Author Archive: ken

What a wonder weekend! While sitting on the deck this afternoon, we noticed a squirrel pillaging our bird feeder. We had a squirrel baffel attached, but it was too low and he was using it as a springboard to get to the bird feeder. So we moved it up a foot or so to make it more difficult for him to steal all the bird seed. Here’s the result:

I think I can make it.

Yep, I think I got it. Dinner time!

Oops?

Oh Crap!!!

Fail!!

Thanks again for reading!!

-Ken

Last night we went over to a friend’s house to watch some fireworks. (Thanks Jen and James!) We were completely surprised by the quality/quantity of explosives we were about to witness. The first clue was that they had all the fireworks taped down to plywood sheets. That way, when one was launched it wouldn’t dislodge any of the others. Oh, and one more thing, did I mention there were several plywood sheets?

Ok, so fireworks right? I had to bring my camera and a tripod. I decided that you see a gazillion photos of beautiful fireworks photos and they all tend to look alike. So I positioned by chair close to the launching area (as close as I dared. 🙂 ) so I could shoot up directly at the fireworks. I also chose a relatively long lens (70-200 2.8 IS) considering my proxity to the explosions. That way I got a closeup of what was going on. I was so close that debris from the fireworks was raining down on me after each launch. It took about 15-20 minutes of continuous fireworks to exhaust all the explosives. It was awesome. Anyway here are some shots.

James and the guys setting up. Lit mostly by flashlight, ISO 12,800.

 There is a true beauty to the chaos and violence in these explosions. Kinda like mini-big-bangs. 🙂

Anyway, that’s it for now. Thanks for reading and I hope everyone is having happy Independence Day!!!

-Ken

Sorry, pun intended. One of my shoots last week was for an ad agency whose client is a company that makes electric motors. It was a challenging shoot due to many factors. However, “challenging” to me equals fun. 🙂 

Below is a shot of the setup in a remote studio. It was a 5 light setup using red gels.

Here is a shot from this shoot.

Lots more other stuff coming up later this week.

Thanks for reading!!

-Ken

This past weekend I co-sponsored an fundraiser for Kate’s Kart. If you don’t know about Kate’s Kart, it’s an organization that provides books to children that are in the hospital. You can find out more here . The fundraiser was an ice cream social and there were tons of activities for kids. There was face painting, games, a magician, music, and of course Edy’s Ice Cream. There were even Llamas!!

The sign at the entrance to the Ice Cream Social.

Ronald McDonald was there. I call him Ronnie Mac. 🙂

There was face painting as well tons of games.

Peto The Almost Magnificent doing a card trick.

Of course they had books!!

Llamas!!!!!

Although it was a hot day, there was a nice breeze that made it tolerable. This is really a worthwhile charity, so please patronize the sponsors. 

Thanks for reading!!!

-Ken

Ok, last week I posted a photo of a graph, but left you hanging as to what it means. Here’s the lowdown on the mystery. In the class last night we examined the Inverse Square Law of light. This law says that the intensity of law deminishes on a logarithmic scale rather than a linear one. In English this means that light falls off faster the closer you are to the light source.

Are you confused? Let me explain the experiment we did that helped us understand the principle. The first thing I did was to setup a strobe on a stand. Then I put a piece of duct tape on the floor 1ft from the strobe. I further put a piece of tape on the floor every 5 ft after that until the final piece was 30ft from the 1ft mark. I then proceeded to meter the light at 1 ft, 5ft, 10ft, etc. A student then wrote the f-stops that I metered on a grease board. We then graphed it with feet on the horizontal scale and f-stops on the vertical scale. The result is the graph from last week.

What you see in the crude graph is that light falls off nearly 5 f-stops over the first 5 feet and only 1/2 stop over the last 5 feet! This means that in the first 5 feet away from the light source you nearly exhaust your entire dynamic range of a digital camera. Pretty amazing stuff, if you are a photographer. If you are not a photographer, frankly I’m surprised you’ve continued to read this far. 🙂

What this information tells us is where to place our lights in relationship to our subjects and backgrounds in order to get the results that we want.

Thanks for reading!! Next week I’ll have something more entertaining for non-photographers.

-Ken

Next Tuesday evening I am teaching a class for a course titled “Beyond Basic Portraiture”. My section is about working in a studio and more specifically it covers studio lighting.  Below is a mysterious graph that I’m gonna use to illustrate an important prinicipal to the students. We are actually gonna do an experiment that captures the points along this graph.

The Mysterious Graph

Next week I’ll tell you what the graph illustrates. Thanks for reading!

-Ken

I’m sorry that I’ve been a few days behind in updating the blog. Things have just been kinda busy. Generally, I don’t post a lot of images from photo shoots to my blog. They are accessable to the client as online proofs. That said, here are a couple of shots from a senior shoot this past weekend so you can see what I’ve been up to.

Thanks for reading!

-Ken

Sorry, but this week I haven’t had a chance to post a blog entry with any interesting photos. I’ve been working on getting a print ready for the Artlink Member’s Show. I finished mounting it this past weekend and looks pretty cool. I really can’t show you the photo, because I need to keep it under wraps so it stays unique. A lot of work and time went into creating the image and it’s unusual mounting method. I’ve also been putting materials together for a class I’ll be teaching on June 15th. The class is called Beyond Basic Protraiture and I’ll be teaching a session on studio lighting and basic light theory.

I hope to use some of the material in a lighting workshop later this summer (I know, I’ve been talking about doing this for a long time).

Anyway, along with doing photo shoots, that’s what I’ve been up to. Thanks for reading!

-Ken

Yesterday I shot photos for a local ad agency. Their client is a company manufactures just about anything made of metal. They make everthing from tiny metal brackets to trailers that are used to haul grain. It’s really a cool place and is giantnormous.

Most of the day we shot inside the building, but in the afternoon we shot exterior shots of the building as well as some shots of the trailers from lots of different angles. To get the right angles I shot from a scissor lift, which is a blast. I could get a perspective that just isn’t possible from the ground.

While I was waiting them to move trucks around I shot a photo of my shadow. It was a really nice afternoon to be shooting outside.

My view from the Skyjack.

It was a good shoot and we got some really nice shots. Thanks to Meg for helping with gear and styling the shots.

Thanks for reading!

-Ken

If you’ve been following my blog you’ve noticed that my topics are quite diverse. It just depends on what strikes me at the moment. In this case I finished working on a new photo, so I thought I’d share it with you.

This was shot at an old factory that made gas pumps. It has  closed years ago and fell into a state of disrepair.

Thanks for looking!!

-Ken