Dragonfly Portraits

I barely squeaked out my 100 photos yesterday (my daily goal for 2010) by taking macro photos of dragonflies. I originally intended to just chase the bugs around our neighborhood pond. I captured some nice images, but nothing too spectacular. There is a trick to shooting these Harriers of the insect world. Most of the time if you spook one, it will just circle around and land right back where it was. The bug in the top photo circled and landed on the same twig seven times, with me moving ever closer. He didn't get the hint until I bumped him with my lens hood. A neighborhood friend saw me geeking out, and presented me with a dragonfly on a stick. This little winged dude wasn't long for the world, but was still clinging to his perch like Velcro. I brought him inside to our makeshift studio, where I was able to control the lighting better. Here's the result:















No wonder you can't sneak up on these things; look at the eyes! It also never occurred to me that they have antennae, or creepy back hair either. The next project is to catch a dragonfly mid-flight. This will take some practice, but it'll sure get my 100 shots out of the way in a hurry.

Learning Studio Lighting, Part I

I had my absolute first portrait shoot today! My father and I have assembled a very modest but capable studio setup consisting of my (now lightstand mounted) Nikon Speedlight SB-800, which we either bounce off of or shoot through a studio umbrella, a reversible silver and white reflector panel, a white background cloth and a black background cloth. The quality of light changes dramatically depending on what strobe angle you employ. Think of the model's position as a clock face: twelve o'clock is directly in front of the model, assuming no crazy poses. The result is about the same as on-camera flash, creating flattened features with little dimensionality. Conversely, position the flash at three o'clock, and the effect is quite dramatic. I was very fortunate to shoot Mrs. Marissa Rose Ladd today, a dynamic model with a good deal of previous experience. She has the ability to project a whole array of emotions and attitudes, from the sweet girl next door, to a Long Island killer.

The topmost photo was taken with a shoot-through umbrella almost head on to the model.

Here are three more shots from this evening, with the lighting described:


Strobe shot through umbrella positioned at the model's 3 o'clock, with no reflector


Strobe bounced against silver umbrella interior, at around 2 o'clock position. White reflector positioned to model's 2 o'clock



Strobe shot through umbrella positioned at model's 1:30 (ish). Silver reflector positioned at 9:30, very close to the face.


The evening was a fantastic learning experience. Marissa was infinitely patient with my camera tomfoolery, and even offered up a ton of pointers and suggestions. I believe without her input these shots would have ended up like drivers license photos. I hope to keep up my education in the studio realm. We need more lights!

Sunday Evening at the Arboretum

I stole my father's Nikon D90 this evening and headed out to stalk some bugs. My D50 has always, and continues to work perfectly, but I wanted to try out some off camera flash setups. Nikon's CLS or Creative Lighting System,a feature found in its newer cameras, allows you to trigger regular hot shoe mount style strobes wirelessly. This sounds great, but there are a few pratfalls to be wary of. One is the sheer amount of variability in your setup. For instance, I was shooting today while holding the flash in my left hand, both flash and camera on full manual. Tiny changes in distance and angle affect your exposure. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, in fact, it's the whole point, right? The other trouble stems from the triggering nature of CLS. A light sensor on the off camera flash picks up the output from nearby flashes, triggering it to strobe. In certain conditions, such as evening light coming in at a low angle, the external flash can't "see" the other flash. A set of Pocket Wizards are officially on my wish list. Please see my blog gallery for more photos!

Cheating With Limes, or "Saved By the Buoyancy of Citrus"

I have been trying my hand at product photography for the past few days. This involves setting an object on a large sheet of paper, or "seamless" and shooting with high intensity lights to make the background disappear. The problem is I don't have powerful lights, just a speedlite SB-800. This lime project has taken a little bit of Photoshop tweaking.

Here is the original image:


...and here is the final product, after replacing the dark background with white, cloning or healing out the nasty brown scrapes, and increasing saturation a few ticks to make a refreshing, juicy, tasty, fake ass lime:

If anyone would like to learn how to nerd out like this, shoot me an e-mail. I am also posting answers to general photo questions every Friday. If you think I can be of some help, send a message to erickrousephotography@gmail.com. Now go have a mojito.

Rodeo!

Last night I attended the Carousel Farms Rodeo, in Raleigh NC. The event is held every Tuesday night at 7:30. To find this place you head down Capital Boulevard towards Wake Forest, then turn right at the dump truck. You will know what I mean when you see it. We arrived about an hour early to scope out the situation, and were able to see all the participants gearing up, stretching and warming up their horses. Spectators begin to flood in around 7:15, so get there early if you want a seat! The rodeo consists of two events; bull riding and barrel racing. Bull riding is fairly obvious; with one hand, grab onto a sorely pissed off bull and hang on for eight agonizing seconds. Or at least try to!



The barrel races are a bit different, and in my opinion, more exciting than the bull rides. Participants charge around a set of three barrels at full gallop, trying to complete the course in the least amount of time. The idea is to get around the barrel without knocking it over. The course looks like this:


The quickest lap of the evening was just over sixteen seconds. The photographic challenge here is to freeze a galloping subject at night, under weak halogen lights. My camera was as exhausted as the horses by this point in the evening.




The rodeo was an absolute blast! I can't wait to go again. Now that I know what to expect, I may get some better shots next time! Maybe with some rented faster glass...

Chicago artist Molly Carlson is doing her part in the relief efforts associated with the Deepwater Horizon (BP) oil spill. She is making available, for a very modest donation, archival quality prints of her latest watercolor series. 100% of the donation money goes to the relief effort, and you may direct your money to the organization of your choice. A spare 25 bucks will go a long way. Read more about it at the link below, and be sure to check out the awesome high speed video of her completing the Brown Pelican profile shown above:

http://www.emersonstreetcreative.com/

From the Artist:

As most of you are, I am deeply saddened and disgusted by what has become the greatest ecological disaster in my lifetime. I sat at home watching the news, and tearing up at the birds covered in oil…the fishermen who livelihoods are destroyed and wondering, what can I do? Should I quit my job and go scrub oil off the rocks? I felt helpless and worthless in my apartment in Chicago, so far away. I didn’t want to feel helpless, but also figured completely dumping my responsibilities to go to the Gulf might not be the best idea.

So here’s the deal and I am asking for your help! I decided I would do what I am good at, and hopefully this is the best way I can help the situation. I’m going to paint the creatures being affected by the oil spill and put them up for sale. 100% of the profits of the sale I will donate to the following organizations:

• The Greater New Orleans Foundation’s Gulf Coast Oil Spill Fund
• Our Gulf Waterkeepers
• National Audubon Society

If you would like to specify which organization your donation goes to, just let me know. Otherwise, I’ll do a weekly donation and split the money between the three groups evenly.

The Artwork:

I am producing limited edition prints of watercolors I have created for this project. Animals are near to my heart, so I am choosing them to be center focus. The prints will be made on Kodak Professional Supra Endura VC Digital Paper, which is archival quality, lasting up to 100 years in the home, and 200 years in dark storage.

Each print will be signed, with an edition number, certificate of authenticity and statement of where your donation went. At this time I cannot offer tax-reciepts, but if you would like to donate directly to the charities – their information is below.

If you or someone you know are looking for a piece of artwork and want to support a good cause, now is your chance! Please spread the word around to as many people as you can. I’m also open to suggestions for what animals to paint next (although I’d like to limit it to Gulf species)!

Love,

Molly

An Offer, A Response, And A Recoil.

I recently responded to an advertisement from a local Raleigh company seeking photographers. Here's the gig: Take your camera to all the hot downtown spots and shoot people having fun, or "take pictures of boobs" as my girlfriend said. Sort of like this: I figure, what the hell. It'll probably be a minimum wage gig, but at least I'll be out shooting (until 2am). This is my inquiry, and the response I received:

Me:

Good afternoon. I am interested in the photographer position. May I have more information? Thank you.



Dude Man Brah:

Eric,

As I have been telling the people that have been emailing me, this is not a paid employment job. This is an opportunity to network and meet other photographers and people out at clubs/bars. You will get to choose what bars you would go to and I would just want you to go in and take some pictures of the people at the bar, then post them to our website for people to view. If you are still interested, I will be more than happy to get you set up as a photographer and you could start shooting whenever you want to!

So, basically a volunteer position for awkward people who want to use their camera as a pickup prop. Not me thanks. This is not a portfolio stuffer, since I can only assume the company retains image rights. I don't leave my house for less than fifty bucks, and if I am shooting people like this I'm photographing for stock, gathering model releases. Clone tool will rip off any visible logo, to be replaced in Photoshop with another. I am seeing this sort of "job" advertisement more often lately. It seems that free is the new minimum wage? I am also wondering what this sort of thing does to the stalked clients in these bars. People go drinking to have fun and maybe be seen, but not be harassed by some dude with a laminate-gig-tag-on-a-lanyard popping flashes in faces. This isn't in the same league as the cigarette guy with the giant damn messenger bag chock full of Camels, like Nico-Santa around midnight, and loved by everyone. If you "hire" a photographer for free you are going to get a predictable level of shot quality. There is a reason wedding shooters get hundreds or even thousands for an afternoon's work. I am not saying that shooting people in bars is worth that wage, but how about this: stock agencies pay an average of thirty five cents when a client buys the RIGHT to use an image ONCE. You can basically lease the image to as many people as you want. What if the bar photographer received thirty five cents per image, for the rights and all? That's twenty well exposed and composed images an hour to equal $8.00 an hour. The agency may do what they please from then on out. Doesn't everyone win with this situation? Give us an incentive!

To Dave Rose of Deep South the Bar: I will take photos for you anytime you'd like, for free. You've been great. And sorry I almost blew up your sound board that one time...

My apologies to J-Teazy Bitch, J-Sloozy and J-Dizzle. If anyone knows these gals, please let me know. I'd love to get a model release. ...and photoshop out that band-aid in the background.

A Trip to the Art Museum

I wanted to share two photos I recently took at the greenway surrounding the NC Museum of Art. Along the path are permanent sculpture; some with a natural theme, some just odd. Here are two of the latter:



Called Collapse I, this piece by Ledelle Moe is a set of concrete legs terminating abruptly just above the waist. I refer to this piece as "The Butt"





I'm afraid I don't have information on this installation, but I just don't get North Carolina's obsession with these rings. There are at least two more exhibits just like this one. Giant demon fruit loops, or mega ear gauges. Is this what tattooed gutter punks dream of?

My Workstation, and a new toy!

If you remember seeing my desk last time (The CIS rant blog post) it was in ruins, with crap thrown everywhere and hardly a place to stick a coffee cup. I decided to do some spring cleaning, rerouting all the cables and organizing all the peripherals.





Much better, no? All of this was preempted by my birthday gift: A Wacom Bamboo Pen tablet! For those of you not in the know, graphics tablets work like a giant touch-pad, replacing your mouse, and receiving inputs from a pen shaped device called a stylus.




The pad is mapped to correspond to your monitor; tap the stylus to the top right hand corner of the tablet, and your cursor flies to that location. This eliminates the typical click and drag operation with a mouse. It takes some getting used to, but after just three days, I'm beginning to forget about my electro-rodent. It's like driving a school bus, then trading that in for an Audi R8. Twitchy at first, but you never want to go back.
The tablet is pressure sensitive, and you can set this to adjust your brush size, opacity, color, etc. It also gives you a much more natural method to lasso, dodge and burn, erase, and all the other tools requiring more finesse than allowed by bulldozing with a mouse. I'll post updates as I learn this great new tool!

Ask Eric!

Indian Pipe Flowers near Asheville, NC.



I'd like to start a new segment; You send photo questions (or otherwise) to erickrousephotography@gmail.com and I will answer them, or at least try to be funny if I don't know. Feel free to ask how, when, where, why I took a particular photo. I'll post the questions and answers every Friday.



Tony the Dog; the same one who ate my broccoli. This is his "Bark Out the Window" chair. He was taking a break at the moment. Not sure how that's comfortable...

How to get close. Really Close!

A nasty hairball?



Nope! Actually a 10pt comma...




Last week a friend of mine asked which macro lens to get for his Nikon D50, the same camera I shoot with. My knee-jerk answer was the non VR version of Nikon's 105mm, which you can find used for cheap. This now discontinued lens was solidly built, razor sharp, and due to its fast aperture (2.8) can double duty as a fantastic portrait lens. I have the Vibration Reduction version, and use it for every possible shot. These lenses will spoil you in the sharpness department. "Macro", in photo-geek terms, means 1:1 magnification. The size of the object you're shooting is the same in real-life and on your capture medium (film/sensor). OK that made no sense to me either! How about a scenario: You take a photo of a dime with 35mm film, and get it developed. You set the negative next to the real life dime, and both "film dime" and "real dime" are the same size. Get it? Nevermind. Here's my trusty 105VR, and a life size portrait of a dime:





But what if you want to get closer? Life size not good enough for you? Don't have $350 hanging around for a true macro lens? Try stacking! The trick here is to mount a telephoto lens on the camera, then stick another reversed lens in front of that one (face to face). Ask your local photo store to help you with a coupling setup made from a few stepping rings, or choose the ghetto route, and use a big wad of tape as shown below. I used special tape my dad bought that also seals hydraulic lines and fixes electrical wires and garden hoses, but hell, Scotch brand would work here too. Whatever you grab first, man.



Shown above is my trusty Nikon 70-300 zoom with a vintage Minolta 28mm manual focus lens stuck out front. I'm not sure how all this works, but the longer the mounted lens, and the shorter the reversed lens, the higher the magnification rate. You can figure out power of your new setup by dividing little into big. So, if fully zoomed out, my setup is 300/28, or nearly 11:1! not bad for a little tape! You have to open the aperture of the reversed lens all the way; This works best with a manual or older AF lens on front, but you can use a "G" type (no aperture ring) autofocus lens if you tape the little aperture lever (located on the mounting side) to its widest setting. Here's what our dime looks like with this setup:



Getting all of "E. Pluribus Unum" would require a 5+ shot panorama. Yes, it's not the sharpest image, but this is due to the lack of mirror lockup on the D50. The slapping of the mirror and shutter alone are enough to send your carefully composed micro photo vibrating wildly enough to give you motion sickness. The closer you get, the shallower DOF you have, and the more pronounced vibrations become. Consider this: fine focus tuning was made with my tripod's center column knob! Tightening this knob raised the center column ever so slightly, but enough to bring the image in and beyond focus. We're talking depth of field in fractions of a millimeter. Special devices called Focusing Rails are available for finer tuning of focus. These move the whole camera assembly back and forth with a knob, but we're on the cheap, remember? Try it out and let me know what you get!

Hello. My name is Eric, and I'm a snare addict...

Possibly the most hotly debated, and fiercely defended component of anybody's drumset is the snare drum. Today's modern drummer has more options available than you could shake a stick at (wah wah wah.) My drum collection was sparked with an unexpected Christmas gift from my grandmother; a Premier Anniversary Signia wood hoop snare. I have only seen one other like it, and it was attached to the matching drumkit. Whoever you are, you're a lucky bastard! Naturally, High School Douche Eric immediately took it to band practice with the punk/metal group I was with at the time, thus denting the gorgeous wood hoops with overzealous rim shots. Sigh. At least I don't have to worry about hurting it anymore. Mine is the black version with gold hardware. If you have the natural clear lacquer one, I'd like to talk to you... The problem with snares is there are waaaay too many variables to consider. In the beginning it was easy: metal for power, wood for warmth. If you were an disciple of Dave Lombardo, or some other ridiculous bazilliom BMP rock band, you went with a metal snare. The cold, brooding, gunshot crack of a steel snare surely instills fear in the hearts of the Tom Jones set. It's Not Unusual for the mellower drummer to select a maple shell (exceptions exist!) for a warmer crack that would be right at home in a Blues Traveler cover band. Now you have to choose between a galaxy of materials, options, finishes, plies, big damn holes in the sides... It never ends. My personal collection runs the gamut from thin shell reinforcement hoop clad wood hoop jazz drums to die cast hoop copper monsters. The snare shown here is my current favorite: It's a Spaun 6.5x14 slotted maple maneater:



The hole (pun) purpose of this type of snare is for the energy of your stick stroke to explode out whatever orifice has been engineered into the snare's design. Play one of these vented Mesa killers and there is no turning back. My previous rock drum feels broken after this one. Maybe Chad Sexton and Travis Barker are on to something here... A word of warning: other than your practice space or 1000+ venues, these are just too freaking loud! Stick with your trusty maple snare, or birch, or mahogany, or ironwood, or zelkova...

Bulk Ink Systems, or CIS my Ass...

Tools of the CIS trade: Windex, syringes, a knife, Rubbermaid bin, paper towels. and, uh, broccoli. Not shown: coffee, aspirin, a bunch of crap thrown around in frustration. Note the expensive rug underneath this train wreck of a project.

So, you buy a fancy printer to crank out the fancy images coming from your fancy camera. The first thing you realize is printer companies aren't here to sell you hardware, but ink. Expensive ass ink. $15 per cartridge to be exact, and my printer requires NINE. Three blacks, four including the matte and shiny ones that you swap out! Good lord man! These suckers could be sold on the street by sketchy dudes in trenchcoats. "pst! ey! ey my man! you need some Cyan?"
I decided to not be one of these slaves to Genuine Ink and purchased a CIS, or Continuous Ink System, a series of dummy cartridges hooked up via tubes to huge reservoirs you fill up with ketchup bottles of ink. It's like an enema for your printer. I mean this literally and here's the pun: They're a pain in the ass to install and use! The installation process is torturous, like a game of Operation that makes your hands look like Toucan Sam.




The installed cartridges must be primed using syringes (nine of them). Then there are the computer chips... new cartridges have chips that monitor your ink levels, and when you hit a certain level the Red Light of Death turns on. You can't just shake out a few more photos like in the old days. This monitoring system persists with CIS. The printer software still shows your ink level depleting, but when it "empties" it is supposed to reset itself. This is sometimes the case. More likely, the empty cartridge will malfunction, claim to be empty, and also trigger adjacent ones to feign uselessness. It's like the old Nintendo NES system: take out the cartridge, look down the hole, blow into it, blow on the cartridge, put it back in, jiggle the thing around, hold your breath, reset and... THAT DAMN RED LIGHT AGAIN! I've resorted to prying chips off old cartridges and sticking them on. My next step is to purchase a Chip Resetter, a $10 savior to bring these bastardized chips back to 100%. Where there's a will, there's a way! So to summarize, a Continuous Ink Supply can be a wonderful cost saving tool, when it works. WHEN it works, print like it's your freaking job. Do not sleep, leave the room to pee, or let the dog bump the desk.





That all said, I do love the idea of this system. When it works, I print out 13x19's with reckless abandon. The quality, color, and quick drying are identical to "real" ink, if not damn close. One online reviewer, with better installation luck then me, said the only problem with a bulk ink system is running out of wall space. I agree on this: for around $250, you get about 6 sets worth of ink. No more careful proofing, hitting the abort button a third of the way through to check color, printing dime sized contact prints. Let 'er RIP! (a printing joke...anyone? aww.)

Editor's Note: The broccoli was eaten by Tony the Labrador while my back was turned. This can't possibly end in tragedy, or at least horrible dog gas while we're watching movies tonight.

Steaks!

My mom went to a formal demonstration at Williams Sonoma on how to cook steaks the proper way. Naturally, we had steak for dinner, doing nothing the chef said. "Medium Heat." No. Ten. If the stove went to Eleven, we'd use that. If meat tasted best when gently warmed by the stove equivalent of old ladies breathing on it, no one would use FIRE.

"It's a secret message, from my teeth!" Eric's first blog!

Welcome to the blog site of Eric Krouse, photographer, drummer, and nature geek. Prints of my images are available for purchase. If interested, please contact me through facebook or at erickrousephotography@gmail.com. I will also document your local events for cheap! Kid's parties, events, band gigs, etc. I promise no one will have a microphone sticking out of their head.