Advent Service

Our friends, Aaron and Kristina (see last post with their son, Oliver :) put together a sweet Advent service at our church last Friday night. There was inspired music and sweet instillation-style art up. Here are a few long-exposures I took:

Photo Notes: 8 Seconds or so for the exposures. 20mm lens (good for interiors). F/11 for depth of field. Tripod and cable release for 1 and 3. Second one was an accident - gathered light as I walked to take photo 3 (had accidently hit my trigger release). I find that my camera's long exposure noise reduction is often a good call - I used it here as well.

Oliver

Oliver . . . what a great name and what a great smile. Megs and I could not get enough of Oliver when we were photographing his family the other day. Here are a few of our favorites:

Photo Notes: Shot inside a beautiful home with two SB-80's. One had a 1/8 CTO gel. The other 1/4 CTO. All shot at 5000k for WB. 1/8 CTO was shot through a 24" Ezybox that was directed at the ceiling to bounce the whole room (1/2 power). The other was into a white shoot through that was directed at the ceiling as well. The shoot through was kept at eye level and relatively close to the subject. This allowed some light to fall sideways across the subject while the rest headed toward the ceiling to bring up ambient. It was a really fun lighting scheme to stumble on. It really worked great. Megan was the one who figured it out which was fun too.

Norris Woodworking Cutting Boards

My friend Jim Norris is a fine carpenter with a great ability for design. Recently we had the opportunity to photograph a few cutting boards that he had made. It was fun for me because I got to do some "food photography" which I had been learning about by skimming through Megan's Donna Hay magazines. Here are the photos:

Photo info: Shot with a 24" Lasolite softbox (Ezybox). Megan did the raspberry and green bean lay-out.

Cutting Board info: The first board (with the tomatoes) is rock maple and cherry. The second board is figured bird's eye maple. Jim is available to make more cutting boards and can do custom designs. Email me if you would like to talk with him for more info.

Free

I love posting to this blog. I also love not posting to this blog. It has been great taking a break, but tonight there is some sort of creative thing inside of me that just needs to get out, so here it is . . . some pictures that I took recently. My photography has never felt so free. The trouble with my hobbies in the past is that they have owned me. Recently I have been more in right relationship with photography than ever before. I like it. Finally, the pictures :)

Photo Info: Fun. Free. 150 mm Macro Lens.

Fall Wildflowers

I love fall wildflowers. I particularly love the mixture of earth-toned grasses that have passed their peak for the year. We went for a run tonight at one of the local metro parks, and I decided to take my camera with me. All the shots were shot with my 150 mm macro lens around f/3.5.

Photo Notes: I had fun taking these pictures.