoor sites. Speaking of batteries, buy a bunch of rechargable AA batteries (8 is a full set for two speedlights, so get 16) and a couple of chargers so that you can have one set recharging while the other set is in use. Depending on the flash power setting and the rate of shooting, your speedlights are going to chew through those AAs in about an hour and a half.

- And in stranger Iains, even Death may die -

SerialForeigner Photography.
calapine
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Reply #3459 on: May 25, 2018, 04:29:00 AM



Too much shrubbery, not enough sky.  Ohhhhh, I see.

Shot from this location:


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Reply #3460 on: May 26, 2018, 10:56:35 AM

It rained today.


IMG_2771.jpg by Iain Compton, on Flickr

- And in stranger Iains, even Death may die -

SerialForeigner Photography.
Sky
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Reply #3461 on: May 26, 2018, 03:04:54 PM

The 50mm prime is a lot of fun! I need to get better about focusing, I usually use a tripod and my transitional prescription lenses ain't helpin none neither. But I took a few pics and messed around with stuff in LR a bit.





Count Nerfedalot
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Reply #3462 on: May 26, 2018, 10:32:35 PM

It's more of a snapshot than a "photograph", I didn't have time to dig out the camera or futz around with getting an artsy shot. but it's a really interesting and unusual machine. the rusty back end and undercarriage almost look like it was banged together in someone's garage from scrap metal until you consider the gauge of some of those castings.



The fun part of the story is the robin photobombing me on the roof of the cab. That bird was scolding me the entire time I walked around the engine, hopping along the engine next to me and repeatedly zooming at my head and doing the broken wing ploy on the ground behind me. Never did see the nest but the robin is in almost every picture and was chattering or swooping down at me until I retreated to my car and left it in peace after a few quick pics with the phone.

Yes, I know I'm paranoid, but am I paranoid enough?
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Reply #3463 on: May 26, 2018, 11:12:42 PM

The 50mm prime is a lot of fun! I need to get better about focusing, I usually use a tripod and my transitional prescription lenses ain't helpin none neither. But I took a few pics and messed around with stuff in LR a bit.


Yeah, even on a crop-sensor, f/1.8 is a crazy thin depth of field if you are used to the kit zooms. Despite the lens's light weight, small front element and general cheapness, it's optically a pretty good lens. 50mm primes have been the standard for decades and it's hard to make a bad one, you'll find it sharpens up noticeably around f/5.6 or so but even wide open it's very usable. There's a ~$400 50mm f/1.4 which is optically better and much more sturdily built if you really like that focal length.

- And in stranger Iains, even Death may die -

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IainC
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Reply #3464 on: May 28, 2018, 08:10:34 AM

Went back to the park yesterday and took more pictures of water monitors. Those things are so cool to watch.


IMG_2828.jpg by Iain Compton, on Flickr


IMG_2822.jpg by Iain Compton, on Flickr

It was super busy so most of the wildlife was hiding and only the less timid stuff was easily visible. This bittern was trying to catch fish while dodging overexcited Korean children.


IMG_2799.jpg by Iain Compton, on Flickr

- And in stranger Iains, even Death may die -

SerialForeigner Photography.
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