Nakumatt Junction Roundabout

So I finally got a camera I had been waiting for for quite a while and decided to test it out last night. Thing is I don't live in the safest of places and my insurance hasn't taken effect. All the same, I really wanted to try out some long exposure shots so out I went equipped with my Sony A99 and my Sigma 12-24mm. It was about 7:30 PM so not too late to be out and about. I walked to Nakumatt Junction, stood on one edge of the round about and took a few 20 second shots. This is the one I ended up liking the most. I think I shot it at 12mm, F10, 20 sec exposure, ISO 50. I think I oughta try this before the sky gets too dark. I would like that exposed just a bit more.

A few minutes with Kagwe Mungai

This weekend saw me shoot the rather interesting and talented Kagwe Mungai. His manager, a friend of mine, called me up for the work and I figured it would be fun. Thing is I had no idea what the venue looked like and I thought it would be just Kagwe Mungai. I'm always shooting still lifes so I didn't mind shooting people for a change. We got there at about an hour to sunset so my first few photos would try utilise the sun. Turns out I only had a few minutes because not everyone was around but here is what I got outta the few minutes I had with the sun....
The suns setting quick, so we pop some hay stacks between the camera and the sun and have him sit on them. we get this...

That was shot with at about 16mm hence the distortion. Not bad for starters. I like the lens flare though it made it impossible to focus seeing the sun was in my eye. This is a two light set up if you count the sun. There was a speedlight fired into a reflective umbrella at top camera left. I liked the set up so I shot a few more.

Well, the sun went down and I had little ambient light to work with. Sad panda. Anyway, we decided to go back to where the hay was housed and see if I could get a good shot or two there. With pretty much the same flash setting, we get...

Just for the sake of it, I put them in the grass with him playing a guitar. This one shot involved three lights. the bulb you see, another flash top camera left and another lighting the grass in the background.

These are just a few shots that I liked but there were quite a number that day. Anyway, till next time...

Lighting a Heineken Bottle

Today I was learning how to light a bottle properly. For Rontgen to know what to do in case I have to do it for a client. Prefer to refine things before I have to do the actual work. Anyway, I had tried this with a Jack Daniels bottle before here, and I wanted to see if I could do it a bit different with a Heineken bottle this time round.

I started with one light to see what it would look like and thenbuild on that. This is what it looked like.

Not bad for starters. I concluded I may only need two lights for this setup. Also needed a background that didn't involve the walls of my apartment. So I throw in a white sheet of manilla and throw the speedlite behind it. I gets this.

Sure I killed the plastic container it was standing on but i thought this was also pretty good for just one light. So let's try both sets of speedlites now. One below and one behind the bottle.

Better I think. But I want to kill the overexposed bottle at the bottom and get rid of the grey and white area distinction. I'll solve this by lowering my shooting position to the level of the container it's sitting on and increase the flash behind the paper to give me a completely white background. [Looking at this now. I think I had already thrown in the softbox above.]

So now we've lowered the camera position and changed the look of the bottle just a bit. think I prefer this perspective in fact. Feels like I'm looking up to the mighty Heineken. Anyway. I didn't like the shine at the bottom of the previous one so I tried killing the flash with cards so that only a little light got into the bottle. Worked enough for me though I intend to add green ice to the setup so a little bit of overexposure at the bottom won't hurt. Now we wait for the green ice and the beads of sweat from an ice cold heineken. No one drinks look warm beer....

(A few days later)

So I tried the green ice cubes. Turns out I made them too dark. I will try this shot again but with lighter ice cubes. Perhaps made out of lime juice and not green paint. Here's the shot. I don't like it. Let's see what the lime juice option will look like on Friday.

Blue & Orange

We start out my first post with my most recent photo to date. Here you will find only the photos that I like, and only my photos. Though a lot of these are going to be guided by David Hobby's blog where I find most if not all my inspiration. This here was shot with my soon to be retired Sony A700. This was lit with a total of three speedlites flashes. One to the left, another to the right and one above in a soft box. 

This here was shot on the same day. The study was "specular highlights". Which in layman's terms just means you want to control how harsh the reflection on a surface is. Too harsh and a photo looks ugly. I think I like how this came out. Soft reflections on the shiny stuff gives a better photo.

This was a simple two flash setup. One with a full CTB gel (Colour Temperature Blue) and a bare flash. 

*A gel is a sheet of thin plastic film you put over your flash to change the colour of a scene. In this case I changed the scene to blue.

This is the same setup but with the second flash gelled with a CTO (Colour Temperature Orange) gel.

Now the same but with the flashes with CTO gels instead of a mix of both CTB and CTO.

And a mix of both gels below...One CTO flash firing into the background and another CTB firing straight down into the shot glass.

The same without the blue now.