Pet Photography

I wanted to shoot something fun today, so I decided to try something different and photograph our turtles, Turkle and Tiffen, while they were swimming around in their tank. We're not sure what sex they are, so my girlfriend and I just refer to them as males. Unfortunately, Turkle, the bigger one wasn't so interested, probably because I didn't have any food for him! But it was fun to shoot underwater and try to control the reflections on the water and in the glass tank.

Here you can see just how bored Turkle was. He yawned and barely looked over at the camera. He wasn't moving from his perch on that rock, which was kind of surprising, because usually any time anyone goes near the tank they both go nuts swimming as fast as they can trying to get to whoever is that is standing nearby.


This is Tiffen. He was less camera shy. Anyway, in this photo you see the light bouncing off some of the bubbles in the water. The light cuts through the water, bounces off the white wood that the tank is sitting on and lights up Tiffen's underside. You'll also notice in the photos there is some dried out residue from the water that's splashed on the sides is glowing from the flash. I like the result, it's kind of abstract. It adds an almost painterly feel to this photo.

In these next two Tiffen presses his face up against that glass. There's a lot less residue reflecting. That's partly because there is less residue in the corner and also the angle the light is bouncing off the glass at. I find the second of these two photos funny because it looks like Tiffen is looking out the window of his über modern New York City condo. You can see neighboring buildings in the background.

Finally a picture of the set up that I used. For anyone who doesn't really understand the technical terms of photography, you can stop reading here! I placed my flash with a Pocket Wizard inside of a smaller fish tank that rested on top of the tank that the turtles were in. I had the flash set to 1/8th power. I didn't need a lot, since the flash was so close. I could have gone even lower on the flash power as I was using f/11 for my aperture. My shutter speed for most if not all the photos was 1/125th (actually I think the setup was at 1/60th).

Glamorous

Glamour Garage in Williams- burg is not your typical hair salon. There's lots of vibrant colors, grafiti on the walls, a large purple couch, the front end of some old car with a nice sparkly, green paint job and a dog named, Chance, who will usually greets you at the entrance.

The owner of this place also runs another salon nearby called Hello Beautiful. She mentioned to me that I had to go by and check it out sometime, not knowing I was a photographer, and so this past weekend I took her up on it and went to check it out. I had a friend in tow. She's a photo student from GA, spending the summer in NY. We met on the train going to the mermaid parade and we talked about photography. She told me how she was kind of scared to approach people in New York to take their pictures, which can be a tough thing to overcome in photography. You just have to get some thick skin and not really care when someone doesn't want you to take their photo. She's also studying photography more as art, not photojournalism like I did.

Anyway, we stopped by the salon, which has a tattoo parlor upstairs. It was rather hot up there that day though, so we didn't really stay to check that part out. We did take a look around though and it is definitely worth returning to in the future for some more photos.

Finally I get to share something new, something different, something that's not buildings! Maybe I'll return soon to do some real photography. The time we spent there was just a chance really to talk, show a couple of things and give her some advice she's probably not getting in photo school. I'm always happy though to share my knowledge and experiences with others though. I think its great when you get a chance to give back. And even better when you get to share what you love (photography).

Cadillac XLR photo shoot

On Memorial Day weeekend I was in Massachusetts for the weekend to photograph a graduation and some family portraits. The night before I had set out my gear to test it and make sure it was all working properly. That night my family also planned a little cookout to celebrate the holiday. Anyway, long story short, my sister and her boy friend showed up with his mother's Cadillac XLR. This car costs about $100,000.00 and is a beauty, so I offered to take some photos of the car. We did the photos right outside of our house. We didn't go scouting for a location or anything more elaborate because we didn't really have time for that. I had no idea he was going to show up with that car.

It was nice because I really got to test my gear and make sure it was all working properly. On the upside, all the gear was working properly. On the downside, was is past tense, and while transporting one of my lights, it slipped out of my hands, fell to the pavement and smashed the light.

I wasn't worried though, as I have 4 lights just for this reason. If something goes wrong with one piece of equipment, I have others to use as backup. Most photo shoots, I can get away with one or two lights, so with one broken light, I was down to three lights. More than enough for a small group of family photos.

For the above photo, there was a light sitting in the car between the two seats pointed up to accent some of the interior. Then there was a light on a stand with a large soft box to the right of the car.


Now this next photo is a detail of the grill. I had to go in and photoshop some defects in the paint as this is not a brand new car. There were a few dead bugs on the bumper, some light scratches in the paint, and a spot where the car's bumper had clearly been tapped by another car while parked or something because you could see something from underneath pushing through.

This one looks like I may have added some colored gels to the lights, but I didn't. The blue comes from the intense color of the night sky. The orange is from a nearby street light. This photo only needed the one light. I repositioned the softbox toward the front of the car and swept is across the grill.

Then my sister wanted a photo of her and her boyfriend with the car, so I obliged. The difficult part with this photo was that it's being done at night and I'm using a shutter speed around 13 seconds, so they had to remain really still. Tricky considering the mosquitoes which would not leave us alone. I liked the way the red brake light showed up in the photo. I tried to figure out a way to keep the brake depressed for the photo without them in the car, but I didn't have anything big enough to get it to stay down.

Finally one photo with them standing outside the car. Notice, here you only get a little bit of the red brake light because the lights are on, so the rear light is on, but the brighter light that comes on when you push the brakes is not.

Beauty shots

I just wanted to post two recent photos from work. There is a third also shot while at work, but it's kind of unrelated.

So the first two photos are prime examples of what our clients are looking for. These are the beauty shots keep them coming back to us.




Finally, the third photo was just a one off thing. I just liked the composition and lighting. The funny thing is, I didn't take this photo to actually make a picture. I just wanted to know what time it was. Since I don't wear a watch and my cell phone was in my pocket, it was easier for me to take a photo and hit the review button, which would show the time the image was created.

NYPH '09 saturday review

Saturday was much nicer. I guess I just hit up all the galleries I didn't care for on Friday. Tim Hetherington has a project called "Sleeping Soldiers" that was really powerful. It was a multimedia piece that displayed images and videos across three screens. The pictures were mainly of soldiers asleep in their cots inside of a dimly lit bunker. The video was clips of bombings, helicopters firing some missiles, and chaos in the heat of battle. The effect wonderful and makes you think how these soldiers ever manage to get to sleep.

I still haven't made it to a single lecture yet. I'm not even sure I'm going to get back to DUMBO for today. I'd like to, so I can take in at least one talk, but I have a bunch of work and possibly some social obligations. I also want to try to meet a few of the photographers who I know that are there but I haven't had a chance yet to talk to.

Though, I did hear a little tip from an NYPH attendee from last year. Sunday is a great day to go because at the end of the festival last year many of the books were put on sale at really great discount prices - some as high as 60% I was told!

Update - Below are the links to last years blog posts about the NYPH:

New York Photo Festival

Images taken yesterday at NYPH

NYPH round up

NYPH round up part 2

NYPH round up part 3 - book soup

NYPH round up part 4 - awards ceremony

NYPH round up part 5 - borrowing canon g9

NYPH round up part 6 - the final day