THIS BLOG IS DEAD

I have transferred all posts and comments over to my new home at my domain:

http://thechrisproject.com/photoblog/

Please update your links and browsing habits! The feed will be busted until the permalink problem is solved, which should be a few days at most.

Moving

I will be moving this blog to a new home on thechrisproject.com soon. I really liked it, but blogger has problems that I've been complaining about for months that have yet to be resolved. The biggest problem for me is that I often can't post behind certain firewalls. I've seen little discussions of it here and there but really don't want to put the large amount of time required to fully research the problem on someone else's system. If I'm doing that kind of troubleshooting, the convenience of using blogger is gone.

When I move I hope to post a lot more, especially about photographers and artists that I like. I'll try to migrate all my posts and I will definitely put up a link here to my new blog.

For now, check out this amazing space shuttle launch photo. The moon's death ray is blowing up the shuttle!

Lighting 102

I've been learning a lot about lighting lately. I've done almost exclusively available light shots since I started taking pictures. I bought a decent flash a while ago to take better derby pictures. Eventually I stumbled across a great flickr group that dealt exclusively with lighting. Not just any lighting, though. They dealt with strobes: cheap flashes, not the big zillion dollar rigs that you see on model shoots.

Strobist has an accompanying blog that talks about all sorts of lighting related topics. They have a course of sorts, called lighting 101 that is great a full of wonderful information.

Well, now they're doing lighting 102.

On June 4th, just over one month from now, we will be starting from scratch, so anyone can participate. There is no fee for the program, and you are certainly free to come and go as you please.

What should you expect?

• An organic and comprehensive way of understanding and controlling light.

• An enhanced creative process, by comparing your results with those of photographers from all around the world.

• The knowledge that good lighting need not be expensive.

There will be plenty of discussion, both here and on the Flickr threads, about the various topics we will be covering. We'll be learning new techniques, talking about them and applying them in regular group assignments.

I want to make this as interactive as possible. I also want to get full value out of the wide range of perspectives, experience and ability of the readers of this site. This will allow us to do things that no physical classroom environment could accomplish.

We will be starting off at a basic level, but I hope the more advanced among you will not be put off by that. Over the last few months I have been developing what I think is a novel approach to understanding lighting and I want to use that as a foundation. Which means stating from scratch.

It starts June 4th, and you can read more about it on the strobist blog.

One of the things I've learned and applied from strobist is the use of gels on lights. Some of my old derby pics have decent color on the girls in the foreground, but the backgrounds are yellow (if not totally dark). This is because my flash puts out "white" light at a color temp of about 5500K. The interior of Fast Forward is lit by incandescent bulbs, which have a lower temperature, around 2800-3500K. By putting an orange gel over my flash, the color of the flash matches the color of the lights so the lighting is more even. Using lenses with a larger aperture has helped a lot as well. Compare these older derby photos of mine to these to the ones I took this past weekend. My technique has improved a lot. One thing that I used to have a lot of trouble with was skin tones, which was a result of correcting the images out of the camera in ways that killed the skin colors. Now my images out of the camera are a lot better and the skin looks much more natural.

I, too, do this

The obligatory "I've been busy" post

Is there any other way to start off a post that has been a long time coming? The absence has to be explained, or at least acknowledged. So why haven't I written much here? I've been busy. Doing what? Working on my pictures, trying to put together a coherent portfolio, and dreaming up big ideas. I started a project of parking garage pictures that I'm fairly excited about. I've got a lot of ideas for the Madison, Wisconsin flickr group that I've done a little work on. Mostly I want to build us a web page that we can put up a calender (for photowalks, which we're going to try to do monthly, and mini-walks which take place more frequently) and some galleries for contest winners. I'd also like to start a Photoshop Users Group type meeting where we can get together and discuss technique. Perhaps the users of other similar software could come and tell us about it, too.

A reporter from the Capitol Times interviewed me today about the Madison Flickr group. We have one of the more active groups around and she's doing a piece on us, which I think is great. The more exposure we get, the better, because the more members we have, the better. Using the internet to create and strengthen "real life" communities is something I'm very excited about.

I've been shooting a lot of events. Some more derby bouts, a Leslie and the Lys show, the film festival, another photo walk with the flickrites, and the usual assorted neighborhood shots. I guess I can show you those rather than talking about them a lot.

Derby Bouts:



Photowalk:



Neighborhood Shot:


Yesterday, between the derby finals and the subsequent after-party/concert, I took over a thousand pictures. Managing the files and dealing with the memory card that decided to give up on life has taken a staggering amount of time today. I'm just about to get started ranking and discarding them. Hopefully I'll have a few usable shots before I go to sleep. I anticipate tiredness tomorrow.

Oh yeah, there was also a breakdancing competition:


And I got some new lighting gear to play with. Here's one of my first shots:


That's all I can write right now. I have a few posts in the works so I can hopefully post a little more regularly.

Popularity, Flickr Style

Popularity is an odd thing. It's not something I'm used to and certainly something that I don't fully understand. I'm talking, of course, about picture popularity. Flickr has been my photo outlet and feedback ground as of late. It's got its ins and outs, ups and downs, but I generally like it. Yes, I get sick of going on to forums and seeing the same question for the thousandth time ("WHAT LENS SHOULD I GET?!?!"), but there are a lot of talented people and a lot of really nice people there. It has provided the positive feedback I needed to push myself when I was starting up my photo habit again.

It's funny what gets really high numbers on Flickr. "What are these numbers of which he speaks?," you might be asking yourself if you are not a flickr user. The numbers are: views, favorites, and comments. Views are how many people have viewed your photo. Favorites are the number of times that a flickr user has marked your photo as a favorite. Comments are the number of comments left by flickr users. Then, out of these numbers and some magic, arises something flickr calls "interestingness".

In December I went out and shot a lot of misty night shots. Here are two from that night:


I was still sitting on one of the best pictures of the night, though. I just didn't know how to approach it. In the end, the post work was very minimalist. I worked the curves a little and recovered a little of the red from the lights, but that was pretty much it. I posted it up thinking it would get about the same reaction as the ones posted above.



It didn't. People like it. It's got a cool effect, bright colors, motion, and tons of light. It's number 2 as far as interestingness of my pics goes, it's number one for comments and number two for favorites. It's down the list for views, but it's only been up for a little while. I was pretty surprised.

Here's a picture I took this weekend of a similar environment (night, fog, lights, etc) but one that gets about the usual reaction:

If you'll believe me, it's my best night/fog picture yet.

So why the popularity surge? I think part of it has to do with how people consume flickr photos. The big thing is that most people's first exposure to any random photo on flickr, one that has been put in pools, is a very small 100px thumbnail, like the ones posted at the beginning of this post. A picture with any amount of detail and subtlety will get lost in a thumbnail that small. Take, for instance, this picture of a bee on a flower:


You can't see shit at that small. It looks like some blobs of grey of various shades. Woo-hoo! If you look at in a large size, you'll see the shading and detail in the flower and the bee. It looks great in print. It looks okay large. It looks crappy at even 300 pixels. The other big thing is that, besides being small, the context is important. If you look at pics in a pool of hundreds, your brain is going to filter photos out. The ones with relatively subdued colors aren't going to pop out at you as much.

I'm not bitter or trying to make excuses or anything, I'm just trying to blab about the idiosyncrasies of flickr as a viewing medium. It has its quirks, but I really like it.

Derby Bout Photos

Derby Bout March 2007

So, two weeks after the event, I finished my 30 derby pictures. I took about 600, so having 30 represents an improvement in quality for me. I've been really busy the past few weeks with car buying and other assorted life-administration tasks. Ugh. I'd like to do some more work on some of these. I feel like there is some potential. I particularly like this one:



I didn't even realize that she had a knife. I just liked the way she was standing. I composed the shot really quickly and fired off three shots with different people walking in front of her. This one turned out the best. Not only does she have a knife (why does she have a knife?), but she's looking at another person in front of her. It's positively murderous.

After this I have a derby practice to sort through, and a few hundred pictures from the Against Me! show I went to last weekend. Then I have some serious portfolio work to get down to.