Talk about an 18th!

A few weeks ago was my little baby bro's 18th birthday. And boy did he get a birthday, trip to HK, friends party, and family party. And of course like any birthday, cake was involved! And boy what a cake! I think I'll let the Images speak for themselves. And of course being the strobist afficionado that I am, I lit the bajeebers our of everything :D. I think my family are still recovering from spotty eyes. I'll let you all know how that goes :D.

Desert Before the Cake

Lit my cousin from his front, I was very pleased with how the lighting came out! I'm reminded of some old Adidas ads. Anyhow, as usual the flickr version appears to loose brightness when going from Lightroom to Flickr. And as always I forget to crank it up...DOH!

The Cake

My brother's amusement

what was left of the cake after............

Shab-zilla got to it O.O

The out-take AHEM!

Recap

As usual, consistent blogging comes to me about as easily as a good Idea does to George Bush. However this time I do have a justification if not a reason for not excusing myself in advance. Febuary ended for me with a rather pleasant surprise resulting in me taking an extended 3 week trip. Unfortunately at present I am not able to divulge the details of said trip, however let me tell you the revelations I will make upon the declassification of said trip, will leave a few of you with eyebrows raised! Fortunately this gives me time to process the Images to a T.

However just because any images I might have taken in said trip might be delayed in making themselves online, doesnt mean I dont have material for the present.

Presenting the last of my 2009 Images (finally!) some pictures from a family dinner we had, during X-mas. Now I hadnt originally planned to upload these, however being the strobist nut that I am, I felt they had some value to my fellow strobist's out there, particularly as one set involved the mixing of ambient lighting and flash photography. Something I have been eagerly working on as of late.





Unfortunately the Images arent as great as they could have been. I was still at the time getting accuainted with my new nikon gear. The goal was to shoot the candle holders with the light of the candle oozing thru the gaps, whislt lighting them externally with the flash. Something I did manage to do, however at present I fail to understand the blurry nature of the Images. I can only assume I miscalculated my shutter speed making it too slow in an attempt to fill in some ambient lighting where the flash did not whilst still attempting to achieve some detail in the candles, whilst lighting the candles with an off camera SB900 with a warming gel to give it some ambience. Whilst the Images came out nicely, I find the fact that I used a high ISO and the blurry touch to detract from what I was aiming for. Just goes to show how much I've learned since then, as I'm quite sure I could presently retake the images with considerably better results. Hopefully I'll soon get the oportunity to play with a similar scenario and see if thats true.

My Images dont often get to tell a story. This is one of the reasons I've taken a liking for flash photography, as one is able to create results such as these.



I love how the light adds a touch of drama to the scene. What began as an experiment with my new toy ended with a lovely little scene depicting a heartfelt family discussion. The light capturing my great aunts expression. I love it and I couldnt help but share it.



As for these second batch of Images, my little cousin was clumsy enough to drop a glass of water on this heavily textured foot matt outside. Before letting them clean it up, I couldnt help notice how they captured the sunlight, glistening away. I couldnt help but rush off and grab my macro lens and get some shots before they dried up.

News, News, News and....a photo!

So as you know from my previous post, I had the joy of recently working with this lovely lady in a photoshoot, which looks like it may be proving to provide some very promising Images like this next one and I'm just getting started! More to come soon I promise. Its difficult to find time between writing a 12k word dissertation I am extremely behind, and researching and prepping for two movies I will soon have to Direct and D.O.P for..... Oh yeay is the joy of beeing a student...

On another note I have some very interesting news tidbits that I've come accross recently.

- Firstly I've taken the time to update my RSS feed with a variety of blogs from my fave photographers including Joe Mcnally (who has a new book!), Scott Kelby, Strobist and a few others

- Joe Mcnally has a new book! OH JOY! To those of you who have read his previous book the moment it clicks, know the joy of having read what could pretty much be considered his photographic history, taken the joy in analysing his images, reading his wacky stories and just soaking in the value of the inspirational information that this great photographer has to give.

- For those of you who are using off camera strobes, particularly Canon systems know the agonising pain it can be to shoot Manually using pocket wizards or other forms of radio slaves. Wouldnt it be so much simpler if some little techie somewhere decided to invent a system where ETTL information COULD be carried through radio waves? Well feel the pain no more! I have recently discovered the advent of Radio Poppers, nifty little devices that like the pocket wizards, use radio wave's to transmit the flash signal. but not only do they do that, they also transfer ETTL! No more will you have to worry about your flashes having a direct line of sight from your master unit to you slaves, never again will sunlight get in the way of successfully using ETTL! however whilst its still a littel expensive at the moment, I'm eagelry awating the amateur and prosumer version the Radio Popper Jr!

On a further note one of the many meetup groups I have signed up to is doing a london lights night photowalk on the 7th which I am eagerly looking forward too, hope to have new pictures by then!