A Turtle in the Road

/0 Comments/in , /by

So I found this little guy trying to cross the road in front of my house the other day. Of course I saved him from being flattened by some passing cars, but first I had to take some photos of him!

This is the fourth turtle I’ve saved from the road this year, but this one had so much more personality than the others. He was not shy at all, and was more than happy to walk around on the road for me 🙂

Game Day!

/0 Comments/in , /by

 

I’ve had this idea for a while, but I wanted to save it for the football season. I’m a big Tennessee Titans fan so I always get excited when the season starts!

 

Here are some alternate shots:

 

The flare to the right is actually the second flash, not the sun 🙂

 

 

 

 

 

Had to get the kids involved! Loved this one, lol

 

 

 

 

The Set Up:

 

The set up was actually more complicated than it looks! It took my wife and I awhile to get it just right.

Goes like this:

Canon 7d with a Sigma 10-20 lens in the cooler propped up, beer bottles leaning all around :

 

 

I used a remote with a 10 second timer to fire it.

 

I have a Cowboy Studio wireless flash trigger that I used to fire two flashes. One flash was an Alien Bee 800 in a softbox set to about 3/4 power (which is kind of high, but the goal was to beat back  the sun). The box is sitting right next to the cooler, firing up into my face:

 

 

 

The second flash is a 580exii on a light stand on camera right, set to 1/2 power just to add a little fill:

 

 

And that’s it! Once I got the set up working right, I just took several photos with different poses. Don’t worry if the neighbors look at you funny 🙂

 

Also, check out my “Game Day” shot from a couple years ago. This one was a 3 exposure HDR, processed in Photomatix 🙂

 

 

Thanks for stopping by!

 

 

A Whole Lot of Randomness…

/2 Comments/in , , , , , , , , , , , /by

So I haven’t posted many blog entries lately except for my This Week at the Lake posts. So now is the time to catch up! There are a lot of photos here, if you follow me on facebook or flickr you may have seen some of these but many are being published for the first time.

Here is the Randomness, in not so random order:

Here I was practicing with using a flash

A random office building in Franklin, TN

From the Laundromat from when my washing machine broke:

A Self Portrait…

Looking out at the snow on my car during my 4 hour commute home one snowy evening

On the way to work one morning, didn’t look like a very good day for a hot air balloon ride!

Vanderbilt University at Night

Swish!

More portrait/lighting practice

I like the one above of my daughter but I feel like I blew this one of my son. I should have been able to get more sky in the photo…

A neighbor

Jump!

See? Random wasn’t it!? Hope you enjoyed them though!

Lemonade Splash!

/0 Comments/in /by

I’ve seen some really great “Cookie Splash” shots on flickr and I’ve been wanting to try it.

Now, I don’t drink coffee (or even own a coffee cup) so I had to think of something else. Being so hot lately, I decided on using a nice refreshing glass of Lemonade.

I also don’t even own a flash, so I had to do it outside in the sun to get the fast shutter speed.

I really liked the splash on this one but I wish there wasn’t so much motion blur. After this shot I upped the iso to get an even faster shutter speed (from 1/2000 to 1/4000)

This was my last attempt, I actually threw the lemon into the glass (instead of dropping) to try to get a huge splash – The lemonade shot straight up

I really had fun with these – I’ll probably be doing more soon!

Setup:
The settings for these shots are virtually the same
Exposure: 1/4000s at f2.8
ISO: 400
Focal Length: 108mm (far enough away to not get splash on the lens!)
Put the camera on a tripod, set it to “Burst” mode (In this case I did a 6 shot burst)
Hold the drop item over the glass, when the burst starts drop or throw the item into the glass – easy as that!

Back Yard Fun – Humming Birds

/3 Comments/in , , , /by

I have so many pictures that I don’t really know what to do with! I’m going to try to make a few more posts here for some of my “Random” shots. This is one series I’ll be posting over the next couple of weeks – Back Yard Fun. Because there are so many, I’ll break it up into groups

This first group is Humming Birds. We are lucky enough to have several humming birds this year (I’ve counted as many as 4 at one time). They’re pretty easy to get close to. I usually just pull out a chair and sit and wait. They always show up soon!

Here are a few: