PBPhoto

Well I haven't posted many pics of this little one. I've been trying to get ideas on posing a little baby. I like this one. I have a 285HV in an umbrella high above with a silver autoshade reflecting into her face from the floor in front of her. I also have a bare 540EZ to camera left giving a bit more definition to that side.

I did a bit of post-processing on this one to remove some dried food etc. I use the gimp. It is a photoshop-like tool that is free. I like that. It is not a complete replacement, but for most people I think it is more than enough of an editor. I look forward to the gimp including adjustment layers. So first I used the healing tool to clear up her skin. Next I duplicated that layer and added gaussian blur. I applied a layer mask and revealed the sharp eyes beneath the blurred layer.

Please give a critique if you have time.

Here are a few shots that I made in the Smithsonian Air & Space Museum. This was my first time seeing DC. I remember having a huge photobook of the museum when I was a kid. I would stare at those aircraft and spaceships for hours and think how cool it would be to be there. So thankfully I had a chance. We only had about half a day and that is not nearly enough to take it in but just looking around was great. We also caught a little of the Art Museum as well as the Natural History Museum and the Smithsonian Castle.

I only have two lenses: the kit-lens is a 28-135IS and a 50 1.8. I chose to leave the 50 on the whole time since we were mostly inside. I was able to get really sharp results @ ISO 800, f1.8. The light level is typically very low in the museums.

Color balance is also a challenge because there is a mix of natural light through windows and various combinations of incandescent, fluorescent, and led's. I found myself switching between incandescent and cloudy all day with good results.

Please give a critique if you have time.

I am very happy with these. Have tried this before without the success because I didn't balance the ambient very well. The snooted source is very harsh if you are working very far above the ambient. So you need to use the ambient to fill in the shadows. I found 2 stops to be too much so these were like 1 1/3 or 1 2/3 stops down for the ambient.

I had made a cardboard snoot covered in gaffers tape. What I don't like about that one is that you are not able to change the size of the opening. These are done with the foam snoot. Nice because it is inexpensive and infinitely configurable. So I used an opening about half the size of the 285 flash head.

I also really like how the grain of the wood pops out with the flash.

So go out and try some flash photography!