Artist Reception

My whole family and I made it down to the Urban Hive for the Vox Artist Reception night of the Second Saturday show that is going on tomorrow. A ton of great work up there. Didn't get a chance to talk to many people. Was too busy taking it all in and chasing my son around keeping him happy and out of trouble.

My First Art Show

VOX Sept flyer
Originally uploaded by jillallyn

So this weekend I'll be showing some of my photographs at the Vox Second Saturday Art Show. Every second Saturday in Sacramento there is a big art walk going on, so the people at Vox put together different showings with local artists. This month they are featuring local photographers that are part of the Sacramento Photographers group on Flickr. So it's not really like I was singled out for my talents or anything, but all the same I'm really excited to be a part of it.

Fun in the Tub

Had a little fun with bathtime the other day with Andrew, and pulled out my Westcott Apollo softbox. That thing really puts out a great light. It doesn't take much either. I think I had the Strobe set to 1/16th power (maybe it was 1/8th, I don't remember). That power is perfect for shooting portraits at F/2.8 or so. Nice shallow DOF, clean crisp focus, nice soft yet directional light, and recycle time is nonexistent.

Impressions of San Francisco

My company sent me to San Francisco for two days of training connected to the big JavaOne Conference going on all this week. I won't bore you with the details of Software Engineering training, but I did want to share some photos from my wandering in-between sessions.

Eyes That Pop

One of the most striking elements you can add to a portrait is eyes that really pop. The problem is, nowadays people get lazy and try to do this too much in Photoshop, rather than with the camera using proper light. So my tip of the day is how to find that light.

Clean New Look

Wiley and Clean: 17-40mm F/4L @ 29mm, F/4, 1/200th ISO 200,
Manual flash at 1/4 power fired in Softbox about 2 feet away.

Making some changes with the blog, and I hit on it a bit with the last post. I think it's a much cleaner, streamlined look, and I'm liking it much better. None of the templates were doing what I wanted, so I figured 'what the heck, I'm a software engineer', and I went into the html and fixed it myself.

Flashback(December 19, 2008): Old Town Auburn

Continuing my flashback series, partially because I have nothing new, and partially because I regret not sharing all the interesting places I've discovered over the last year....


Placer County Court House: 17-40mm F/4L @ 17mm, F/8, 1/500th, and ISO 400

Auburn is a cool little town only about 20 minutes from where I live, and I figured it would be the perfect place to test out my new camera. I had talked about meeting up with somebody from work for this little outing, but he ended up being busy so I was left to explore on my own.

Flashback (December 18, 2008): New Camera

Okay, so I was a lazy blogger over the last year or so and I have decided to flashback on a few events in no particular order.

This one was a key event for my photography. I had been using a Canon 20D camera over the last four years or so. It was a great camera, and I took some amazing shots with it, but over time I grew to know it's limitations all too well. The main problems to me were the flaky autofocus and crop sized sensor. I admired the 5D from afar for quite some time and envisioned myself going after the successor to it. Well, the successor came, and though an amazing camera, I wasn't blown away by the new features enough to sink that much cash into it. My decision therefore was to get a good condition used 5D instead.

Artificial light doesn't have to look artificial

Too many times I've heard the term "natural light photographer", and with it how much better it is than "artificial light". There seems to be this perception in some circles that any photog using a strobe is producing those boring staged shots where the lighting is more obviously fake than the painted backdrop. This does not have to be the case.

Light is light, and it's really as simple as that. Once you understand lighting direction and temperature you can make natural looking lighting conditions, or enhance what natural light is already there.

I was trying out my new Elinchrom El-Skyport triggers for my flash system, and decided to do a little project at the same time.

Venice Again

15mm Fisheye F/8 1/160th ISO 200 with a little fill flash.

Just wanted to post a few more shots from Venice beach. I really didn't get a chance to edit the ones I posted before very well and didn't do the trip justice. Also check out Rob's post on the trip in his blog(I'm the local reader Randy, I feel famous now :-)

Finding The Art In Photography

OK, it's no secret that I'm a technical geek when it comes to photography. I love to study all the how's and why's of the medium, and I shoot everything in manual because I like to have my hand in all the elements that make up the photo.

Lately though, I just haven't been getting the fulfillment from it that I once did. I think as I jump over more and more technical hurdles the truth of my goal with photography becomes clearer and clearer, that I want to take profound images. Something moving, something emotional, something thought provoking. Something art.

Dynamic Lighting Done Naturally(well, kind of)

50mm @ F/2.8 1/60th ISO200

For me, what really makes a portrait come to life is dynamic lighting. There's many ways to do this, but I wanted to touch on pulling it off using natural light only.

Getting Into the Flow

OK, I know I'm slower than a faucet drip getting these posts in, but I'm going to double my efforts to get that faucet flowing, even if I have no readers at this point.