Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas, originally uploaded by Jersey Rich.

Merry Christmas to everyone. One important fact to remember is the Jesus is the reason for the season.

This was a time exposure. I triggered the camera with the remote and had it set to a long exposure time. This was strictly by trial and error. After I got the exposure time nailed down, I started playing with drawing various shapes. I tried to imagine a big poster board mounted in front of me and knew that this would be one long line of light. I was pretty happy with the results. Enjoy your holdiays......God Bless All!!!

A Charlie Brown Christmas Tree?

A Charlie Brown Christmas Tree?, originally uploaded by Jersey Rich.

Winter finally arrived. We had an ice storm that coated everything. This plant was heavily coated with ice. Many of the plants would break and parts of them would fall off when you touched them. I was able to capture a lot of good shots. Later in the afternoon the sun broke thru the clouds and the beautiful ice was gone within a half an hour.

Looking into the Sun

Looking into the Sun, originally uploaded by Jersey Rich.

I only wish that I had a wider angle lens to capture the entire circle. This was shot using a Tamron 18-200 looking straight up. I keep the grid display turned on in my D80 so that I can try to align items such as this one.

Shy

This was from our recent trip to Florida. Taken in the Animal Kingdom at Disney, I found this guy/girl? off in a corner of the pond. I retouched and increased the saturation, added a blur filter, and increased the contrast to bring out the black in the beak and also darken the background shadows.

The image on the left is the original and the one on the right was the result of my editing efforts in Photoshop6. Why PS6? Because I got it for free! I've posted the image to a number of different group pools in Flickr and it's gotten many goood comments and awards. Personally, I didn't think it was all that good. I didn't like the way the edges of the trees looked with the gradiant I applied. I'm working on a couple of other ideas and will be posting them here.

More Photshop DA

These are latest attempts. I made use of the gradiant tool. This is a really handy tool that allows you to have complete control of how the color will blend, the direction it will blend from.

I took the picture of the Jesus statue about 2yrs ago. Although it looked neat to begin with I knew I could get a better look by tweaking the colors and adding the gradiants. I included before and after shots.

Digital Art - Flower and Stone

Here's another Photoshop image that I created from two pictures. I used a few more tools then the last post. I'm using Photoshop 6. It's a pretty steep learning curve. There's just so many things you can do and sometimes it's hard to figure out which way is the best way. It really depends on your workflow and what you're the most comfortable with.

Spooky Car

I've been doing lots of reading and tutorials on Adobe Photoshop. I'm currently using Version 6. I have always been a bit intimidated by this program, however, I decided it was time to really get into it. I've been learning about layers and what you can do with them.

There are things you can do in this program that are amazing. Here I took two photos and combined them into one. I used the extract tool to lift the car from it's source photo. I also worked with adjustment layers and gradient fill to blend the scene and render the overall color. This is a rough draft, I'll be posting another revised version that will look even better.

Glassboro Auto Show

These are a few of my favorite pictures from the Glassboro Auto Show held August 29, 2008. More of the pictures can be seen by following the link to my Flickr Photostream at the bottom of the page.

Capturing your Setup Shots

After looking at many of the millions of Flickr photostreams that make use of off camera flash, I've decided to start including some captures of the setups I used for pictures displayed on this blog. I'm starting to see the benefit of doing so. It gives you a much better idea of where the light is actually going. This is something that's hard to predict when you're tightly focused on your subject. These setup captures act like mental notes of what worked and what didn't in a lighting setup at the time you were doing it. I've added a second umbrella since my last post. I was happy with the results, but I still have a lot to learn. Practice! Practice! Practice!

Quick Studio Style lighting

I had an idea for a little off camera lighting project. The entire setup took only 15 minutes. I borrowed a guitar from my son and decided to shoot against a bright background (my dining room) for some contrasting colors. Here are a couple of the pictures. I especially liked the contrast between the bright guitar and the darker orange wall and so I also did a few captures in black and white.

The setup: Guitar was suspended from an overhead shelf using a bungee. I used 3 strobes, one mounted on camera, but pointed away from the subject it was the trigger for the other flashes. I used Vivitar 285HV with optical trigger and pointed into a shoot-thru umbrella at camera right and an SB800 in SU4(Slave mode)was positioned under the guitar and pointed upward.

Added more strobes to my collection

I recently won a bid for a set of strobes which will add support for my off camera flash work. I purchased a Vivitar 285HV and a Promaster 1700 Flash. I am looking forward to using these to help light my subjects better.

I recently built a DIY soft box for shooting small items. I'll be putting the pictures up on EBay for household items we wish to sell. I identified the need for the additional flash units based on some testing that I've done. I've also seen a lot of photographers list the 285HV as an inexpensive go-to flash possessing the ability to change the output power level.

I'll be posting some of my pictures with descriptions of the setup.

Philly Photo Equipment Resource

I work in Center City Philadelphia and have recently discovered a great camera store that's withing walking distance of my work. Webbcam, LLC is located at 241 North 12th Street Philadelphia, Pa 19107.

I was trying to find some hardware to allow me to use my older Canon 199A flash with my newer digital equipment. They were very helpful and knowledgeable and I purchased a Wein H-Prong receptacle and Micro Slave. Total cost was about $70 and will allow me to optically trigger the flash up to 120ft.

I'll be testing it out tomorrow for some Prom shots of my son and his date. The folks at Webb said that it shouldn't be a problem triggering it even in direct sunlight. My idea is to move both the SB800 and 199A off camera and trigger them remotely using the D80's built-in flash. I'll be posting some shots to my Flicker photostream.

I recently stumbled across the Strobist Blog with David Harvey. Wow, what a great site to learn off camera lighting. David has many years of experience that he's more than willing to share with all who wish to learn and at no charge!

I experimented with the D80 and SB800 in iTTL mode using the on camera pop-up flash in Commander mode. The IR suffers a bit in direct sunlight, but if you move into the shade and keep a clear line of site to the sensor it worked fairly well. I posted a few shots of my dog Niki to my Flicker photo stream. All of the shots were taken mid day with full sun. I was trying some of the suggested tips from the Strobist by using the flash in manual mode and adjusting the power settings or the aperature for some dramatic lighting.