No Salt

It’s Saturday night and all is quiet… Too quiet and that’s what is irritating me for some reason. Nothing much is happening and that means not much progress is being made. The world has taken something out of me this week but rather than complain, I’ll try recapping my activities instead.

I ordered another flash on Friday and took some more demolition photos under bad midday light. This whole week has been slow as far as photographs go but I do have some ideas sloshing around in my brain for next week even though the new flash will probably not make it until Thursday or Friday.

I could use another flash (radio) trigger but I’m thinking of upgrading, so it will probably end up being a bit longer before I buy anything new since I don’t want to add stuff I’m not going to use going into the future. I’m hoping to test a few of the new flash triggers by Radio Popper and Pocket Wizard soon to see if I can settle on a clear favorite. Of course the reality is that you can only use what exists at the time you want to use it even though a lot of tempting things are in the works. New gear is always exciting but often more of a want or a wish than an actual needed item to get the job done.

On a more mundane level, I also need a few more reflectors. I have been using the plastic sheets that yard signs and store displays often made of. That material (Coroplast) seems to hold up better for me than foam core board which is also popular to use as a reflector. Coroplast can be wiped off when it gets dirty and is easy to cut like Foamcore material. You can also use it to make gridded snoots for your shoe mount flashes. I think I’m going to need a few more pieces of it for my outdoor photos next week. It’s pretty handy stuff and it is inexpensive when compared to the other options like collapsible reflectors.

David Hobby has a new Strobist Boot Camp assignment (sbc2assign4) going on right now over at www.strobist.blogspot.com so I am going to try throwing some effort in that direction because it is a lot of fun and a chance to interact with some other photographers as well as actually learning a new trick or two. The subject this time is “Transportation.” There are also some cool prizes for the winning shot to motivate you so go check it out.

Back To Basic (Training)

David Hobby is running Bootcamp II over at www.strobist.com right now so I've been trying my best to follow along and not make too big of an ass out of myself (hey I really am trying).

The idea is basically a simple cover shot using a couple of flashes. I already miss the nikon flash I borrowed from James but I hate borrowing things so I guess I will have to buy another flash as soon as I am able to afford it. The nikons can be turned way down to 1/64th power which makes working close (as in food shots) pretty nice. I picked up a little piece of plexiglass for this project. I wanted a bigger chunk to give me more working room but those were four times more than the price of the one I did get.

The girls made pesto last night and I was going to take photos of that too but I got started on another project instead. I did take a setup shot of this but it was so busy with junk as to be pretty useless. I'll work on that in the future (right). The background is made with a strobe firing through a diffusion panel I (we) made out of ripstop nylon. The super secret frame is made out of a garment hanging rack I bought at a large Texas based retail store. It works pretty well and even has wheels on it which often get in the way when you are trying to cram a lot of things into a small space like I was here. The front light is a snooted flash with a grid made out of plastic sign material.

The title "Salt & Pepper To Taste" sounds like something David Hobby might be fond of saying, though it did not occur to me at the time I posted this on flickr.