Day 70 - The Art Institute

The Art Institute of Chicago is another fantastic museum. The museum itself is as gorgeous as the art, and this is a small detail from a balcony that overlooks a large exhibition room. The light is from a very large skylight directly above.

Day 69 - The Cloud Gate

Millenium Park in Chicago has one of the most unique pieces of sculpture I've seen anywhere, The Cloud Gate. This was shot from directly under the center looking not quite straight up. That's me in the blue coat in the middle, near the bottom.

Day 68 - Arctic Fox

The Field Museum in Chicago is an excellent museum of natural history. They have one of the largest and coolest collections of taxidermy I've ever seen. This is an arctic fox that I thought they did an excellent job preserving. Shot under tungsten lights through glass. I held the lens right up against the glass to eliminate any glare.

Day 67 - Under the Sea

Detail of an underwater plant, dried out. Available light shot, through glass. Held the lens right up against the glass and cupped my hands around the lens to eliminate any possible glare.

Day 66 - Book and Candle

This was an idea my wife had, she's my creative director at times. Lit with an AB800 and a 10 degree grid camera right, with an orange gel to mimic the color of candle light. Shot with a shutter speed of about 1/15th to get enough light from the flame to make this a little more believable.

Day 65 - Quilt Detail

A little different take on another quilt. Beauty dish overhead and slightly off to one side so I don't wash out the quilting entirely.

Day 64 - REPOST: Aaron

Haven't actually done any shooting the past 2 days, life has been too busy. So, I'm posting a couple older images that I just recently processed in place of new images. I know, its cheating, but hey.

This is an image of Aaron that was taken mid afternoon and made to look like afternoon sun. There was a light camera right, along the side of the barn with a CTO gel over it to mimic that golden hour sunlight. We used a large california sunbounce camera left and low to provide fill.

Day 63 - Flower Detail

Closeup of a flower done in natural light.

Day 62 - Another Selfie

Picked up a couple clamp lights for working with continuous lighting setups. Also picked up some CFEs are are almost perfect daylight temp (6500k). Here's a quick self portrait with a single clamp light camera right on white seamless that I purposely underexposed to give it a little color.

Day 61 - The Pecker's Back

Now I know spring is starting to arrive. The woodpeckers are back! With all the trees (what's left from the ice storm anyway) bare, they're easy to spot. Shot with my 400mm at f5.6, on a tripod.

Day 60 - Screws

More extension tube experimentation. This time with all 3 tubes connected to my 50mm 1.4. Lit with a single tungsten light above and slightly right.

Day 59 - Extension Tubes

Photo of one of my extension tubes, with the other 2 tubes on the camera. Minimum focus distance was about 3 inches with both tubes connected. Hand held with a beauty dish directly overhead, with just the modeling lamp.

Day 58 - Picture in a Picture

These days, this is what I think of when I hear picture in a picture. Its a little noisy, this was taken with my Minolta 5D, looking at the back of my A700. This is a test of a shot I want to do with a model, working out the lighting, framing and the like.

Day 57 - Jayne Cobb

Yeah, I'm a geek. I freely admit it. One of my all time favorite TV shows was Firefly, and for christmas one year, I got these figurines. They make great macro stand ins for people. The lighting concepts are pretty much the same, just on a much smaller scale.

This is light with a softbox camera left and another light on the background.

Day 56 - Renee Marcou

My good friend Janeen Jones asked me to shoot future pop princess Renee Marcou (and let me tell you, this girl has some SERIOUS pipes) as a favor, for an updated portfolio. We had a 5 hour shoot today, with multiple looks both in and out of the studio. Here's an image that we did at the orchard walking distance from my house. This was lit with an AB1600 in a large softbox, camera right and a reflector my good friend Steve was holding just out of frame camera left. The AB1600 was cranked up to like half power, letting me shutter down to 1/250th to knock the sky back to something manageable. This is a quick edit as a teaser for the shoot. More to follow.

Day 55 - Female Cardinal Again

The trees in our back yard don't get a ton of sun, and the wind was knocking the very last of the snow off the branches, make it look like it was snowing. This female cardinal was perched close enough that I could get a shot with my 400. Natural light.

Day 54 - My Book

My portfolio book arrived today. Here's the front cover.

Day 53 - Cold Cardinal

In the tangle of down trees in my yard, this cardinal decided to hang out just after we got a few more inches of snow the other day. This area is normally clear, but several of the trees are down right there.

Day 52 - More Katana Study

More playing with the katana, getting a little perspective by using my hand. Lit with a large softbox camera right only.

Day 51 - Katana

A friend of mine lent me his katana for a shoot I have coming this weekend. A fine katana is a work of art with the amazing detail that goes into it. Placed it on the studio floor and shot it with just the overhead lights on so I could shoot it at f1.4 to get the depth of field I wanted.

Day 50 - Dress Details

In my wandering today, I found an asian store going out of business with 50% off. I picked up this beautiful blue dress (no, not for me...) as studio wardrobe. I can already think of a few people I think this would photograph beautifully on.

Day 49 - Self in Black and White

I have a west facing window in my studio, and it gets a nice soft light in the early afternoon. Figured I'd try a self portrait as a black and white.

Day 48 - Blue Vase

Shot with a mix of bright field lighting and spot lighting. This hand blown glass vase was set on a piece of clear plexi, on top of white seamless paper.

Day 47 - Dried Geranium

We had this pot with geraniums right at our door and as winter set in, they dried up. Being on a porch, they didn't get subjected to all the snow and they're still standing in all their dried glory. Shot wide open at f2.8 with the house siding as a background.

Day 46 - Black Eyed Susan

We have a flower bed of black eyed susans in front of our house. Somehow, this one stalk stayed upright all winter, and as the snow melted around it, it stuck out. Shot wide open at f2.8 with the snow as a background.

Day 45 - Drive Home

Now that its staying light a little bit longer, I actually see the sunset on my way home from work some days. This was shot from my driveway, just as I was getting home.

Day 44 - Zeus

My German Shepherd, Zeus, just loves the snow. He can't get enough of it. So, today he's a very happy doggy, with the roughly 10 inches of snow we got last night and this morning.

Day 43 - Rack 'Em

Shot in my basement with the overhead recessed as the only light source. I wanted to simulate the lighting of a pool hall, so I didn't use any flash.