Mike and Cup

I quite like how this one turned out. I was just playing around with a setup at Mike's house while he read through a photo mag (read: naked lady pictures). I'm surprised at the range in shadows here, just created by simply getting the flash off the camera and fiddling around with exposures for a bit. Not a terribly exciting or different portrait, but interesting nontheless.

Oh, and uh.. I've got a cup!

Trigger Happy!

I got my Cactus V4 triggers today (along with all the other stuff in the Midwest Photo Exchange Strobist kit)!

Above is Kuchka lit with a snooted Nikon SB-80Dx, really tight on her face. Most of the difficulty in taking pictures of cats is that they jump around a whole lot. There's a reason it's DSC_181: there are about 200 other pictures where shes looking away or completely out of the (about one foot wide) beam of light. After a lot of aiming and repositioning, there were about 4 or 5 good shots!

Flash in the Pan

This was the best shot out of my first time using my new Nikon SB-80dx. Mike and I were playing around with it at his house, and I was taking the standard flat shoe-mounted flash pictures (no way to trigger the flash off-camera besides the optical trigger, atm). Bouncing off of his spackle textured dark green walls wasn't really effective and made for some really sickly looking light.

The only really reflective thing in his room was a big wall mirror, which I used for the above shot. I set him in front of it and bounced the flash really up close to his face. This made the light larger to him, leaving some nice soft shadow areas on his face.

Bikes..

Loved the way the 3-4pm sun was hitting this motorcycle from different angles and how different parts reacted to it. Shiny chrome on the telemetry bounced clear reflections back. Metal on the engine had a more matte, blurry feel.

This shot of the bike's wheel hub had a really cool industrial gritty abstract feel to it.

(Under) Street Photos

I really like shooting random bits and pieces of street art around the city, whether they're intentional or not. This shot was taken on the way to St. John's University. Train stations are always great places to find social commentary graffiti. Stupid advertisements get marked up, bare walls become platforms for anonymous people to speak their mind.