Meet the Perrys

I had the pleasure of shooting with the Perrys yesterday. I'm a sucker for casual lifestyle family portraits, so when I found out I had the opportunity to do them, I was stoked! Their son Luke is adorable, he was so smiley the entire time.






All shot with my favorite lens, D700 + 85mm 1.4 with natural light.

Modeling in China

Modeling in China, originally uploaded by blister gone.

Eric has decided to quit his job, quit photography, quit Oregon, and move to China to do modeling.

"Opportunity comes a knocking, and I'm a going." says Eric. "I'm mostly excited about going to McDonald's overseas to try some FANtastic!"

Fan, which means rice in Chinese, replaces the standard buns on the burger, giving it an Asian flare. It is a play on words.

Ha. Ha. Ha.

"This particular picture of me shows the deep side of me, because it shows that I know how to read. The reading of my empty hands are symbolic in that I really don't know how to read, but only pretending."

The Chinese characters directly above Eric are the characters for Read Art. The picture as a whole is a paradox.

Eric will be moving to China next month to teach modeling and bring bungee jumping to the masses.

"It's good for the kids and their pets."

Penny at Nostrana

Penny at Nostrana, originally uploaded by blister gone.

Had the pleasure of having dinner with Joe, Sammy, Penny, Vinh, Nikki, and my partner in crime, Audrey at Nostrana the other day. Fantastic food by the way, but that's not nearly as fun as photographing Penny.

She is the sweetest baby ever, just look at that adorable face! These are more or less casual shots, but the light was nice and the subject was cute so I can't complain.

Doing portraits of babies is really prompting me to get back to the basics. I need to stop being so lazy with Auto ISO on my new camera - 1/80th sometimes is just not fast enough for moving babies. I can handhold sharp shots at 1/80th, but it's definitely not a one size fits all setting!

Audrey at The Nines

Audrey, originally uploaded by blister gone.

Our friends are in town this weekend, and they just happened to be staying at the Nines, a place we've been looking at for wedding photos. We ended up going up a bit to check it a bit.

We went into the library, and I immediately thought of a shot done by Parker Pfister, one of my favorite wedding/portrait photographers. I had Audrey be my wonderful model on the leather couch for me. It turned out quite good!

Natural/dim light, 35mm f/2, ISO 6400.

My Super Heroes

My Super Heroes, originally uploaded by blister gone.

Well, it's been a while since I posted. A couple of my friends have asked me about how to do macro/product photography. Naturally, I pointed them to the Strobist Macro photography entry. Not having tried it myself, I decided to give it a go tonight.

The only difference here is, I have a black background, and slightly more control over my light in the lightbox. Of course, I was too lazy to actually construct one with a cardboard box, so I just winged it.

I used the black cloth that was used to ship my drobo in as the backdrop. I used tissue paper to surround the set so light will bounce around inside the area and provide even fill light. However, I didn't want that much fill light because of the nature of the scene. So I grabbed a piece of foam that was used to package my computer case in, and put it on top of a couple CD/DVD spindles for height. Then I used another tissue paper on top of that to soften it out a bit more. Then aimed my sb-800 down on one of the foam piece openings and fired a couple shots. That's it!

Here are the setup shots:

Maisie

Maisie, originally uploaded by blister gone.

Maisie was a wonderful model and a pleasure to shoot. She is fun, playful, nice, and single. I'm not sure where the line starts, but you better find out and get in it!

Shot with D700 + 85mm 1.4 with a sb-800 on camera left with the dome diffuser. I tried to cover up the flare with my hand, but I was unable to block all of it. Overall it looks pretty cool though.

Make up was done by Audrey.

Mason

Mason, originally uploaded by blister gone.

Come on ladies, how can you resist? Mason is a MD... Master Director of Human Resources. He herds sheepish people like you and me onto the road of success.

He is seriously one of the nicest people I've met; his kind, gentle, and playful spirit really shines through.

Shot with D700 + 85 1.4, natural light.

By the way, I've always thought the Nikon 85mm 1.4 to be not very sharp at f/1.4. Boy was I wrong. I think my previous attempts at using this lens were full of fail due to insanely low light, crazy high iso (talking iso 4000+), and barely passable shutter speeds (1/80s). Shooting in broad daylight at 1.4 was a treat.