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I haven't been feeling very inspired for the last few days. I know this happens to everyone, but it's a frustrating situation. Anyway, here's today's shot: a toy Rolls Royce in a DIY softbox. I was going to process it to go in the Motionless set, but it didn't seem to fit the theme very well.
click to enlarge, or see it on Flickr
Aperture: f/4
Shutter Speed: 0.3 seconds
ISO: 100
Focal Length: 100mm
Tripod
I kind of liked the color here, although it's not my first choice for a multi-million dollar car. Yeah. Hopefully something more interesting will enter my head soon.
Now that we're FINALLY starting to get some nicer weather around here, we have kind of "re-opened" our wood shop. As it's nearing the end of the school year, I have begun to make pens for some of my teachers. One teacher in particular (who teaches the Newspaper class, as well as some English classes) really enjoys writing. As in, poetry. I figured she would probably appreciate a fountain pen. But I wanted one that would really fit her personality. She's unique, not not in a negative, weird way. She's just awesome. So is Fig-Asian Satinwood, as I discovered.
click to enlarge, or see it on Flickr
Aperture: f/7.1
Shutter Speed: 0.3 seconds
ISO: 100
Focal Length: 53mm
Tripod
Even though I was working with a light tent, I wanted some directional light to try and capture the "holographic" effect the flame in this wood gives, especially under polish. I don't think I did it justice, but facing the open side of the softbox into the light helped a little bit. It also gave me that rather obnoxious glare coming off the main barrel of the pen. I guess that's a fair trade off.
Also, because I haven't been very good with keeping up with this blog (or photography in general) the past few days, I have already noticed a really big oversight in the process of taking this photo. I got to the "pick the best photo to use" stage of post-processing and realized... I shot all of my exposures at f/7.1. I didn't vary the aperture once. f/7.1 happened to be a reasonably good aperture for the job though. If it hadn't, I would have gone back and shot again. I need to be doing photography, every day, otherwise I start slipping. It doesn't take long.
One final piece of news: I got hired at a camera store nearby! Dream job, here I come. I start work in... 2.5 hours. Woot!
As I mentioned yesterday, I did do a number of product shots in a paper light box. I'm happy with how they turned out. Just as in this post, I'm continually impressed with the professional-looking results that you can achieve with 4 pieces of paper to diffuse the light.
click to enlarge, or see it on Flickr
Aperture: f/8
Shutter Speed: 0.8 seconds
ISO: 100
Focal Length: 100mm
Tripod
I used the 100mm f/2.8 macro lens and a tripod that belongs to the newspaper staff. It was interesting shooting these, because I knew they all had to turn out really well. I wasn't just shooting for myself, it was a semi-professional job. As I had an odd mix of cloudy window lighting and overhead fluorescent, I had to manually set the white balance. Not a big deal, but it turned out excellent—I wanted to be sure the colors displayed were accurate.
So if you like what you see, head on over and check out my friend's business: http://cuteasabuddon.blogspot.com. Hopefully soon you'll see some of my photos on there, when she has time to update the site!
A while ago, I read a post on how to improvise a soft box from four pieces of paper and three paper clips or binder clips. Soon after, a friend needed me to take a picture of a strawberry so he could print a poster of it as a gift to his friend (she loves strawberries, and hates when they're out of season). I figured I would test it out.
click to enlarge, or see it on Flickr
Aperture: f/8
Shutter Speed: 0.3 seconds
ISO: 100
Focal Length: 55 mm
Tripod
I'm really pretty happy with how it turned out. Very high-key, and the colors are saturated without my needing to tweak much. The only improvement I wish I could make is the focus. The AF did a good job, but I took this before I discovered Mirror Lockup or Live View zoom MF, which does a slightly better job. But I got the DoF just right in my eyes.
Edit: At the suggestion of a commenter, here's the link to the tutorial on how to build it. You can use artificial lighting, but I just set it next to a window on a cloudy day, as I didn't have any portable lighting with me.
