Getting fruity

If you live in the south you know how hot it gets in the summer. Since my sensor is ready to go I was jonesing to take some more photos and I still had a couple of Strobist excercises that I hadn't shot yet so I got a little fruity this morning.

This particular exercise was all about changing the apparent size of the light source, you can control the severity of the shadows an object throws. The hard shadows thrown by the peach and strawberry are as a result of the flash directly above the fruit. The softer, more pleasing shadows are diffused by a 32" diameter diffuser placed about halfway between the light source and the object.

Pretty interesting stuff! Check out the Strobist Blog to find out more about off camera lighting!

(Click on photo to see full size image on Flickr)

Back in action!

Over the course of the last several months my sensor had become so covered in dust that I had zero interest in taking any photos. Why spend 45 minutes cloning out dust specs on every photo? Thanks, but no thanks.

I finally broke down and ordered a cleaning kit and while the results aren't perfect, I managed to get about 95% of the culprits off of the sensor. I have been woefully behind in the Strobist Bootcamp this summer so I decided to take some shots with off camera lighting to see how the images turned out.

It looks like everything is back to normal now. WHEW! Each of these images was shot through a diffuser, flash power varying between 1/8 and 1/32. Interesting to see how the diffuser actually shows up as the reflection on the wine bottle (specular highlights!) :)

(Click on image to see full size photo on Flickr)

Clearwater Beach

I hadn't touched my camera since the 4th of July so this morning, I decided to take pictures of something... Anything! I headed over to Clearwater Beach and my timing couldn't have been worse.

I arrived about 8:15 and caught the tail end of a cycling event. It also appeared as though they were in the process of setting up the beach for a youth soccer tournament in the sand. Needless to say, shooting either would have been great but I was in between opportunities so whaddaya gonna do?

So, I ended up just walking around and taking photos of... well... whatever. I can usually find something to shoot if I look hard enough!

(Click on photo to see full size image on Flickr)

Fourth of July

I'm fortunate to work in one of the tallest buildings in Pinellas County - especially since it's only a few hundred yards from where the City of Clearwater has their annual Independence Day fireworks extravaganza!

We anticipated the throngs of people and got to the office about an hour before the fireworks were to start. Despite some thunderstorms earlier in the evening, the weather was nearly perfect. We went up to the roof and by the time the show was to start, there was about 40 fellow co-workers and significant others there to watch the show.

This was the first time I had tried to shoot fireworks but I used some tricks I learned from the workshop I had taken in May and was able to get some decent exposures. Here are some of the better shots taken.

(Click on image to see full size photo on Flickr)