Prairie Storm

Looking north from the parking lot of our motel in Marysville, Kansas.  This can be a land of violent thunderstorms. The town lost power for about three hours Friday night and Saturday morning.      

Native

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Soulard Farmers Market has some vendors of things other than food. This man was selling Native American jewelry. Damn, he was a good model. Click the link in the left sidebar to my Flickr page to see a couple of other pictures of him. For some reason we got talking about the Lone Ranger, that racist Western adventure that ruled my childhood. The name Tonto, the LR's Indian companion, means fool or stupid in Spanish. Tonto always addressed the LR as kimo sabe. I thought it was a corruption of the Spanish que mas sabe, or "that knows more" in English. My subject (I didn't get his name - hope he emails me) said it was simply an Apache term for pale face.

This is why I went to that lighting workshop recently. We were in shade inside the market. Sunlight was coming in from the left and I had a flash mounted on the camera with a Lumiquest Pocket Bouncer at TTL -1 2/3. Wish I could hit it this well all the time.

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For Brattcat, Or, It's Hard To Light Glass

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Found in the same junk/antique store in Maine as last Wednesday's post. Glass is problematic. There is usually glare. Strobes spread light behind the translucent object that you may not light (or it may look really cool). I never did learn how to deal with it but sometimes the outcome was okay.
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Head Shots

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The Fourth of July parade and fireworks in Ridgewood, New Jersey, are not until today, a legal holiday in the US, so no shots of that. I won't have any fresh St. Louis material until the weekend. For a few days, then, we will pull up more Maine images or perhaps dig in the archives.

There was nothing scheduled last Friday afternoon. Three of us spent some time in the studio with our teaching assistant, Jason Esposito, working on lighting head shots. Above, your humble servant, taken by Kelley de Bettancourt. Below, Ted Lieverman, taken by me. At the bottom, Jason instructs Kelley on flash settings.

Home this afternoon.

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Camera Camp, Day Four

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Another long day. I'll need a rest when I get home. (Note to self: ha ha!). For our afternoon shoot, we went to an old school in the larger (meaning, big enough to have a WalMart) neighboring town of Rockland. It been converted into an arts center but still has great signs of wear. Interesting spaces.

I had no idea where to start. There was an auditorium with a black-box proscenium that looked interesting, but what to do with it? Then I found a costume closet above the stage. Okay! It still took me over an hour to work out the lighting with my limited set of equipment. This is what I came up with in the end.

Tonight is the big finale with a Maine lobster dinner and an amazing video show of all this week's classes' work. I'll post our bizarre class picture as soon as I get a copy. Down to New Jersey tomorrow to see all my family at my sister's house.

Camera Camp, Day Three

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I'm writing this late Wednesday night and I'm out of gas. There is precious little free time here. Everyone in our class is supposed to have a project for the week, some theme we will use to try to improve out lighting skills. Mine is definition of shape and space with light. Some of us went to a junk/antique shop in Cooper's Mills, Maine, called Elmer's Barn. That's where I found this.

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