Green Monster
Sometimes Connor gets tired of having his picture taken and just stares at me looking very annoyed. That is when his toy takes his place and I get to shoot something that doesn’t constantly move. Key light is through an umbrella and the blue edge light is bare.
Connor’s New Bed
“Surely there aren’t any monsters under my new bed!“
Connor is almost two and a half and he has a new brother on the way. I figured that it was about time to move him out of the crib and into a bed. I found some great plans and went to work. Modified slightly because I wanted a railing. It’s actually a little snug for a modern crib mattress, but it still works. I would make a few minor adjustments if I were to build it again.
All shots were taken with two off-camera flashes. I have lighting descriptions on various flickr pages: Naked Furniture, Monsters, Morning Light, B/W, Froggies.
Flaming Pumpkin Festival – Year Three
Welcome the the Third Annual Flaming Pumpkin Festival! It’s always nice to end Halloween with a nice flaming pumpkin…. or pumpkins.
My favorite shot of the night is the one above. He was a very small pumpkin with a very large mouth. Buy prints of him HERE. Makes a great gift!
I added one element to the photography this year. I had a wireless flash positioned to the right of the camera with an orange gel to keep the color nice and warm. I didn’t use it on every shot – see right. I also had a continuous light behind the jack-o-lanterns gelled blue to illuminate the smoke.
The pumpkins are filled with flammable materials and sprayed with generous portions of lighter fluid. – Don’t try this at home.
Year Two
Here’s last year’s victims! More pictures in this post: prestonpro.com/photoblog/2010/11/08/flaming-pumpkin-festival
Year One
My first ever flaming pumpkin. I loved this guy, he was HUGE. Here’s a multi-exposure shot from before the burning: prestonpro.com/photoblog/2010/01/09/great-pumpkin
Cacti
From a recent trip to the Seattle Arboretum. The shot above is available for sale at redbubble.com.
Happy PI Day – 3.14
Yesterday while brainstorming ideas for PI Day, the main image that kept coming to mind was π shaped bokeh. I had read the concept for creating the light shapes before, but had never tried it. The miniature cutting took a while, but worked great in the end. The lights are Christmas lights strung up over black fabric. The foreground lighting is a flash behind the subjects and to the left of camera with a reflector to the right. I used a Pentax 50mm f2.0 lens at 2.0 for every shot. Click on the smaller images to see them full size.
Hellboy and Wink
Wink and Hellboy were both shot with the Pentax 50mm 2.0. They are lit with a 20″ softbox to the right and a gold reflector just off camera on the left. The background is a blue painted poster board from another project. These guys have always been favorites of mine to shoot.
Salsa!
This is my first attempt at making salsa. I photographed the process with my Pentax 50mm 2.0 and lit with a wireless strobe bounce off the ceiling. It was pretty tasty stuff and fun to shoot while cutting. Click on any of the small photos to see them large.
Tragic Mix
I had my camera with me today when I came to work and had to grab a shot of the audio console while on break. The wireless strobe is laying just out of frame on the console pointing back toward the camera.
On FLICKR
Splash!
Trying my hand at splash photography. Flash is below the set firing straight up. The glass is a tasting glass from last year’s Pumpkin Beer Fest and the green object is a mini tiki pencil top. This turned out to be harder than it looked. Both the aim and timing are tough.
Flaming Pumpkin Festival
Welcome to The Second Annual Flaming Pumpkin Festival! Above are the before shots of “Stinky Pete” and “Scarface”. They both enjoyed long and fruitful lives before being burnt to a slightly charred medium well. They were carved on Halloween Eve and lasted three glorious nights before entertaining us with flames shooting out of their eyes and mouths.
Click on the smaller images to see full size.
Gas Works
This must be how I see Gas Works Park. (de)Faced fire hydrants and out of focus rusted towers. It’s one of my favorite places to hang out in Seattle. Great views of Lake Union and downtown. Not seen here… I used to come here to read when I lived nearby.
Beer
Traveling the world and drinking good beer is a good thing. There are so many interesting things to try that are hard to come by at home. Here in Washington State we’re lucky to have a great micro-brew industry, but today we’re going to look at a few foreign beers. My favorite shot is the one above. This is at a bar in Vancouver that specializes in Belgian beers. It was my first ever Hoegaarden. Below left is three half liters of Hoffbrauhaus‘ Witbier. Below right is from a bar in Amsterdam. Click on the small images to see them large.
More beer pictures on Flickr.
Making Chili
Here are some images from two chili making sessions. Each shot is a five exposure HDR. A couple of these became very popular on my Flickr page. The chili turned out very good and yes, the habanero batch was quite hot. Click on any of the thumbnails to view full size.
Wink
Wink, from Hellboy II, was part of my short-lived toy 365 project. The whole series can be seen on Flickr. All of the Wink shots are here. The shot above is my favorite of the series and was even featured on Seattlest.com. [Screengrab] The building in the background is the Westlake Tower and the image is a five exposure HDR.
Mini Tiki
My set of Mini Tiki pencil tops make a stop at work to be photographed at my workstation. The green guy is lit by a small green led keychain. I’ve used that light in almost all of my toy photography. Shot with a Pentax 50mm @ f2.0.
The Great Pumpkin
The Great Pumpking was picked out at Beringer Farms for Halloween last year. It was gigantic. This shot is a composite of two separate exposures, hand aligned and blended in photoshop. See the rest of the shots and subsequent burning here.
It’s a Long Way to the Top
Taken on February 23, 2009. This is the most “interesting”/popular shot that I’ve ever posted to Flickr. I shot at 18mm – f/5.6 for 269 seconds.
