Home Portrait "Studio"

I put studio in quotes because it would really be a stretch of the imagination to call my setup a studio, but, lacking a better term, that's what I call it! And it works well enough.

Here's a quick shot of the setup:

We're lucky enough to have a large loft, which has gone from being a bedroom, to playroom, to now a part-time photo studio.

I put a couple of clamps onto the ceiling beams. On these clamps I attached some large zip ties - one on each side that holds the curtain rod at the highest level and then about six more on each side that are linked like chains and allow me to adjust the height of the curtain.

As for a backdrop, right now I'm using a large sheet, but am planning on replacing that with some (much) larger cloth backdrops. It helps to have a few contacts that are in the sewing business! As I take portraits, the plan is to slowly add one or two from my earnings.

Now for some sample images from this setup (all images, with the exception of the first, are untouched. The first one was only cropped):

The big thing I noticed is that I need more light on the backdrop - in this case I want it to be white, not the off-white it really is. It can be fixed in post-processing, but that's just one more step that can be eliminated with proper lighting. That and I need to iron the background before I take real pictures ... But I think that the subject lighting is pretty good.

I wanted to get some test shots in before I started taking "real" portraits!

Photographing Butterflies

One of the things I enjoy about photography is looking for colors and contrast, which is perhaps why I enjoy photographing flowers so much; butterflies also fit well in this category. Here are some examples of butterfly photography I have done, nothing too amazing, but hopefully they convey a couple of ideas I've had.

If you ever get the chance to go to a butterfly farm, do it. There are generally lots of beautiful specimens there, plus lots of very nice flowers, so you get the best of it all. The only thing to be careful of is humidity - the butterfly houses tend to be very warm and very humid, which is generally not a good thing for an expensive piece of electronic equipment.

The tricky part, as always, is composition. How are the butterflies positioned on flowers or other objects? How do they fit into, or stand out from, the scenery around them?

This first example is from a butterfly house in Mindo, Ecuador.

I liked this because of the vivid contrasting colors, but also the plant - the stem kind of leads through the picture, but not in a distracting way. The butterfly is also nicely defined against the background - you can see it well and it doesn't become part of the background.

Here's another one, from a butterfly garden in Stratford Upon Avon, England. While I like the colors, particularly the purple that stands out, the black of the butterfly does kind of fade into the background, making it difficult to distinguish from the background.

 Another one from Mindo. I liked how the flowers compliment the butterfly yet it is nicely distinguished from the background.

 
While the background with all of the flowers is kind of busy, I hope it doesn't distract too much from the butterfly.

Why I love my new tripod

I recently got a new tripod and it has been amazing. I decided to upgrade to a Manfrotto tripod and Manfrotto Joystick head.

The tripod itself is heavier than my old one, which makes it much more stable. The joystick head is great - I mount my camera on there, lock it into place, and then, with a squeeze of the grip, can reposition it just about any way I can imagine. And it has a death-grip on my camera, so it's not going to drift downward just after I frame my shot and before I snap the picture.

This is great for taking multiple shots to stitch together into a panorama, like this photo:

The other great feature of the tripod is that you can splay the legs out and get it really close to the ground. That's what helped me get this shot:

If I had known how great this tripod was, I would have gotten it sooner!

Inauguration

I have decided to go ahead and create my own blog that focuses on photography.

Enjoy!