'You can’t solve the world’s problems, so don’t try. Instead, focus on what you can do each day to leave this place a little better than you found it. We have a window of time to change this planet’s course, but it’s rapidly closing. If governments do what they say they’ll do, we still have a chance.'

~The Book of Hope, by Jane Goodall

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sunlight reflected on to an interior wall .

Another shot of the PRS P20e using bounce light and optical snoot.

This flower was back lit by the sun shining through a window this morning. I used a small hand mirror to bounce a little light into the center of the flower in order to reveal more detail.

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Gallery Walls between Exhibits.....next exhibit due in April

The Leslie Powell Foundation Gallery - Lawton, OK

San Francisco

jacksimonphotography.com/

Another shot from the unusual late May snowfall of a year ago. Of the hundreds of frames I shot in two or three hours, the ones with a touch of green were the most pleasing. Although I was focusing on birds throughout, I maintained at least a dim awareness of their surroundings, because every element in a shot is important. Backgrounds matter as much as the main subject. I've seen countless shots ruined by poor backgrounds. Been there, done that. I'm no Ansel.

Much of wildlife photography is instinctive. Once we lay the groundwork - find a subject, anticipate its behaviour, determine the POV and which lens we will use, etc. - random factors come into play. Some compelling action will happen, or it won't; the light will break for us, or it won't. And then there is the last second fine tuning. Perhaps here I should have taken one or two steps to the right, to separate the background branch from the top of the dove's head, but that might have spooked it and cost me a shot. At least the branch is out of focus, and part of a tangle of branches. We've all seen those family portraits with a tree or telephone pole sprouting from the top of Dad's head. Unlucky overlap.

Almost all the wildlife images we look at on Flickr - not all, but most - have been cropped during processing. In effect, we get to recompose, and often recover an image from earlier mistakes. And once again, attention to surrounding and background detail is critical. I had to leave the green in. Not only does it give the image a nice hit of colour, but it conveys information: this isn't winter, it's spring, an unusual time to see snow (except maybe across the prairie). It's a secondary visual component, but the image needs it.

Could I have shot this better? Yes, of course. Most images could be improved with minor - if not major - adjustments. (Get a catch light in the eye! Straighten that horizon!) But there's still a lot to like, and that includes the diffused light we've been talking about for several days. Light this good, this unusual, is a rarity. The birds themselves look extraordinarily beautiful, bathed in bouncing photons.

One more shot to come, and then we'll move on...

Photographed in Val Marie, Saskatchewan (Canada). Don't use this image on websites, blogs, or other media without explicit permission ©2021 James R. Page - all rights reserved.

Pictured here are the ladies anxiously looking at the countdown of the final few seconds of the game.

Strobist:

3 Alienbee B400s bounced off ceiling

16-35mm f/2.8L at f/5.6

Canon 40D at 1/250th, ISO 1000.

*** I wanted more DOF for this so that I wouldn't miss focus on the critical "emotion" shots that occur for brief seconds... ***

Triggered by Pocket Wizards

(to be seen Large - press L)

I tried to explore the beauty of a plant stem last year, and I didn't get the light that I wanted. I went out and buy a reflector and was going to experiment of the bounced light technique, but then I lost interest of macro photography. Well, after rediscovering my mojo, this was my first try using a reflector, and I was lucky to get a bonus too.

Thank you for visiting. I will get back to you when I come back on Monday.

San Francisco

This is another of the artistically presented displays at the Oakwood Creek boutique in Julian, California. The owner had graciously allowed my wife and I to come in and photograph items in her store on a day that the store was closed to the public.

Lighting stuff: YN560-III in an 8.6 inch Lastolite softbox at camera right. Fill light came from bouncing a bare YN560 off of the white ceiling. Both strobes, in manual mode, were triggered by a Yongnuo RF-603N.

I've put all of my images from this shoot into my Oakwood Creek album. www.flickr.com/photos/9422878@N08/albums/72157660153654735

Other still life images that I've attempted are in my Still Life album. www.flickr.com/photos/9422878@N08/sets/72157635247182331/

My newborn nephew Jai Yoshimine Webster...cute!

best to view the little one, large and on black

For the strobists:

This shot is a good example of how one light can work for photography.

I set the light (speedlite 430ex) up on a stand to about 2 feet above Jai and aimed it at the roof (for soft light), with a stofen (to send light through the bars as a 'cookie' and to help spread light hitting the roof)

flash was on full, f/6.3, 1/200th of a second, and ISO 200 to cut out all ambient light.

Personally I like the inverted effect the bars on each side of him make with the lit and unlit floor.

there was a discussion recently on strobist concerning using flash with infants, whether it would negatively effect their eyes.

for that I say, baby pictures look better with soft light, so there's no reason to ever point the flash at them. this shot was diffused with a stofen (which loses about 2 stops, so is about the equivalent of direct flash at 1/4 power) AND fired at the roof, AND 1.5m away from the cot, AND fired BEHIND the babies back. If you are worried about negative effects PLEASE try this instead, the light bounced is not much in comparison to normal sunlight, and is for approximately 1/5000th of a second.

also, if you can get away with it, shoot with the babies eyes closed when using flash, and open when using natural light :)

for those shooting newborns while they are still in the hospital, i found a north facing window and used the soft light from that, and when i needed to, i threw a stofen on the hotshoe flash, and pointed it backwards into the room/ceiling to bounce.

This is why I love reflectors! Although there is some fill flash 90% of this light is from the reflector and this shot is one of my personal favorites. There's nothing quite like the Sun and the beautiful light it produces!

Last month, I received an email from Hamilton today announcing his retirement. He inquired if I still have the photo I took of him a couple of years ago so he can use it for his signature board. So I dug this up and thought I might share it here. It's really a test shot. At that time I just got my Canon 580ex ii flash and wanted to practice on bouncing the light.

# #IAMGenerationImage

These beautiful, and stylish flowers caught my eye while at a friend's wedding. Part of the regular hotel decor, the white vase against the white, lightly textured wallpaper made for a pretty nice high key shot when I quickly snapped this with my flash bouncing light off the ceiling just above them.

Tuna the cat, Christmas 2017

Camera: Leica M4-P

Lens: KMZ Jupiter 8 50m f2

Film: Fuji 200

Developer: Unicolor C-41

Scanner: Epson V600

Photoshop: Curves, Healing Brush (spotting)

Cropping: None

Meter: Leica MP

Oddly, no visible civic addresses.

Nikon D300 18-200mm

A quick handheld selfie with camera mounted speedlite bounced off the ceiling and adjacent wall. The flash also caught just enough of the chair behind me to add a little interest to the background.

I haven't done a Nikon lens group shot in awhile but I thought it was fitting for this week's Strobist Sundays weekly theme. I rented the Nikon 70-200mm VR for a wedding I shot yesterday which was a great learning experience.

Strobist Info:

Light bounced from ceiling using SB600 in TTL (lazy Sunday morning) mode via Nikon CLS

Couldn't get the light I was looking for until I crafted a crude snoot out of aluminum foil and mounted it to my 430EXII. With the foil snoot in place I finally got a tight enough spread on the light bouncing off the wall just out of frame camera left. It also took several attempts to get positioned so the rich warm light in the background fell mostly right behind me. Turned out pretty good.

experiments with light

Please view in large and give your feedback. Thanks!

Best viewed in large against a black background. To view large, please press "L"

Strobist & DIY info: A couple of blackboards on either side and white foarmboard on top to reflect the off-camera flash.

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Please write rubenkalexander[at]gmail[dot]com to use my photographs. Please do not use my photographs without my consent. Thanks!

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This is the setup for the previous picture of a pink Gerbera Daisy.

I hand held a Nikon D90 with a Yongnuo RF-603N trigger and a Strobie 130 on it, and pointed the Strobie 130 at the ceiling so that the bounced light would show the equipment I used. Down below in the comments is the picture I took with this setup. Click on it if you'd like to see a larger version.

I've now included enough setup shots that I decided to create of Set of them, which you can see here if you find the pictures helpful. www.flickr.com/photos/9422878@N08/sets/72157642517882554/

Shot of a tree in a French river gorge, the light just bounced off the r/h/s rock wall and lite the tree up.

Already 30-rows tall, this tower had a little wobble in it at this point, so each of us had to choose our moves carefully.

If memory serves, I believe we made it up to 32-rows before it finally toppled, making each of the last few moves seriously intense!

Our friends twin boys are a favorite subject of mine to shoot, and this little screened in sun porch off their deck always had such great light to work with. In this particular case, I supplemented the natural light with my speedlite bounced of the low ceiling to highlight his hair and face, as well as create the strong catch light in his eyes.

Javi naturally provided the great expression.

Taken on the family holiday last week in France

Lit with bounced flash off wall to left of photo and WB manually set.

A friend gave me his grandfathers ink well and the fountain pen is my grandfathers pen.

To document the lighting setup that I used for the previous image in my photostream, I put a Yongnuo RF-603N trigger in the hot shoe of my hand held Nikon D90 and then slipped a Nikon SB700 onto the trigger. When I pushed the shutter on the D90, all three strobes fired.

Down below in the comments is the picture that this lighting setup produced.

I've now included enough setup shots that I decided to create of Set of them, which you can see here if you find the pictures helpful. www.flickr.com/photos/9422878@N08/sets/72157642517882554/

Happy Sunday Flickr!

Yesterday, I had the opportunity to go shooting with Fashion Photographer and light "master" Matt Bigelow. Nothing formal, just wanted to get out and enjoy the first "Spring" day we've had in this region.

Matt chose a model that he's been trying to work with for some time and she had a terrific location where she wanted us to shoot. As "things" go we got lost and ended up having our own little adventure in the city. We eventually found our location but had to shoot really fast as we ran out of time.

Nonetheless, it was great shooting with Matt and I'm looking forward to using some of the off-camera techniques he shared with me in the future. I was lazy and didn't want to carry my umbrella and lightstands but Matt did and his images from yesterday are amazing!

July 1. This is my trusty sidekick - the 50mm 1.4. She needed some attention tonight. Sometimes (often) I get frustrated only having one strobe and no umbrellas or real light modifiers (that's changing tomorrow). However, it forces me to really work on my light set-ups. This is lit by one off camera strobe. Photo of set-up and alternate in comments. (shot taken with 24-70 @ f/2.8).

Strobist:

430exii @ 1/8 bounced off a bunch of things, triggered with skyports

Today a group of us got together to share, shot and have fun on this beautiful Sunday! It's late but I will share more on my blog this week but here is an early edit from this year's Chicago Summer Trash The Dress. I have to be honest and share that the group of photogs who came out to shoot today have posted some SERIOUSLY dope stuff. I will have to step up my game...

Even though it was still early in the tower, Tyler moved with a sense of focus & calm determination.

Summer sunset slipping into it's bathwater, splashing more than little on the Co-America building an it's jilted clock-tower cousin, downtown Dallas. Shot with a manual Pentax-K Lens, 78mm, attached by shoddy lens adapter.

This lens is a real joy to shoot with and it only cost five bucks at an ancient camera shop in Florida (the vibe of which was distinctly Monkey's Paw.) The aperture mechanism broke completely the first time I shot with it . . . now it's stuck flung wide-open at 3.5. As a result, I can only meter by adjusting the shutter speed.

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vaporslave

Strobist: One SB with Stofen, bounced off the wall and ceiling, camera left. Big glass door, morning sun, camera right. CLS.

The mirror was her idea actually, I thought it was a good one.

This was her pose, first time. I took one shot before this without the flash. The trick was that the light was coming in from the big windows from her back. I bounced the little speed-light 420ex off the 11'6" ceiling. Worked great, a huge reflector :o)

If her expression seems a little lost to you, read the caption and comments on the previous photo. She's fighting her way back.

Fashion shoot took for young sub-culture topic.

Happy Wednesday Flickr! This is a shot from a recent photo session for a new eating system that is very exciting. Until the product is released I can't go into details, but it won't be long.

This was my first super large food photo session using lights and umbrellas, but my 2nd food photo shoot as my 1st used all natural light. The first one lasted 20 mintues, this one lasted 5 hours. Yes, I delivered over 400+ images to my client as I wanted them to have every possible angle and point of view for their product launch.

I'm not trained in this type of photography and would love some feedback on how to get better as it was alot of fun. There are some truly terrific food shots on Flickr so please feel free to share what you would do to make this shot better. Thank you in advance for your help and I look forward to reading your comments. :-)

Trying to create an interesting composition at mid-day in an aging Santa Fe Mall. For me, it's all about lines, tones, shapes, and bounced light.

A homeless old man sitting by the streets of Rishikesh.

It was a perfect day for this particular potrait as the afternoon light bounded right off the ground and on to his face.

Strobist: 1 bare SB off wall to right. One bare SB @ 12 O'clock onto his head. CLS.