Friday, January 30, 2009

I'm shooting this person where? The boardroom? Grrrrrreeeeeaaaaaaat!

There is nothing more challenging that trying to make an interesting photograph in a boardroom....
On this particular day, I had to photograph William Stanley of Atlantic Hydrogen at the office as he was coming through town. Normally we would have gotten him with some of the company's technology, but all that is in Fredericton and it wasn't possible.
So, I get to shoot him in our board room. Great.

So at the very least I pull out the flash umbrella kit, and do a nice simple portrait.


Since he had a few minutes, I decided to see what else I could come up with, so I threw a flash on a chair behind him and pointed it at the wall and voila!


Hey, that's a funky background that works! The glow behind him sort of ties in to the idea of power, and the arms of the chair provided those interesting shadow lines. So now I need to add some light to his face to bring him out. So I throw a snoot on my main flash, and do a test.


Okay, so I need to bring the flash in closer! But wait, where did my background light go?
Oh yeah, I'm trying to do this using the Canon wireless system, which needs line of sight between the flashes so they will fire! I try lots of different options,

including bouncing the flash(above) but even that doesn't work! Of course the only way it will fire is if I point the flash directly him, which ruins the entire effect!

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHH!!!

So what do I do?

Run to my desk and pull out my trusting NIKON SB-800 to save the day! (sorry, too lazy to do a funny illustration with a cape...)

It's built in OPTICAL SLAVE will pick up ANY FLASH firing, so the Canon flash gets the heave-ho(not really, it's the Telegraph's of course...) and I set my Nikon SB-800 to SU4 mode and it works perfect!


The moral of the story? Buy a Nikon SB-800 as an secondary flash and life will be good! Unfortunately Nikon has discontinued the SB-800 and replaced it with the just as good, but more expensive SB-900. If you see any SB-800's out there for a good price, snap them up! If you find two, I'll pay you for it!

Sunday, January 25, 2009

Investigative Reporter Reid Southick goes beyond the call of duty....

My apologies for not blogging in a while, busy as always! This more of a funny post, not really educational at all...well, maybe in a way...

So, me and a reporter, Reid Southwick, went to check out a pedestrian walkway between Celebration Street in the North End and City Road that goes over Highway 1. (You know the one that's all rusty and looks so wonderful in the summer when the sunlight really shows off the rust?)

Anyway, someone had called to complain about it not being cleared and being very icy and dangerous, and well....it was!

We carefully made our way up to the peak, and slowly went back down to the first landing, grasping the rail for dear life. Then I guess Reid decided to try sliding down the ice, as I heard an "Oh Shit", and thinking he was playing around, started firing away.



And continued to fire away as he hit a non-icy patch........


launched into the air............


and flew right into the rusted fence.........




It was at the point when he screamed in pain that I realized he wasn't kidding

Link
and put the camera down and asked if he was okay. That's why there are no more pictures after that.

Everyone at work got quite a kick out it. I've put up a little animation of it here...wish I had sound! Give it time to load!

So I guess the educational part is don't slide down a sheet of ice that ends in a rusty fence....especially with a photographer around...




Sunday, January 4, 2009

Photographs of the Year slideshows

With the end of a year and the start of a new one, everyone goes back through their archives and puts together a pictures of the year selection. Here are some great ones:

NBC News Photos of the Year

TIME Pictures of the Year

Reuters Photos of the Year

TELEGRAPH UK

THE BIG PICTURE

SYDNEY MORNING HERALD

SPORTS

Sports Illustrated Pictures of the Year

NBC Sports Pictures of the Year

Please comment with any others you can add to the list!

We've done the same at the Telegraph, you can view ours here:

Noel Chenier

Kate LeBlanc

Peter Walsh

Cindy Wilson