A simple Egg teaches me about light – Northwest Indiana Photographer

I’m always trying to perfect my art – my friend Mark Lang shared this link with me and I wanted to play around and see what I can learn.  It was fun and educational.  Thanks Mark.  Here is my egg.

Where does the time go?

I’m sure I’m not more super busy than everyone else but my weeks just seem to fly by. By the time I get settled in – in front of the computer I’m exhausted and just cannot muster the energy to post. I have taken pictures – lots and lots of them but the process stops after the post production. I will try to do better. I’ve missed my blogger friends and I need to catch up on my friends blogs as well.

This spring brought new customers, new friends and new home improvement projects. I will try to update those projects in the future.

If you’re still reading this – then thank you for following along.

Elli, from project 365 Facebook posted a link to Freelensing, and it’s just what I needed. Something new to experiment with. I took several images that I am happy with but I will just share one for now.

How to – Bokeh – Magic

I’ve been asked several times how I create my bokeh when shooting inanimate subjects, here is my response.  I’ve shot this subject with several different lenses from the professional  (expensive!) ones to the Kit lenses which are considered Nikons Cheaper versions.

WIKIPEDIA: In photography, bokeh is the blur, or the aesthetic quality of the blur, in out-of-focus areas of an image, or “the way the lens renders out-of-focus points of light.” Differences in lens aberrations and aperture shape cause some lens designs to blur the image in a way that is pleasing to the eye, while others produce blurring that is unpleasant or distracting—”good” and “bad” bokeh, respectively. Bokeh occurs for parts of the scene that lie outside the depth of field. Photographers sometimes deliberately use a shallow focus technique to create images with prominent out-of-focus regions.

This kind of bokeh here looks cheerful and festive.

What you need:  A string of lights (Christmas lights are perfect), clear drinking glasses (optional) a geld light (also optional) ,a reflector, camera, off camera flash on a stand, shoot through umbrella and a subject.

  I added a blue gel to camera left and a reflector to camera right facing the Christmas lights and Crystal glasses.  See below for how I set up the lights and glasses.  I place these as faraway from my subject as possible.  Since I’m shooting on my dinning room table  that would be 3 1/2 feet.  Also make sure your aperature is as large as you can get it (lower numbers).  Light the subject with the off camera light and shoot through an umbrella.

Now get as close to your subject as your lens will allow.  Try different lengths, get closer, my favorite is always pushing the lens as far as it will go.  Usually at max, like at 200 for my 70-200 lens.The following image was shot using the 28-108 metal lens, which is a very old lens.

This one was shot using the 70-200 lens.

I used the 24-70 here.  Now you can see the ugly green cable of the lights and that’s not a look you want.  It is important to find the “sweet spot” of you lens.  This is obviously not it. 

When I first got my first fixed lens the 50mm 1.4, I did not like it because I didn’t know how to work with it.  My husband challenged me to use it for 30 days straight – within the first week I understood the lens.  I know how close to the subject I have to be to get what I want.  The same thing happened with my 70-20mm.  My friend was taking amazing shots with that lens and I felt like I couldn’t even hold it steady.  I used it for a week straight and it is currently my favorite lens. 

This final image was taken using a kit lens as you can see you can still create magic with kit lenses.

this set up was a lot simpler, I just hung a sting of lights to a board, 4 feet away from my s hoes, placed the shoes on the bench, lit the shoes with my speedlight and shot.

What do you think?  Give it a try, if anything is unclear drop me a line, challenge yourself and then link me back to your image, I’d love to see w hat you came up with.  Have fun!