Film | Edit
I come back to this place for fear that one day I won’t find it, or my hips will let me down or worse. There’s a compulsion about it, a need, a vacuum. I’m drawn inexplicably and each time it’s the same, the rush of young river, white noise of water, susurrous on old rock, dank air hitting the back of the throat. I’m drawn again.
Self portrait in blue.
I’ve been lucky enough to experience a bit of growth in the photography area which is great. It has got me thinking more about lighting in general and strobism in particular, and the upshot of this thinking is that I’ve acquired a second strobe used in this picture above. It’s a Nikon SB-800 which complements my SB-600. The thinking behind this is that I could have enough power to light any person/small group of people in pretty much any location. I’m portable 🙂
I’ve also been talking a bit to the models and subjects of a lot of the stuff I’ve been doing recently and as an exercise, I’m imagining myself and imaging myself as they see me. When I’m on the job, this is what they see: a rather large white-haired guy poking a camera into their face, trying not to be intimidating. It’s fun, I’m enjoying myself and hopefully the subjects are too.
You can assess the beauty stuff yourselves by clicking this link.
mua: Ingrid Deegan | model: Sarah Nugent | photographer: Hugh
I’m generally blown away by my latest two pieces of camera gear, a Nikon flash – SB600 – not the newest or most expensive for sure, but it’s an amazing piece of kit all the same and then there’s the Nikon 85mm f/1.4 ais, an old lens which takes really nice pictures. See above.
The whole concept of measuring the amount of light through the lens is a tad overwhelming, as I understand it, the flash fires off an imperceptibly close second flash to actually make the exposure, while the first gets the camera organised to make a good exposure. I think I need a second SB600 and a bunch of wireless triggers … I’ve been adjacent to the whole experience of lighting for years but it’s only relatively recently that I’ve moved from the domain of natural light to what’s going on up here in this portrait. I suppose I haven’t complete;y grasped the bull by the horns in that I’m using a few static lamps here in addition to the strobe. I f you look closely you’ll see three catchlights in the model’s eyes, a dead giveaway. In fact I’ve read that some photographers go to the trouble of obfuscating their subjects’ catchlights so as not to give away their lighting secrets. Not me.
The 85mm is a monster, weighs a ton and is a cranky old lens – manual focus and when you can get it in focus, gives great results. Using it above at about f/4, so it should be coming into its own round that stop. I’ve been wondering whether I should send it off for a spot of maintenance, the focus ring is stiff which may be due to too much grease from a previous user. Maybe.
I’ve been reflecting a bit about the process of taking photos and what I end up doing with them. The photo above was taken on the last day of the year, December 31st, on Inch Strand, Co. Kerry on a blustery, miserable day with bad light and a strong wind. I like the picture but all of a sudden I’m wracked by guilt (wracked I tell you 🙂 ) by the amount of underhandedness it contains. First off, the original image (below) is incredibly flat and uninteresting, so I messed it round a bit in my photo editor of choice, and because I’m slightly a mathematician and therefore fan of the Golden Section, I’ve cropped the image above to conform to that. Secondly, and this is way more underhand, I repositioned the horses and riders to adhere to the Rule of Thirds. You can see that I’ve moved the riders relative to each other.
Being also a fan of TV, an industry close to my heart, I’m beginning to draw an analogy between the underhandedness here and the smash hit TV series FlashForward, what if the manipulation I made in my photo editor actually happened in Real Life? The space-time continuum would be rightly Shanghai’ed. We’d all be screwed I tell you, missing metres and seconds out of our lives, without the lovely FBI Special Agent Mark Benford (Joseph Fffffiennes) and Dr. Olivia Benford (Sonya Walger) to save us. Ponder on it.
Took the boys down the East Pier at Dun Laoghaire this evening to let off a bit of steam in the bracing easterly, back to school in a few days so they’re a little cabin feverish. Anyway, took the opportunity to schlep the 85mm on a tripod (the 85 weighs a ton!) and take a few longer exposures. Result above. But what I didn’t realise was that there’s so much movement in the heavens – the exposure above is a mere 30 seconds, and as you can see from the detail below, there’s quite a lot of movement in that one little star.
The jitter is accounted for by the fresh breeze and the camera being buffeted about the place despite the tripod, but the diagonal movement is due to the turning of the heavens about the Earth. Or is it the other way round?
Copernicus, he knew. 🙂
From Wikipedia:
Copernicus died in Frauenburg on 24 May 1543. Legend has it that the first printed copy of De revolutionibus was placed in his hands on the very day that he died, allowing him to take farewell of his life’s work. He is reputed to have awoken from a stroke-induced coma, looked at his book, and then died peacefully.
Bummer.
If I was smart enough I’d be able to write a piece of software which would filter out the low frequency wind buffeting noise from the image and clean it up a bit, measure the angular change over the given period and figure out what next week’s Lotto numbers are. But I’m not, so I can’t and I wouldn’t anyway. No but seriously, what can you figure out given that the picture was taken over 30 seconds? Distance? Nah. I dunno. Our latitude? ( 53°18’8.79″N 6° 7’34.85″W)
my 48 most interesting images as determined by flickr
A selection of sixteen photos from 09 which I like:
flickriver
just keep scrolling down
Think I’m going to do this. SoFoBoMo is short for Solo Photo Book Month. The idea is you photograph, write the text and design your book all in one contiguous 31 day period between May 1st and June 30th.
Could be fun, could be a pain but I think I’ll do it all the same.
Hey that’s almost a poem.
[redux]
I’ve just read out there on Twitter that the elfin and lovely seethedetails has written up the local participants and I’m privileged to have an honourable mention. She’s put a lot of thought and work into this blog entry that I’m shamed into reciprocating if only by a lowly trackback. Thanks Julie! You’ve obviously done a lot more thinking about this project than me.