Rick’s Rants and Raves

This weekend, we had an opportunity to go with Emily’s God Parents to see the Columbus Symphony perform the score to the Wizard of Oz, while the movie played overhead on a big screen. Nathan decided that he wanted to wear his non-clip-on tie (for the second time). Anne pointed out that if I wore a tie, and showed him how to tie it, that this would be a great photo opportunity. I would hate to let my wife down, so I grabbed a tie and handed her the camera.

Taken by Anne

We had a wonderful dinner, then headed for the theater. Of course, there is the obligatory sign above the entrances “No Cameras Allowed.” I grinned at the anachronism. I mean really, how many iPhones were in the audience? They’ve got amazing cameras built in. I couldn’t resist trying to snap a few photos with my own phone.

Yeah, it sucks. But hey, I took a picture where cameras weren’t allowed! Na ner na ner naa ner. The performance was great, the kids really enjoyed it and so did the rest of the audience. But I was a little irritated at the people who were dashing out as the movie was just ending and the applause was just beginning–the house lights weren’t even on yet. These folks were evidently so anxious to beat the crowd out that they couldn’t even show just a wee bit of appreciation for the performers? Would they leave a dinner party without thanking their hosts just to get home a couple of minutes earlier? Yes, we waited in the parking garage for a few minutes as the crowd thinned, but that was quality time that we could talk about and enjoy our memories of the show.

Today we had a big family birthday party where we celebrated our kids’, Anne’s dad’s, and Laura’s birthdays. And we finally had an opportunity to do some ice skating on their back-yard rink.

One of the many fun parts of the evening was when Laura opened a birthday card with an audio chip embedded in it. The tune was “Do your ears hang low” but the word “ears” was replaced with “boobs”.

Nathan was the only child sitting close enough to understand the words, and he said, just a little quietly after it was over, “That was awkward.” The adults started busting up laughing, again.

Kathy and Van had each received a set of Wizard of Oz Pez dispensers for Christmas (we saw them at World Market and contemplated buying them as gifts), so they decided to give the kids which ever dispenser they wanted. I, of course, wanted to photograph them.

This was one of those wonderful coincidences after having just seen the movie the night before.

The previous two pictures are examples of why I dearly love my new 35mm f/1.8 lens. More on that in another post.

I also took a picture of Kathy’s Welcome sign.

I took this picture because the Digital Photography School assignment this week is “Centered Composition”. I knew when I saw the assignment that I wanted to take a picture of an object framed by a nine-light window so that the picture would be about the rule of thirds while breaking it. Fortunately, Kathy had this lovely welcome sign hanging from her door.

This year was our fourth pinewood derby. Last year I had intended that Nathan would do a majority of the work on the car this year. I figured he’s nearly ten and could handle nearly everything on his own.

Then over the summer, I bought a table top jig saw at a garage sale for $20. The throat on the saw was exactly the same as the width of the car. Did I mention that I had to remove the safety guard to get it to fit? So, I wasn’t about to let Nathan use a saw with no safety guard.

We spent one evening shaping and priming the car. Aside from the rough cutting, Nathan did most of the rest.

Then the car sat in our basement for two weeks because life just got too busy. Next thing I know it is Thursday, and the race is Saturday, and I started to seriously contemplate entering one of his previous cars. Fortunately, we had some time to paint the car on Thursday. Friday came, and at 5:40, I realized I didn’t have any weights for the car, and the Scout shop would be closing in 20 minutes. And I was just leaving work, 20 minutes away. I called Anne, who graciously agreed to run to the store, and she got in just in time, picking up the weights we needed.

We spent Friday evening in the basement carving out a cavity in the bottom of the car for the weights, and finishing the wheels. As Nathan got ready for bed, I took the opportunity to photograph the car, and gather supplies I need to run the race.

The race went very smoothly for the first 33 heats.  Since I was running the race, I didn’t take very many pictures. I got this one however, with Nathan’s car winning by a car length, and the number 2 car just crossing the line.

When the software refused to tell me the results so that I could run finals, I contemplated having a panic attack. Fortunately, one of the parents was just as computer litterate as I was, but wasn’t “on-the-spot” so he was thinking about the situation a little more clearly. We loaded the race file into Excel, and finally figured out how to query to get the results. Of the 33 racers, there was a nice clear dividing line between the top eight and the rest, so I ran the finals with 8 racers.

And the result is…

Nathan’s car came in second–a highly respectable showing.

After the race, many of the boys decided to play crash-em-derby and run their cars into each other on the stage. Nathan’s car broke an axle, making me very glad I’d taken pictures the night before.

Except for the software problems (a conflict with my Windows 7 laptop, I think), I really enjoyed running the race. I had intentionally not planned very much detail about the event–just the start time, and a little bit of thought about what I would need to take. Everything else fell into place as other adults jumped in to help out.  As I called the races, I actually had a few moments to sit back and enjoy all the fun everyone seemed to be having–the kids were great, the adults were helpful, and there were no tears (not even from me).

Next assignment here.

By chance this weekend, I stumbled upon a post announcing that  a bunch of folks on Flickr were going to be going through the Strobist Lighting 102 “courses”. I have read through many of them, but never actually done the exercises. So when I saw that some folks were intending to do it as a group, I thought “what the heck”. I’ve already read the Intro and the Seven Ways to Control light overview, so I was ready to jump into the assignments.

Week 1

The first week we covered the position of the light and varying the angle that it hits the subject. Most people choose variations on moving the flash in an arc around the subject with the subject at the center of a circle, maybe even varying the height. Given the focus I’ve attempted to develop on band performance photography, I decided to try a different approach: simulate holding the flash in my left had while I shot with my right. I say “simulate” because, well, these were self portraits and I couldn’t both hold the flash and be the subject (very easily). So I set the camera up on the tripod, then approximated where I could hold the flash with my light stand and creative use of clamps like this (from the subject’s perspective):

On the flash, I also had the flash diffuser that I made a while back. The result kinda sucks from a self portrait perspective (can you say “Dork in the headlights?”), but I really like how instructive it is from a lighting perspective.

Note, the time designations are from the photographers perspective.

The 12 O’clock simulates a portrait light style called a butterfly light. I also like the 10:30 and 9 positions. If the performer is playing an instrument like a trumpet or sax, it should be pointing to camera right so as to not produce a huge shadow across the face. 7:30 and 6 produce an ominous look which can be fun, but isn’t going to be a typical shot.

Week 2

This assignment was a little bit more challenging for me technically. Here we learn how to control the “depth of field” of the light. Essentially, when a light is relatively close to a subject, relatively far backgrounds tend to be dark. Conversely, light relatively far from a subject produces a relatively light back ground. The strobist article goes into all the requisite detail.

Notice that although the exposure on the dragon remains essentially the same, the background goes from white to dark gray as I move the light in. Of course, I had to adjust power on the flash as I moved close (1/2 at 12 feet, 1/32 at 1 foot), and tweak aperture just a bit. But the dragon remains consistently exposed, while the background gets darker. This has me rethinking some of the techniques I use for performance photography–typically my Voice Activated Light Stand is 10-15 feet from the performer while the camera location moves and changes. With this technique, I could place the VAL closer, with lower power flash, and get background objects to diminish, maybe even to black with the right fall-off or snooting.

And I know this is skipping ahead to the next assignment a bit, but notice how much softer the shadows are in the bottom frame compared with the top frame? This is because the effective size of the light source was huge in the bottom frame–the umbrella was just out of the frame, and cast light all over the dragon. But it was the same size umbrella it was 12 feet away, hence the “effective size” concept. That will be the next assignment.

Thursday was my son’s first strings concert. He plays the violin, and seems to enjoy it, though we do have to nag him a bit to practice. Of course I took the full camera bag. It was still loaded up with gear from my drive through the fog, so I didn’t really pay much attention to details the rush to get out of the house in time.

When we got to the auditorium, and I turned on the camera, I noticed I had only one battery tick left. I hoped it would be enough as I pulled out the flash, and made a few test shots (ambient was 1/13 @ f/3.5, ISO 400). When my son settled into his seat on the stage, the camera stopped firing–battery power was so low that it disabled the shutter. Well crap, what do I do now?

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