10-07-09 – Farktography Classic: Black and White 2

At first I thought I had no usable input along this line. Then I realized that it wasn’t all that long ago (10-12 years) that I helped contribute to the delinquency of a few teenage girls. Her parents slept resonably well. At least well enough that they didn’t wake up when I would climb the trellace, tap on her window, and have her sneak out. They even had a car sensor in the driveway that would sound a chime in the house. All that meant was I was parking on the street.

/I could give you a whole list of things to beware of.
//Or her a whole list of pointers
///Like this protip: Don’t sneak out when the weather calls for snow.

Heh. I’m not so old that I don’t remember my shenanigans 😉 There’s a reason, for example, that the kids rooms are in the back of the house…

U-Man – Do you mind if I borrow your mood idea? Your pictures of your daughter made me think of my husband (I know that came out really wrong, but here I go). He has long hair, shoulder length, and he also has that “look” that your daughter was giving. Even if only practice, I convinced him to let me try. He already has a picture sort of like that for his profile on a couple of places, but I think I can make it better now. He probably won’t let me post him, but it should be fun practice anyway.

I don’t want to be stealing other people’s ideas so I thought I’d ask.

U-Man – Do you mind if I borrow your mood idea?

I don’t know how to answer this without seeming pompous. Yeah. I mean, no, I don’t mind at all. It’s not my idea. It just is. Go spend 30 minutes googling ‘black and white photography’. You’ll see what I mean.

Shit. Everything I do has been done before. I spend at least an hour every week looking at other people’s photos. It’s a good thing to do late at night.

Just yesterday I was looking at this photo blog of some dude up in Alaska. Sacredartichoke or something silly like that. Anyway, he had a pic of raindrops in a puddle. The text that went with it discussed the ugly mess just outside of the photo frame. That – along with this b&w theme – and the fact that it is rainy and yucky today -and many other things – made an idea crystallize in my head. I have often thought about “good light” for a photo. This implies that there is “bad light”. Well, today the light is “bad”. It is dreary. It has a sad mood. I just spent two hours down in the dingy, old, worn-out, industrial part of town taking photos that I hope will induce some sort of emotion in black and white.

I’m rambling. Go take pics of your moody hubby. 🙂

I’ve heard of that Sacredartidude I hear he sits out in the frigid cold with a camera for hours on end.

Something wrong with that guy.

Don’t sell yourself short U-man. You may not think you are original but you have a unmistakable style to your photography, and a great eye.

Thanks guys. Part of me feels like I know what I’m doing. Another part recognizes I’m flying by the seat of my pants and learning as I go. Whatever, I’m enjoying myself.

Came here to give another example of the b&w tool or channel mixer for black and white photos. sleeping suggested it and I like it. I went to the old part of town today and took some shots. I plan on repeating some of them in bright sunlight with distinct shadows to check out the difference in ‘feel’.

Anyway, here is a cool old building front I found. The first one with medium red saturation is good. But I think I like the last one with the red saturation bumped up to give the arrow whiteness.

Original –

Cropped, sharpened, brightness/contrast adjusted –

Medium red tones with b&w tool –

Low red saturation with b&w tool –

High red sautration with b&w tool –

And Justkat, thanks for the vote of confidence. But I see through your kind words to the fiendish JINX that lies within. 🙂

Aw, no man. I wouldn’t do that. What would be the point anyway… you could probably take all the votes of the rest of the top ten and add ’em together and still beat ’em! heehee

Anyway, I’ve got some pix I’ve feeling reasonably good about. Of course, that probably means I’ll barely get the votes I “need” to get maintain my “average votes per entry” 😛 We shall see.

Clouddancer: for pics of your hubby, instead of using the flash you might try a couple of things:
First, I suck at teh flash. Mostly because I’ve only got the on-camera one right now, and it never seems to give me anything remotely like what I want. Generally, too many ‘hot spots’ in the picture. Some cameras you can dial down the flash, but that tends to not give me great results either.

Personally, I’ve got an el-cheapo 3-light incandescent kit from SV that I bought online, but you can replicate some of it with some tricks. Lowes sells 300W 4300K bulbs that you can fit into their clip-on aluminum shoplight jobbies. I can come up with some pics if need be, but they should be apparent. Just make sure the base is rated for the wattage. That’ll give you a fair amount of light and some ability to play with lighting angles, etc. You can clip them to chairs or whatever’s handy (and mobile) to get the lights you want. The important thing though, is that you diffuse the light, or you’re going to get the same hot spots you did with the flash, though possibly not as bad – Unless you want the harder lighting for effect (I do that sometimes). If you can use things to bounce the light off to give an indirect light you’ll get much softer edges. My kit has white reflective umbrellas that I can either bounce, or shine through to get the effect I want., but with a bit of playing around you can probably do something similar with any bright surface – the walls may even work.

Most important, though, is that you’re really, really, really going to want to use a tripod. The lighting is much more subtle in these environments, and because you’re dealing with fixed lighting, it’s going to make life much easier. (The more light you have available, the less you’ll need the ‘pod, but it’s still good to have handy

Those are great for doing small-scale setups. This guy http://65.78.140.207/TF/farktography/090930.colors/emtevee-2154_sm.JPG, for example, was done in my light box – though we built or own and use the studio lights – plus you can change the lighting angles better.

This http://www.amazon.com/KT900-3-Light-1250-Watt-Mini-Boom-Kit/dp/B0000AJB80/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1254796629&sr=8-1 is the light kit I have, and it’s not bad, though I wish it put out more light. Unfortunately that’s not going to happen without upgrading to a strobe (and I’m not there yet).

Home Depot doesn’t sell bright enough lights – at least not locally. If you buy the dishes there, your local camera store should have proper bulbs though – and really, don’t exceed the socket rating. That’s a really, really good way to start a fire.

More than anything else though, get a tripod. You’ll be amazed at the difference, especially in lower lighting. Figure, the lower the lighting, the longer the exposure time. The longer the exposure time, the more you breathe, or just vibrate. Your subject actually isn’t quite as susceptible to tiny movements as you are, if you’re holding the camera.

And yeah, the lower the lighting the less crisp the colors will be, because you need that light bouncing off the subject to create the color.[/url]

Late last night I typed up a post and would swear I posted it. But it’s not here. Maybe I just forgot to click ‘submit’. But it had a photo of a kid smoking and maybe it got deleted for offensive or illegal content. If it is the latter, I can deal with that without whining and go about my business. If it is the former (my mistake) I might re-post it.

Anybody have info?

Like I said in an earlier post – I wanted to do a photo that bothered the viewer. But I didn’t want to cross ‘the line’ of acceptability.

I never saw it.

I doubt it would be baleeted from here,(esp w/out a pm from a mod) so repost.