[olavf]

The trick to popping is to get enough interest in the 640x pic to make the reader pop it. I know that tends to be my downfall – my building interior pic this week is a good example of that IMO.

/and happy belated birthday miller, and congrats on this weeks contest

[olavf]

sweet!

Post it when you find out 🙂

[olavf]

I’m sure this will be plenty Haloweenie (Halloweny? Halloweeny?)

uh-uh. Even I have my limits…

[olavf]

Thanks olavf. In the few minutes since my last post I came to the same conclusion (again). Plus this one looks like she is faking it – which, of course, she was. In my phantom post, I wrote something about our conversation before taking these pics. It was pretty cool. She’s growing up.

/I was able to snap two pics with that smoke in her lips. Then a breeze pushed some smoke into her eyes and nose and she was done. 🙂

Very cool. Double bonus that she wanted away from the thing 😉

If it’s any consolation, choosing my third pic drove me nuts tonight. I waffled between the ‘Stockman Pub’ for several hours before going with it. My other options were this one:
http://65.78.140.207/TF/farktography/091007.monochrome/yosemite-0644_sm_web.JPG
or one of these:
http://65.78.140.207/TF/farktography/091007.monochrome/broken_glass-1969_sm_web.JPG
http://65.78.140.207/TF/farktography/091007.monochrome/girl_bw_2190_sm_web.JPG
which I decided to save for upcoming contests.

[olavf]

Couple B-sides –

http://photos.imageevent.com/ulle17/fark/Barn_6426b.jpg
http://photos.imageevent.com/ulle17/fark/Smokes_5646b.jpg

Man. Now that I look at this smoking one, I think I like it better. Aaarrgh. Should I swap it out?

I’d leave it. The one you used gets the mood you were going for (I think) without pushing peoples boundaries too hard.

[olavf]

My vote is to keep it B&W/grayscale, and maybe do a color-toned contest down the road.

In fact, something along the lines of a ‘Great-Grandma’s Photos’ contest sounds fun – take an old-timey looking photo.

[olavf]

For the small stuff, we use a home-built kit made from PVC tubing and drop-ceiling fluorescent panels. We use the lights from our set, but I’ve seen them used with shop-lights (halogen or incandescent) also. The only disadvantage is that it’s not portable, but when I build MKII I’ll probably design that in somehow.

[olavf]

shoot. that reminds me that I actually have to decide on what pics to use 😛

[olavf]

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]

[olavf]

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

[olavf]

lol! Awesome.

[olavf]

AFAIK all that stuff will break if you change over. As a compromise for myself, I have a section of my gallery dedicated to farktography contests – sorted by contest & date.

Does your image host have a free service too? FSM doesn’t eat a lot of bandwidth so if you can keep your stuff for free, you shouldn’t have any problems.

[olavf]

So even a caveman can do it?

[olavf]

I run gallery2 on my own server and it wasn’t that difficult to set up. But, I’ve got “some” Linux knowledge. I haven’t looked into it, but I think many hosts can help you with it?

[olavf]

well, yeah 😉

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