Author Archive: ken

I used it on a shoot last week and liked the results. For those that don’t know what a ringflash is, it a special type of lighting unit that camera attaches to. The lens of the camera actually is inserted into the flash. The flash looks like a big donut and the flash tube surrounds the lens. The effect of the flash is very unique because there really isn’t any shadows in the pictures taken with the light. Sometimes you’ll see a halo shadow depending on their distance from a background. The photos have a edgy look and a certain starkness that is a noteable characteristic of a ringflash.

This was shot last week with the ringflash.

Around Fort Wayne, you don’t see a lot of photographers that use a ringflash, but they are commonly used for fashion/glamour photography. I use mine more often for fill when shooting outdoors. 

Last Thursday night we had temps drop down to -19 degrees. It was COLD. Friday morning I woke up to no water. Our incoming water line froze. I spent most of the morning using a hairdryer to defrost the shutoff valve. Once it was working I moved up the pipe to the water meter. As it started to thaw, it was evident that it was damaged because it started to leak. As it thawed more it began to gush. So I turned off the water and called Aqua Indiana. In a couple of hours they sent a repair guy out who replaced the damaged meter.

When the water was turned on, the pipe on the other side of the meter began to gush. So, I turn off the water and called a plumber. Lucky for me, the plumbing company I called had a plumber free that afternoon. The plumber replaced the damaged pipe. When the water was turned on, water started gushing from the pipe the feeds the water heater. So we turned off the water and he replaced that pipe. Turned on the water again, then water started gushing from the water heater’s ourgoing pipe. Turns out it had 2 holes in it and it had to be replaced as well.

All totaled, there were 5 different breaks in our pipes. While there was heat tape on the pipes, it was apparently very old and no longer able to protect the pipes. Friday was a bad day.

On Sunday, I picked up my new PC for work. It has 8 gig of RAM, a quad core 64 bit processor, and a ATI video card. I spent over 5 hours today on the phone with Adobe support so that I could get Photoshop CS4 installed propertly on the new computer. What a pain. But now that it’s setup, it is really fast. I spent most of the rest of the day getting everything else setup, such my Wacom tablet and other software/drivers. I’m pretty close to having everything I need setup.

The new machine is going to make editing photos much faster and easier. Since images from my camera start off at about 17mb in size (and grow quickly if I work with them in PC), I need a lot of processing power and memory. I’ll still use my dual 20 inch IBM LCD monitors for now.

Tomorrow, I’ll work on editing/retouching Saturday’s shoot so I can get the photos on my online proofs.

I would take a photo of the new computer, but it’s not a particularly cool looking. It’s just a black box.

Ok, this past weekend I bit the bullet and updated my PDA phone. For years I’ve used a Palm Treo and have been very happy with it. Since I shoot a lot of location work and am in and out of the studio several times a day, I use my cell phone as my work phone. I also use it as my Internet connection. While a little sluggish at times, it worked fine. It’s nice to be at a location and have access to the Internet.

Sunday I broke down and bought the Blackberry Storm. Wow, I love it. The Internet connection speed is much faster than my old Treo. While download speed is noticably better, the real performance gain is in upload speeds. It’s not FIOS or Cable Modem speed, but it does really well considering it’s also a PDA and a cell phone. Since it’s a touch screen, you only have a few real buttons. Most of what you use is the touch screen. I had a few minutes this afternoon (took a break from editing my print portfolio) to shoot a shot of the storm.

My let me make a disclaimer. It is not the best photo that I could take. I was lazy and left the screen protector film over the display and that gives it a blurry appearance. Also if I shot with mirror locked up it help the overall image. Let’s just call this a snap shot because I need to get back to real work. 🙂

BTW, still working on the kitchen. We finally decided on size and color of the tile for the floor. They coming out Friday to measure and talk about the transition from the hardwood to the tile. I promise a photo when it is complete.

Added – 5:40pm – I forgot to add a section I typed earlier. I am working on putting together a print portfolio to use for self-promotion. I decided to get it printed at a print on demand company. So I’ve been going thru photos to decide what photos to use. It is quite a job. Over the past 3 years I’ve taken tens of thousands of images equaling about a terabite of date. Holy smokes that’s a lot of images.

When producing a print portfolio experts vary about how many image you should include. The general rule of thumb is as few as you can and still present your skills and abilities. Well, I made good progress today and it’ll probably be a few more days before I can get where I get a first draft printed. Anyway, sorry to add this after the fact.

Thanks for reading!

I finally took the plunge and bought a new camera. I was shooting with a Canon 30D and used a Canon 20D as a backup body. Now I have a 50D as my primary camera and the 30D is going to be my backup. The images are 50% larger on the 50D (15mp) than on the 30D (8mp). This makes the file sizes much larger which means I’ll soon need more archive drives. So far, I like the camera. Although I haven’t done any head to head comparisons between the 30D and the 50D, the additional resolution should make cropping easier.

Here is a still life I shot this afternoon with the new camera and the Canon 24-70mm L.

This past week has been pretty crazy. I had a shoot for Anderson Bow Company and the ad agency is using my studio work and compositing it into a background that was shot previously. So it was challenging to get the camera angle, the model’s pose, and the lighting right to match the background.

Then we had terrible ice storm on Wednesday night. We lost some large limbs off several of our trees. One limb crushed one of our gutters. We are lucky because about 100,000 people lost power initially. There are still around 40,000 people without power. Hopefully, their electricity will be restored by Christmas. Our power was never interrupted. Temperatures have been hovering around zero and today we hope to reach 30.

On Saturday I had a photo shoot with a local band named Paradise. We had a bunch of fun and got some pretty cool photos. Paradise is a cover band with 2 singers Vinnie and Nefy. This gives them a huge range of songs in their song list. If you get a chance to see them, check ’em out.

A playful shot.

A more serious, artistic shot.

I’m sorry I haven’t been updated the blog last week. We are still working on the kitchen, but it’s pretty much finished. We still have to put in the floor. Once it’s complete I’ll post a good photo.

Ok, the rest of this entry is photography related. I got a new toy yesterday. It’s a Speedotron honeycomb grid for my beauty dish. If you are not a photographer this sounds like a bunch of gibberish, but if you are one of my clients, you’ll like the effect. A beauty dish is special type of reflector that mounts on a studio light. It diffuses the light and softens shadows, plus allows the light to fall off quickly. The primary light source for the photo below was a 22inch beauty dish.

In the photo below, adding a grid to a studio light prevents light from spilling all over the place. It contains the light to a smaller space based on the size of the holes. The shot below was uses a beauty dish with a 35 degree grid as it’s primary light source.

In the photo below, I used a more complex lighting scheme using 4 lights, but the primary light source was a gridded beauty dish.

Anyway, I hope you found this educational or interesting or at least enjoyed the photos. 🙂

See ya next Monday or Tuesday!

… about missing a new post on Monday. There’s been so much going on with work and the kitchen remodel that I’ve just not had a chance to post an entry. Well most of the kitchen is now done, we have some trim work, painting, and a new floor and we’re done. When it’s complete I’ll post a good photo instead of these snapshots. It’s been a real learning experience doing a major remodeling project like this. But we are going to end up with a greatly improved living space.

Well we have made some progress since last week. We have all the electrical run in the kitchen and they finished drywall this morning. But, it still means we will not have a kitchen for Thanksgiving. 🙁

It’s also looking like it’s going to tough to find wood flooring that matches the existing floor. As it stands the cabinets are due to be installed a week from today. Yeah!!

I did a shoot last week for Anderson Bow Company. They make compound bows for hunting and target shooting. I bought some arrows to use as props. This morning I was just messing around with them and shot a cool photo.

These arrows are wicked. The arrow heads are called Thunder Heads and are SUPER sharp. They give you a special tool to use when attaching the heads to the arrow shaft so you won’t slice up your fingers.