My Christmas photos

I have been reading David Hobby's great site Strobist.com for quite some time now.  I remember last year how he set up his lights (strobes) to light his living room so where ever he was, he had good light. This year, I figured I was going to try the same thing.  So on Christmas Eve I set up a couple light stands with two of my flashes and began testing.

Olivia was unusually cooperative and sat in one in our funky chair.  While her little sister, Mia, and the dog tried to ignore me while they lounged on the couch watching TV.

As you can see, they are both lit fairly well.  Nothing amazing, but hey, this is my first try doing this and I am just practicing.

They are probably a little better than my photos from previous years. 

To get this light, I took two of my flashes, (a Pentax 360 and a Nikon SB-25) and put them on stands in opposite corners of our living room.  The stands brought them up to about 7 feet high in our 9 foot room.  The pentax was tucked nicely between the fireplace and our television about a foot from the wall while the nikon was in the opposite corner in front of a small filing cabinet (yes, our living room is my office) about 3 feet from the wall.  Both flashes were pointed into the wall, angled up toward the ceiling.  Here is a very poorly drawn diagram of the setup.  But I think it gets the idea across.

Just for clarification, it was early and we had the blinds down, so there was no light coming in the windows for most of the photographs.  Later in the day I took more photos, but I don't believe there was any natural light coming in and having a big effect.  I should of added the two lamps to the diagram.  One is between the chair and sofa on a table, the other is a floor lamp almost right below the nikon strobe.

Both flashes were triggered with AlienBees CyberSyncs.  They are what really made all of this possible.  I would not have been able to do this with wires and only the pentax has an optical trigger.

The interesting thing is the Pentax flash is much newer and cost me a lot more money. But the SB-25 is my preferred flash.  I bought the Pentax a number of years ago and it is showing it's age.  Not that I don't take good care of it, but the battery door is sooo cheaply made that it will not stay shut without a bungee cord holding it shut.  And it does not do a very good job, but tape really doesn't work.  However, the Nikon I got off ebay for $20 shipped.  It works great and the only thing wrong was a broken hot shoe mount.  Since I only use it off camera, not a problem.  A couple bucks for a mounting bracket along with gorilla glue and I have a great flash.    But I digress.

So how did the photos turn out?  I suppose beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but I really like them much better.  I find the images I was able to make this year are much more interesting than in any previous year.  The lighting is much fuller and not the typical flat light one gets from the flash on the camera.  Below are some of my favorites from Christmas, but you can see all the photos in my Christmas 2008 Flickr set.  Compare the photos with just "Christmas-#" in the title to those titled "Christmas Eve-#."  The photos from Christmas Eve were taken at a friend's house with my flash sitting in the hot shoe right on top of my camera.  Let me know what you think in the comments.

The gift of song.

The children at UCCC gave their annual Gift of Song concert last week.  As is typical I was there with my camera, but this time I also brought along a audio recorder.  Throw the photos and a short music clip into Animoto and this is what comes out.

As usual Mr. Z lead the celebration and all the classes had a chance to show off their own vocal talents.  Mia was in quite a mood, posing for me when she saw my camera, but focusing hard most of the time to know when it was the Supernovas' turn to perform.

To see all of the photos from the 2008 Gift of Song, please visit my SmugMug gallery.

Bowling with the DSAGSL

December is for holiday parties and that means the DSAGSL annual bowling party. Because the girls love to bowl (where did that come from?) we went and had a great time.

As is typical, Jennifer had to work a special Nordstrom event that evening, but she showed up dressed for work and tied on a pair of bowling shoes.  You gotta lover her for that.

Unfortunately I did not get any good action shots of Olivia,

but Olivia was able to get a great action shot of Mia.

I made the mistake of one time picking up Mia and swinging her back and forth while her ball crept down the lane. From then on out, we had to do it every time. I love how Olivia caught the ball in the image right between Mia's legs.

Unfortunately, all good things come to an end and we had to stop. However, that is not always easy. Especially when you are so close to picking up that spare.

To see all of the photos from the bowling party, go to my Flickr page and look for the "bowling" tag. (link)

Landlord vs Tenant

Being a landlord has its ups and downs.  One of the big ups is being able to write into a lease the things you want in there.  In the lease we use one of the stipulations is that the tenant cannot put signs up in the yard.  Not a big deal until it is an election year and the new tenant loves Palin while we, the landlord, support Obama.

Of course we have our Obama sign posted proudly in the front yard.

When Jennifer stuck this sign up, our tenant wanted to show her support with a McCain/Palin sign.  Unfortunately for her, she did not read the fine print of her lease and we had to tell her, "no."  However, since I am a kind, understanding landlord I made an exception and allowed her one yard sign.  The only stipulation, it could not be larger than two inches by two inches.  "Ha, ha!  Take that you tenant."

Of course she did and I almost fell off the sidewalk when I saw her response.

But then she takes it a step further.

I need to update the lease to somehow keep unsightly pumpkins from taking over my front porch.  The only upside is the squirrels have now destroyed most all of the pumpkins.

Don't forget to vote!

UPDATE: The dissenting opinion can be found on Fighting Gravity.

It has been forever...

Wow, I have not posted an update since I was in Loveland almost two months ago.  A lot has happened in those two months, I have over 4,300 photographs to prove it.  What in the hell am I going to do with that many photos in two months?  To be honest, most are not really for me.  I have a ton from WUSTL soccer, two weddings, photos of each family at UCCC and ones from JP Golf team. 

I guess it is time to get caught up and start adding posts.

To start I am gong to add a link to photos from our trip to Loveland.  They are up on Flickr.com and can be found in this set.

Of course being on the lake gives us lots of photos of water.....

...but we also got up into the mountains one day for a little horseback riding.

Truth be told, we also spent a lot of time just hanging out and playing on our computers.