If high school stadium lights ...

... were like Cowboys Stadium lights, Friday nights would be much more fun!

Kaufman Jamfest

It was a good thing that the Kaufman Jamfest folks went indoors for Saturday's event... and not just because of the heat. For me, the giant windows of Jackson St. BBQ made the photo fun better as well.

Here is the setup.. small stage in the corner with evening indirect light from storefront windows. The renovated space has great character. If I was opening a studio, I would want something like this.


From inside, shooting toward the windows was interesting... dial in some exposure compensation to make up for the brightness..


Getting closer to subjects made for nice rim lights. The background is cluttery, but at least all of the clutter is informative.. guitar case, other players, rocking chair...


I also played around with the wide angle 14mm to get a view of the interior.. low angle highlights the great old wood floor.


Shooting from the window side gave beautiful soft light, but even busier background. Getting in nice and close helps, and the black ceiling works too....


Same thing, big window light...


Still working on mastering DSLR video and editing.. probably need some more toys in that department :-).


Have a great week everyone...

Don J.

Tortoises are cool.

Some assignments are tedious. Waiting for someone or something to happen can get old.

But sometimes, even when the light is bad and there are lots of other things to be doing, you get to step back and realize that the world out there is pretty amazing.

Terrell's library has a summer series of kid events called "Terrific Tuesdays." The kids have a great time, the adults, not so much.

But then sometimes you get to see a giant tortoise, which doesn't happen every day. It took me a minute to get un-jaded and say.. "wow, that is a huge tortoise."

Because huge tortoises are very cool. And we should be careful to recognize the cool things when we see them. Even if the light is bad.

Don J.

That Sky

Beautiful sky out there today.. blue with lots of puffy clouds. If you are a photoshopper, it is a good day to get some sky shots to use in composite images later. Just be sure to grab some at different focal lengths and angles so that you can match up well with whatever subject you want to put in front. If you don't the sky replacement will be obvious and possibly ugly.


Also, shoot some that are out of focus. Open up the aperture and focus on something closer to the camera then take the cloud shot. This will be more convincing if you shot the subject with a short depth-of-field, and be less distracting in the final composition.


Of course, for the newspaper we can't do crazy stuff like that, but we do get to play when mocking up concepts or creating non-news graphics.

This young cowboy made a nice news photo last year. The overcast evening sky made the light on his face perfect (And a giant white arena wall to the right as reflector helped).


But a new sky makes the whole thing look nicer for this cover concept as we work on the look of a new quarterly magazine we will begin producing later this year.


Creating a catalog of images for art use is tedious, but worth the effort. Just be sure to tag your photos with good keywords when you import so that you can find them when you need them.

Don J.

Fun light on the cheap

I thought it would be fun to try a photo setup on the cheap just to play around a little bit. It was basically a step back three years to before I started collecting lighting gear.

The idea was for some fresh baby pictures as Joshua hit 10 weeks old today. He can sort of sit up, so I wanted to put him in this old wingback that I inherited from my grandparents.

Since he looks at the light instead of the camera, the photo in my head will have to wait a few months.

Anway, here is what I did to make fun light cheaply.

Using ideas gleaned from years of reading Strobist and Joe McNally had me putting some sticks in buckets to hold up two white trash bags that had been split open and taped together to make a big diffusion panel. Behind that, a single 55 watt compact fluorescent bulb in a clamp lamp bulb holder. Simple as can be.


Well, simple is a relative term I suppose. It is actually a real pain to gather all of the things to put this together. Cutting up trash bags, using lots of clamps and chairs to put things where you want them... lets just say that we pay money for easy-to-use gear for a reason.

But light is still light, regardless of the money spent to produce it.


Joshua got tired of the chair very quickly, so I moved the setup to the floor. Same concept... a directional, somewhat diffused light source just makes pictures more interesting.


Tried some fun background materials.. like a rug thing from Peru..


And different angles relative to the light. One big downside is that adjusting anything is difficult. It is easier to move the subject around than move the lights.

This is shooting from ground level, putting the camera directly under the diffusion panel.

Little detail shots pop nicely with fun light...


And to really make it all worthwhile, the lovely wife joined in for some shots. The light setup is just out of frame above their heads.


The up side? Making fun lighting setups doesn't require dedicated photo gear and lots of money. You can have a lot of fun with flashlights.

The down side? It isn't all that bright and takes a lot of time and effort to set up. If you are using a point-and-shoot camera, you will want to use lots of light behind the diffuser to get decent shutter speed. 500w halogen work lights do the trick well, but they will heat up the room in a hurry.

Have fun making some pictures!