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Experimenting with strobes and profiles
The text below makes more sense when reading on the blog with the pictures...
I experimented with some profiles today. I didn't have lofty goals but simply wanted to attempt to recreate a dramatic profile photo I had seen recently. My favorite result is shown above.
The inspiration for my work had been done with fancy studio lights with a huge softbox (at least 3'x5' if not larger). There was essentially unlimited space in the studio which allowed the subject to be far from the background. The black surround on the softbox allowed the light to be prevented from lighting the background at all.
I had some limitations with my setup. I could only get my subject about 2.5' from the background (a yellow wall in my house). With some furniture rearrangement I could have changed that but I'm still not allowed to do much in the way of exertion after my back surgery. I was also limited to a shoot-thru umbrella which allowed plenty of light to spill on the background. Tried flagging it with a blanket…no worky. I have a black cloth somewhere which would have allowed me to shoot into the umbrella, reflect the light, and block most of it from the wall. The key word is "somewhere"…not sure where that cloth is so I had to shoot through the umbrella.
Below is the basic shot I ended up with. The background is lit by the spill from the strobe which had a 1/2 CTO gel on it (ambient was a non-issue at this exposure). I had done a custom white balance before shooting and this shot is straight from the camera.
The shot at the top with the blue background is almost the same shot except that I added a strobe with a 1/2 blue gel on it to light the background. My "assistant" used her hand to prevent the background strobe from directly lighting the subject. This background strobe was set to 1/32 power -- doesn't take much. I stopped down a bit on this shot to get the balance I was looking for between subject and background. I could have kept the same aperture and same main strobe power and moved the background light further back but the furniture was in the way again. Notice how the blue overcomes the natural yellow of the wall completely.
This was all very unscientific and ad hoc. There are so many more variables to play with: Getting the subject away from the background. Moving the subject such that the main light feathers around him differently. Higher key lighting on the background. Using grid spots on subject and/or background. Moving the background light around. Etc., etc., etc. It's kind of fun to experiment. When my back is improved I'll play around with these things more.
3 pencil profile sketches of Scott of Oldham, Dr O, and an unidentified man with sailors cap, beard and glasses.
This sketch appears in a sketchbook belonging to Ernest Arthur Binstead, a keen amateur artist. The sketches date from around 1898 and 1908. The majority of these sketches were made during Mr Binstead’s journey on the SS Garmoyle from Glasgow to the Isle of Dogs during April 1901. They highlight both life on the ship and the sights viewed during the journey.
This sketchbook is held in Glasgow University Archive Services. For more information please contact the Duty Archivist: www.gla.ac.uk/services/archives/contactus/
(Reference number: GB 0248 UGC 195/1/1)
I finally got to putting the v4 nose on the thing and it just looked ... wrong. It was definitely a stud too long (confirmed with the scaling tool) so back around I went with a shorter front hood and corresponding changes everywhere to accomodate it. Just about everything here needs tightening up, but it was fun to get all the elements together at last
This photo was taken with the Samsung smart-phone, close to 9pm in the terrace, with the torchlight of the mobile camera. Went to terrace for a different reason and while goofing around with the torchlight, noticed slight movement in the wall. This little gecko juvenile was about two inches long. Either he was stunned by the light beam or thought of being still to be unseen (one of the reptilian strategies to escape attention), but ultimately the images were okay!
Woman, window, wires, woods, and water (in that order.)
Crema Cafe looks out across Monona Drive to the lake. This woman was lunching with girlfriends and stood peering at the menu before going up to the counter to order. I'd been taking shots of just the window and the wires before they arrived. A human silhouette was the missing element!
[project365-70]
Common redpolls are a rarity in my backyard and are usually found feeding on the snow covered ground on sunflower seeds fallen from the bird feeder. This day they are puffed to keep warm in wind and the lightly falling snow.
I make no apologies for the fact that I feature a lot of titles from Profile Books in my Daily Bookshots, but the fact is, their covers are so photogenic. Take the recently released Time by Eva Hoffman. The cover (the creation of Dan Mogford) is simple yet profound. A solitary silhouetted dandelion in the act of dispersing its seeds, perfectly encapsulating the passing of time.
But of course a book isn’t just about the cover. It’s about the content too (especially when you're a ‘proper’ reader like you and me :)). And I’ve got to say that the content of this book looks to be utterly intriguing. Intriguing because Eva Hoffman looks at a resource that affects and directs all of us, and it’s a resource which book bloggers always seem to have a distinct lack of. That right folks, a big clue in the title - TIME. Here’s the cover blurb (and it’s a long one):
Time has always been the great Given, a fact of existence which cannot be denied or wished away; but the character of lived time is changing dramatically. Medical advances extend our longevity, while digital devices compress time into ever briefer units. We can now exist in several time-zones at once, but we suffer from endemic shortages of time. We are working longer hours and blurring the distinctions between labour and leisure. For many, in an inversion of the old adage, time has become more valuable than money.
How do such developments affect our societies and our selves? What impact do the hyper-fast technologies - computers, video games, and instant communications - have on our capacity for concentration and reflection? The last decades have witnessed the rise of multi-tasking accidents and time-fragmenting emotional disorders. As we examine physiology and consciousness on ever microscopic levels, what are we learning about the processes and patterns of time in our minds and bodies? Is there such a thing as natural human temporality, beyond which we venture at our peril?
In this radical exploration of life’s most ineffable element, spanning fields from biology and culture to psychoanalysis and neuroscience, Eva Hoffman asks: are we coming to the end of time as we have known it?
OK a lengthy blurb I know, and not a particularly enthralling one, but putting aside any notion of complexity, I think that Time may well be an absorbing read. I’ll let you know myself in the near(ish) future.
Profile Books | September 2009 | £10.99 | HARDBACK | 224 PP | ISBN: 9781846680380
My profile picture, if anyone's interested. A CoD M16, overlayed with separate filters and effects thrice, on an "urban warfare" background.
A representative soil profile of the Chaos series. (Soil Survey of Lassen Volcanic National Park, California; by Andrew E. Conlin, Soil Scientist, Natural Resources Conservation Service)
The Chaos series consists of very deep, somewhat excessively drained soils that formed in rockfall avalanche deposits from rhyodacite. Chaos soils are on rockfall avalanches from Chaos Crags. Slopes range from 2 to 30 percent. The mean annual precipitation is about 43 inches (1092 mm) and the mean annual temperature is about 43 degrees F (6.5 degrees C).
TAXONOMIC CLASS: Loamy-skeletal, isotic, nonacid, frigid Typic Xerorthents
Depth to restrictive feature: Bedrock greater than 60 inches, (152 cm)
Mean annual soil temperature: 43 to 47 degrees F (6 to 8 degrees C).
Soil moisture control section is dry: June to November (about 180 days).
Particle-size control section (weighted average): 0 to 2 percent clay, and 27 to 83 percent rock fragments.
Surface fragments: 15 to 60 percent gravel, 10 to 70 percent cobbles, 2 to 50 percent stones, and 0 to 50 percent boulders.
USE AND VEGETATION: This soil is used for wildlife habitat, recreation, ecosystem management and watershed. Vegetation is Jeffery pine, lodgepole pine, western white pine white fir, California red fir, pinemat manzanita, buckwheat, and snowbrush ceanothus.
DISTRIBUTION AND EXTENT: The soils are inextensive and are mapped in MLRA: 22B, Southern Cascade Mountains.
For additional information about the survey area, visit:
www.nrcs.usda.gov/Internet/FSE_MANUSCRIPTS/california/las...
For a detailed soil description, visit:
soilseries.sc.egov.usda.gov/OSD_Docs/C/CHAOS.html
For acreage and geographic distribution, visit:
Suspended Animation Classic #195
Originally published September 20, 1992 (#38)
(Dates are approximate)
Cartoonist Profiles
By Michael Vance
Three years ago in January, Suspended Animation began talking about the world-wide popularity of comic strips. Ninety-seven years ago, the first comic strip, “The Yellow Kid”, began a dialog with the world.
For a big chunk of that time “Cartoonist Profiles” has written about the cartoonists who talk with you through characters like Cathy, Blondie, and Calvin and Hobbes. It’s the official magazine of the Museum of Cartoon Art, located at Westport, Connecticut.
Yes, there is a museum filled with thousands of strips and related materials that you should visit! But, if you can’t go, this museum can make it to your mailbox quarterly. “Cartoonist Profiles” is, regrettably, not sold on many newsstands.
The bulk of this wonderful magazine is dedicated to informal interviews with strip and editorial cartoonists, and gag and comic book professionals. The history of this artform is laced throughout the articles as well as life philosophies, technical information on art, writing and marketing, and photographs.
In the reviews issue, there are interviews with the cartoonists behind “Big Nate”, “Herby and Jamaal”, “Scamp”, “Ella Cinders” and other strip characters. Editorial cartoonist Tom Engelhardt is featured, a short course on caricature is offered, and magazine cartoonist Charles Almon is profiled. If these named don’t ring a bell, examples of their work pepper the entire magazine and their characters are instantly familiar.
If you’re a fan of comics instead of a casual reader, or are an amateur cartoonist looking for information, “Cartoonist Profiles” is indispensable. If you simply enjoy reading comics, there may be more here than you need.
If you want information on the museum and magazine, drop an SASDE to: 281 Bayberry Lane, Westport, CT, 06880. [Editor’s note: this information may be out of date].
You heard it here first.
“Cartoonist Profiles” #90/72 pages, $7, published by Cartoonist Profiles, Inc./edited by Jud Hurd.