Chasing Alice

It's the middle of October and I'm currently thinking about all things make-believe.



Halloween will soon be here and I am planning to spend most of the day taking photos around my neighborhood. First there is a dog parade, then a kid’s parade and finally an adult costume party after dark. It's usually a blast and only a couple of blocks from home.


The other day I got a call asking if I would like to take some photos of a building that use to house a steel foundry. The building is being torn down (right now) so the question required some fairly quick thinking (or lack of thinking) on my part. I went over for a few hours on Saturday to scope it out and discovered that they are pretty far along from the look of things. I was still able to find some subjects that I found interesting and got several good action shots of the iron workers cutting up large chunks of steel into smaller chunks of steel that would fit on a trailer to be hauled away for scrap.


I may go back again if there is anything left standing by next Tuesday which is the first chance I will have. I'm not sure what else there is to photograph at the foundry but maybe the light will be different or I will be in a different frame of mind. The weather report is for clear skies and warm temperatures which is also perfect for one last kayak outing. I hate to pass that up but maybe we will get lucky and have two good days of weaher in a row.


I also need to find some time to work out a few lighting details for taking portrait photos of people in costumes. I need something better to carry my lighting gear in when going on location. The foundry had a fine covering of sooty sand and dust inside and coal black mud made out of the same stuff on the outside. You wouldn't want to set anything down without taking some plastic to put down first. I got plenty dirty just walking around. I need that Pelican case!


I took some location photos last week that turned out to be a disaster because something was triggering my el cheapo radio triggers and causing the flash to go off at random. Then the other day when I was taking demolition photos one of the receivers fell on the ground and split open, spilling the battery out on the ground. If it had been any darker I never would have found the think in the three inches of black sooty casting sand I was standing in.


I’m hoping to order a better set of radio remotes next week. They are still the bargain variety but operate on a different frequency which is supposed to make them more reliable and have greater range. The bad news is that they will not show up for two weeks, too late to be of any use at the events I am going to this month. The old set of triggers is about toast and I can’t afford the more expensive Pocket Wizards right now. I’m hoping to buy two transmitters and four receivers to give myself at least one spare of each and with two transmitters, I will be able to fire the camera and the flashes at the same time on different channels. I’m not sure why I would want to do that right now but there must be some reason. Anyway spares are a good idea, especially with budget equipment.


I also had some visitors today but that story will have to wait. It involves men in suits and a parrot.

Head In The Clouds

Well maybe not in the clouds but somewhere close. After being sick for a week, I’m beginning to feel human again… and just in time to go back to work.

I spent a few days in Washington DC and Annapolis Maryland while I was on vacation this week. I came home to one day of beautiful weather followed by a day of constant rain.

I’m still in sleep mode, or trying to sleep mode. I guess I am a little more rested than when the week started but I don’t feel like I got much accomplished, at least nothing of lasting significance. In life we seem to spend a lot of time running around and not getting anything done. I took a bunch of photos while I was out of town but nothing seemed to stick. I guess I was just off my game and not feeling so great. Maybe in a few weeks I will have a different perspective on things. In the meantime I decided to move everything from my laptop to the backup drive so I will use that as an excuse to make a fresh start (at something).

Life In The Fast Lane

As planned, I got together with the Strobist St. Louis group on Sunday and spent the afternoon learning some new things about lighting and taking photographs of cars. I also got to play with some CyberSync flash triggers, which worked really well with the Alien Bee studio flash units provided by Ariana, who put together the whole meet-up and had three cars there for us to photograph. She also arranged for her favorite model Zaea to pose with the cars because cars and models seem to go pretty well together. For my part I was mostly there as a fly on the wall and anxious to learn as much as I could from everyone there. I tried to stay out of the way and not trip over any light stands.

As it turns out, taking photos of black cars in bright afternoon light is not so easy and we retreated into the garage where we could control things a little better until the sun got lower in the sky. Ariana brought along something called a PLM or Parabolic Light Modifier, which is for lack of a better description an 84″ diameter shiny umbrella which doubles as a death star if you happen to look directly at it when the flash goes off. Even the tungsten modeling light on the flash unit lit things up like a night game at a baseball stadium. Ariana brought enough lights, stands and reflectors to mount a small expedition and it was nice to have a lot of options and more choices for how to set up the lights.

I had a lot of fun and came away with a bunch of new ideas about working with lighting and keeping all the gear organized. You can look at the photographs from this meet-up by going to www.flickr.com and doing a search on this tag – stls_sept09

I went to work on Monday and caught a cold which has me feeling pretty miserable at the moment and makes it hard to be very productive as far as editing photos or writing anything that makes much sense. Some more aspirin and orange juice and then I’m off to bed.

External Validation

I finally heard back from the folks at http://www.istockphoto.com/ and it appears that my submissions were in fact up to stock snuff. So now I will be combing thru the archives over here looking for the one half of one percent of shots that may be suitable for stock images and submitting those a few at a time while hopefully adding a few more to the collection as I go along. I don’t know if it will amount to much but at least now I can further confuse people I meet on the streets by telling them that I shoot stock photography. “Huh?”

No new photography adventures this week (so far) but I am planning on going to a meetup of the St. Louis version of the strobist group from http://www.flickr.com/ and meeting some of those colorful charactors in person. We are going to be shooting some high end sports cars which is something I had never really thought about doing before so I should be able learn something in the process. I’m hoping to try out some new lighting gear while I am there.

The gang over at http://www.adventurecanoe.com/ is also getting together this weekend for a quick float trip, so that made for a tough choice between paddling canoes or photographing cars. I’m hoping I will still get to go camping (and canoeing) sometime in October for a little fall color action out in the wild woods of the Missouri Ozarks. I’m hoping for an Indian Summer this year.

The Strobist Bootcamp II, Assignment IV, winner is supposed to be announced over at http://www.strobist.blogspot.com/ on Monday 09/28/09. I’m curious to see the results on that one which was on the subject of transportation. I’ve had a good time taking photographs in the process of doing those assignments.

Right now I’m looking for some sort of bag or case to throw my light stands, adaptors and flash units in. I seem to have a lot of little boxes and nothing really fits or is easy to access all those small parts and connectors. Of course there is no budget for new cases, bags or backpacks (as usual) so I’m a little stumped for what to use. The lightstands and umbrellas fit in an old baseball bat case I found for $2 but it’s all the other junk like cords, chargers, batteries, filters, clamps and flashes that I can’t figure out what to do with. I think I need something like a tackle box with lots of little compartments. A waterproof Pelican case would work well since I like to venture outdoors with all this junk every now and then.