WildOats

Well I don’t have anything too exciting to mention today. So I’ll keep it short. I’m still carrying on with my my photography stuff. Still taking pictures next to my window. It’s actually pretty cool, in that I can see how the light affects the subject as I move it around. Not that I know or understand what it all means, but it is pretty cool to see.

Here’s my latest examples of what I’ve been up to.

In this one I liked the simplicity of it. I liked that clean plain darkish background. I sprayed the flower with some water, to add some interest.

The second shot is of the same flower but from the front.

Another simplicity example. Nothing too distracting. The details are seen much better in a bigger sized photo tho.

Let me know what you think.

The other day I had an idea. After dealing and playing with light, and being confined to my light tent, it came to me. Maybe being trapped inside this small box, isn’t the best way to do things. I liked the idea of the tracing paper diffusing light. This evened the light out. It tamed down the highlights, and brought light into the shadows. This made things look better.

But using the box was kind of a pain. It was hard to place things properly in it. Sometimes, the sides were in the way. Sometimes the back was in the way. Sometimes the way the subject lined up with the box, it wasn’t right for the lens.

I thought why don’t I use the tracing paper, and just tape it to the window. That way, I’d be softening the light coming into the room. I set myself up as I did when I used the tent. But now I just pitched the tent. I set up a flower in a vase, and placed it next to the window with the tracing paper. But no box. The light was softened, but I still had shadows on the flower on the side opposite the window. To combat this, I put a white piece of paper opposite the window. This piece of paper now acted like a reflector, and brought light back into the shadows.

I think it worked out pretty good. I was free of the confines of the box. I had fairly decent light. I used a blank white wall as my backdrop. The way the light was coming into the room, the wall behind the flower was in shadow. So it kinda went dark. Overall I think this makes things easier. I think I’ll be playing around using this technique.

Here’s a few examples of what I came up with. See what ya think.

After a few days of working inside with the light tent, I decided to give that a rest. I wanted to spend some time outside again. I grabbed my camera and went on my usual walk. I didn’t have a plan in mind, so I was going to wing it. Just walk around and see what I could find to get a picture of.

The first thing I noticed was this old branch type thing. I think the landscapers placed it there originally years ago. Now it had this plant growing on it.

It even had a purple flower growing on it. Pretty cool for an old branch.

This next one is another mushroom fungus thingy. It was growing not too far away from this first picture.

I liked the color contrast between the shroom and the mulch background.

This last one is of my friend Iggy that has been MIA for a while. Not sure where he got to, but I haven’t seen him in a while.

I snapped a few pictures and then left him alone.

It’s been a few days since I’ve used my light tent. So I decided to give it another go. I gave up on using it outside. I came back inside and was using the tent inside. The problem inside is that the light is not so even. I did buy those desk lamps, and was using those. It did help, but it is still involved. The positioning of the subject inside the box does change how the light looks on the picture. Also, how you position the lights makes a difference too. So I’m still playing with all that and learning as I go.

Here’s a few examples of my efforts.

Sunsets….what’s not to like. Sometimes when I’m out for my walk, I happen to be out right around the time the sun sets. These are a few I have gathered. See what ya think.

I liked how the clouds looked in this shot. I also liked the contrast of the pinkish light next to the blue sky.

What drew me to this one was the firey sun falling below the horizon. Also the colors in this were great orange, purple, blue, black and some pinks.

This one gave me that….. I’m on vacation with a cool breeze relaxing at the beach feel. On a bigger pic the colors really reflect nicely in the water.

This one is all about the orange of the sky. It was also cool that the small puffs of cloud where there too. They reflected a pink-purple which offset the orange.

Ok, so was I using my light tent outside, and didn’t like how the wind was still messing with me. So I decided to go back inside and try using lights on the light tent. I didn’t want to get a whole elaborate setup, so I decided on little desk lights. I bought 2 small desk lights that have the bendable neck thing. That way I could adjust the light in different ways.

I brought the lights home and placed one on each side of the tent. I also had another light shine down on the top of the box. So now I had light coming in from all 3 sides of the box. This allows me to have more control over the whole thing. No more wind, and I can position the lights how I want them. Despite all this new found freedom, it still takes some playing around with.

Right now my biggest problem seems to be positioning of the subject inside the box. I’ve been using these flowers I bought. And the way they grow it sometimes makes it difficult to get them set up in a good way. Either it gets too close to the back, or the stem is long and gets in the way of the sides or wants to come out in the front of the box. It’s all just logistics, but still a pain. I don’t think I’ve grasped the whole idea well enough yet. But I am making some strides in the mean time.

Here are some examples of my efforts.

How did I do?

Sometimes learning comes in little itty bitty baby steps. Which I guess is better than having to take a step backwards every time you go one step forward. Anyway, that’s how I’m feeling lately with this light tent of mine.

Up until now, I was using the tent in a way that’s not really taking full advantage of it. The box has 3 sides where the light can come in. But I set the box up next to a window. So in affect, light was only coming in from one of the 3 sides. The inside of the box is white, so light does reflect and bounce around in there. But that still doesn’t eliminate all shadows, and the light was kinda uneven.

So I had the idea of moving the tent to my balcony. That way the light would be brighter, as opposed to being inside. Also, I’d be getting light to come into the box from all 3 sides. So here I go. I bring the thing onto my balcony. I set it up and look inside. I did get better light in it. I do have a roof on my balcony so I wasn’t getting too much light into the top window of the box, but the light was much more even. I was happy about that. So then I put the flowers back into the light tent, and tried to see how it would work out.

Well the lighting was a bit better, but still not as good as I would like. I guess the next step would be to drag the whole thing down to street level, and be able to have light come in better through the top too. But I wasn’t up to doing that just yet. The other thing that I noticed was the wind. AGAIN!!! Even though the box is shielded on 3 sides, the wind was still able to come in, and move the flowers around. What a battle with this wind.

So I did manage to get some shots of the flowers. See what you think.

The white background seemed nice. I also thought the lighting was more even. Not too bad overall.

On these the lighting seems more patchy. I think it had to do with the positioning of the flowers in the box. It was harder to get them in a good spot inside.

Overall, it was a step in the right direction, but still not what I was looking for. Live and learn I guess. I guess bringing the thing downstairs would be better, but I’d STILL be at the mercy of the wind. I think I’ll go back inside and get some lights to use. I’ll give that a whirl and see how it goes. Stay tuned for the up date.

A few weeks ago I decided to go to a local park. I haven’t been there in a while, so I thought it would be cool to go back and check things out. It’s a decent sized park. It has some lakes, some areas to BBQ, some areas to just walk around, some areas to rent those pedal boats, stuff like that.

I brought my camera along in case I might find something to photograph. I totally forgot about this area that has horses. So I got my camera and went to see what I could get. Actually there were more horses there than I had expected. There’s a fenced in area, and the ponies got to walk around and graze. Kinda cool really.

Well I picked the wrong time of day to go. It was mid day-ish. So the sun was high in sky, causing harsh dark shadows and big time highlights. Oh well what can you do.

It must have been their lunch time, because most of the horses were just eating. Here’s a pretty white one lunching.

The white color of this horse made it difficult to get a good exposure. If you expose for the white, the rest of the picture comes out dark. If you expose for the grass, the white comes out over exposed.

Here’s a darker horse enjoying his lunch break.

I don’t think he wanted to share his lunch with me tho.

Here’s another set of ponies grazing.

This one had a mane and tail I don’t think I’ve seen before. It looked kinda crimped or something. Odd no?

And I think these two just got back from their honeymoon.

So that was my trip to visit the ponies.

Wow I can’t believe it’s been so long since I’ve written anything here. I guess time has gotten away from me for a bit. Not much has been going on. I just got side tracked and haven’t gotten around to posting for a while.

Anyway, the last time I did post, I was writing about the light tent. Well I did construct the box. I have been playing with it also. It does do what it’s supposed to do, but it does take some messing around with.

So what have I done with it so far? Well I took the box, and brought it close to one on my windows. Since it has the tracing paper on three sides, it allows diffuse light to come it. I allowed of the tracing paper sides to face the window, and allow light into the box. I then put some flowers into the box and started photographing.

Here’s the first few examples I managed to get.

In this pic, I liked the lighting, it seems fairly even. I also liked the idea of having a nice clean background. Overall not to bad for my first attempts.

Then I took that flower out, and decided to try another one. This was a change of color and flower type. I wanted to change it up a bit.

In this pic, I again liked the simple clean background. But the lighting somehow wasn’t all that great. It seemed patchy and shadowy. I think it’s mostly because the light is only coming in from one side. The inside of the box is white, so the light does reflect back and forth, but I guess it’s not enough to compensate for the fact that it’s mostly coming from one side.

For my next trick…… I’ll try using this thing on my balcony. I’m thinking I’ll get more even light. Hopefully more light will come in from both sides as well as the top, and even things out.

So until next time, that’s been my dealings with the home made light tent.

Being a pretty fresh newbie when it comes to photography, there’s a lot of things I don’t know. So it’s always cool when I learn how to do something new. Or learn how something works. Or even when I learn about something I never even thought about.That’s exactly what happened to me while I was surfing the intra webs recently. I came upon something I never even thought about or knew existed. I learned about something called a light tent or light box. I never heard of that before, but when I read about it….I had an aha!!! moment.

So what’s a light tent? Well it’s something that does a few things. The first thing it does, is it allows you to control the light falling on the object you’re photographing. The second thing it does, is it allows you to control the background that is behind the object you’re photographing. Ever see those pics of things you can buy on places like ebay? How the lighting is all nice and they have a nice clean white background? Well they took those pics using a light tent.

The idea is that you have a box, and have some sort of diffusing material between the object and light to soften the light, and have a nice clean background. The other part that I loved about this article I found was that it’s a DIY kinda thing. Which was cool, since I didn’t want to shell out a ton of money on this light tent, and then find out that I hate using it.

So I read the article and decided to try it out. I went to an office supply store and bought a cardboard box. I then bought a pack of tracing paper, and a roll of white paper. The cardboard box is the actual box part of the light box. The tracing paper is the diffusing material, and the white paper is the background. I cut large holes in on 3 sides of the box, leaving only a 1.5 inch boarder on the sides. So the center part of each side is cut out, and only the 1.5 in boarder was left on each side. This way, the box can still maintain it’s shape, but has huge holes on each side for light to get through. Then I taped the tracing paper over the holes. This will diffuse the light that will fall on the object being photographed. Then I tapped the white paper to the back for the background.

I then put some flowers into the box, and tried the thing out. It actually does work. I’m stilling playing with it, and learning how it all works. But I have to says it’s pretty cool. There’s still some tweaking I have to get done, but I think I’ll have some fun with this new toy. Here’s a sample of my attempts.

What do you think?