Goal!

Goal!

At school Lily has a folder that will hold all of her writing. She has to decorate the folder with pictures of her choice. Yesterday she specifically asked me to get a picture of her scoring a goal so that she could put it on her folder. Perhaps she’s just a bit too comfortable with a camera always pointed at her. Bad parent, bad!

And my alternate “Goal” shot:

Technorati Tags: photography, soccer, lily, champaign, il, illinois

Double Rainbows

Double Rainbows

Odd weather here in Champaign lately. This past weekend we saw a double rainbow looking out our backyard. The bottom rainbow was as complete as I’ve ever seen one. I used the widest lens I’ve got (17mm) and still couldn’t get it all in frame.

This, naturally, led to a series of rainbow pictures….

Northern End

Single Rainbow

Cloud and a bit of Rainbow

Technorati Tags: photography, rainbow, weather, champaign, il, illinois

Summer Weather

House and clouds near sunset

Another kooky one. We’ve been getting storms lately, and with the storms come lots of cloud cover. They’ve been really impressive lately. Dark gray bottoms with golden sides as the twilight hits them. I always want to take pictures, but it’s always a fool’s folly; they all just look like boring old clouds after I’ve taken ‘em. I’m sure that a better photographer than I can manage to capture the grandeur, but I can’t seem to.

But still, you have to try, right?

Technorati Tags: photography, champaign, il, illinois, house, cloud, sunset

Sleepwear Winner

Sleepwear Winner

From the Champaign County fair.

I have to admit that my initial reaction to this was very snooty. “Sleepwear winner? Ha!” But this image has dogged me a bit. After all, I don’t have the skills to make any clothes. And aren’t I proud of my photographic creations? Why shouldn’t someone be proud of their needlework?

Technorati Tags: photography, champaign, IL, illinois, county, fair, winner

Pink Seamless Test

From Pink seamless test shots

Lucy, the soon to be birthday girl.

Saturday is Lucy’s birthday party. This is going to be a very “girl” focused party. Tea, finger sandwiches, princesses, crafts, pink everywhere, etc. One of the crafts is decorating a picture frame. My wife (bless her heart) thought it would be nice to get pictures of each of the girls and print them for their picture frame. Additionally, we’ll be having a princess stop by and want to get pictures of each girl with the princess.

From Pink seamless test shots

Stella wanted to show me her “mad” face.

In preparation of all this, I ordered a pink (actually “Carnation”) roll of seamless paper from Calumet. Last night the girls were kind enough to help me out as models. I got to try a few different lighting styles, they got to change costumes several times, and at the end they got a huge piece of paper to color on once I cut off the used piece of background paper.

From Pink seamless test shots

In my defense, Lily picked her own wardrobe.

This was my first time using a paper seamless background. I got the 53″ wide background as opposed to the 107″ roll. While it’s not a huge issue, I think I’d choose the 107″ roll next time. It’s a bit more freedom and I would then be able to get a group shot as well. The 53″ is fine for a single person and a shot of the princess and 1 child. But more than that and I’m pushing it.

Now we just have to work out the logistics of when to take the pictures. I need a decent amount of space. So does the craft table. So, there will have to be some shuffling.

All in all, I’m quite looking forward to this Saturday. It’ll be a fun challenge to shot a bunch of other people’s kids, process the pictures and print for the frames.

A few more selects….

From Pink seamless test shots

Technorati Tags: photography, lights, seamless, pink, kids, party, birthday, champaign, illinois, IL

First Roll of Black And White

I’ve just processed my first roll of black and white film.

Thanks to prophotolife.com for the tutorial video. By far, the hardest part was getting the film onto the reel. I was using a stainless steel Adorama reel, and had practiced before hand but I still had some film touching film at the end of the roll. Fortunately, no pictures were harmed in the development process.

I’ve since purchased a Paterson reel from Calumet. It is significantly easier to get the film onto this reel. Perhaps with more practice I’d have gotten proficient with the stainless steel reel, but I’d rather just process, scan, and learn.

Little did I know that the Paterson reel wouldn’t fit into my stainless steel tank (D’OH!) so I should be getting my Paterson tank today.

I guess you live and learn.

All of the negatives exhibited dust and a few spots. So, I still have to overcome that as well.

Technorati Tags: B&W, black, and, white, film, process, urbana, illinois

Autumn in Champaign

From Lily and Dad at the Arboretum

Lily and I went to the Urbana arboretum to go photo exploring and just generally enjoy the weather. It’s been unseasonably warm this past week so this was our last hurrah.

From Lily and Dad at the Arboretum

Lily had a great time playing in the leaves and basically running around. We only lasted an hour, but it was a good one.

From Lily and Dad at the Arboretum

Technorati Tags: photography, color, champaign, il, illinois, autumn, fall

Birthday pictures

We finally got in Lucy’s 4th birthday pictures. Lucy is my middle daughter, and she turned 4 a couple of weeks ago. We just got around to getting her pictures. We do a birthday shoot for each of the kids on their birthday (or there abouts) so that we can see how they change as the grow.

It’s been a while since we’ve done one, and I’m now reminded how challenging it can be taking pictures of Lucy. All in all I think that it worked out, but she’s a strong minded person.

My personal favorite (above), except for her foot. We were running and gunning, and I didn’t notice it at the time. Dang! Perhaps with some cropping….

An out-take. Knock-knock jokes work great on Lucy.

My wife’s favorite. She took this one (have to give credit where it’s due).

Ah, the picture that could have been. Lucy just didn’t want to cooperate for this one. This is my “the-one-that-got-away” for this shoot.

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illinois, outdoor, photography, portrait, urbana
birthday, kid

Dinner on the Farm

I seem to be veering from photography just a bit….

This past weekend we had a chance to go to a “Dinner on the farm.” This is the first time that I’ve been to something like this, and I believe it’s a first for the Champaign area, if not Illinois (though that may be a stretch).

The dinner was put on by Prairie Fruit Farms. It was a great meal. There were approximately 40 people that attended.

Windmill and sunflowers

All of the food was made with food from the farm or from local farms. It was held outdoors, and the weather was fantastic.

Our table

We met some new people and had just a great time. Highly recommended.

Talking about the farm

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champaign, illinois, slow food, farm, dinner

Sunset silhouette

There seems to be a common wisdom running through the blogosphere (or at least my view of the blogosphere) that you need detail in the shadows of a sunset / sunrise picture. I’m not entirely sure why this is.

After all, isn’t a sunset mostly about color? Color is the primary here. Isn’t it simply distracting and unnecessary to force detail into something that I most likely want to be a silhouette anyway?

Picture of the Champaign sky at dusk. No mods, converted to JPG via Adobe Camera Raw.

Not to contradict myself (though I may), but the next picture (a different frame) I feel needs the bit of detail right in the foreground. Overall I’m undecided on whether I like the picture, but I’m pretty sure that without the detail in the front, it’d be crap. Might be a depth thing.

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champaign, illinois, photography, silhouette