Photo 52 Week 3, "Chopped"

You can see the image I posted for this week's Talk Photography Photo 52 by clicking on the image to the right, but I wanted to post a little extra about it here on my regular blog, mention how I messed up, and how I could've fixed it had I enough time.

The theme this week was "Chopped", which sent quite a few ideas through my mind, most of which required a decent amount of effort to try to avoid the obvious, but I had settled on one specific image in my head.  This wasn't it. :)

My own kitchen is currently a construction site, so I decided to head over to my mother's house to take the shot.  The other reason was that I knew (or thought) she had some props there that I had in mind for the original image I wanted to make.  As it turned out, she didn't. So, I had to come up with something else and shoot it in about 10 minutes, as she was rushing me to get out of the house as she had to leave (and I'd lose my assistant holding the light too).

So, this is what I came up with.  I do like the composition and layout of it, for the most part, but the lighting definitely needs some work.  This is primarily where I screwed up.

I wanted to use a traditional wooden handled axe, but after trips to four or five different local hardware stores I couldn't find a single one that was about the size I needed.  The only wooden handled ones I saw were absolutely massive, and far too big for my mother's kitchen counter (which, as you can see from the image, just wasn't quite deep enough for what I was going for as it was).

The scene was light by just a single SB-900 from above camera right, shot through a 33" TriGrip diffuser.  If I'd had the time, I would've added a second snooted or gridded SB-900 above at the far side of the axe (flagged off from the camera to help prevent flares) pointed at the axe head in order to give it some reflection and show off a bit more of its curved shape and definition.

I might also have possibly put another snooted SB-900 camera left on the countertop throwing a very small amount of light on the back face of the axe head to help separate it a bit from the dark shadow of the countertop.

I do have a couple of other ideas for the "Chopped" theme, but there just wasn't enough time to shoot them when I did this (like I said, I didn't even have enough time to get this one right), so this is a subject I want to go back to in the future to try those out, as well as revisit this particular shot and fix the lighting.

You can follow the progress of my Photo 52 over on my Photo 52 Blog.

What's in the bag? - My Strobist Kit

One thing people always seem to want to know is what's in another photographer's kit bag, especially these days when it's of the strobist variety.  Being a Nikon strobist, I'm often asked what I take out with me on a typical job when I'm using speedlights, but there really is no typical job in my experience.

Short of taking everything, which kind of defeats the purpose of traveling light and using small strobes, there's no way that I would be able to put together a one-size-fits-all set of gear.  Sometimes I may only need a single SB-900, other times I may need a dozen.  I might only need a single lens for the whole shoot or I may require 2 or 3.  I may or may not require softboxes, light stands, background stands & backdrop, snoots, grids, gels & holders, flash brackets, clamps, laptop & USB hard drives for tethered shooting, or any one of a hundred other things.

That is not to say that I don't always have a bag prepared and ready to go should the urgent need arise, and that's where this post comes in.

I have a few different bags that I use, but the one I carry most often is my Tamrac Cyberpack 6.  I bought this bag about 5 years ago and love it.  It's got plenty of space in there, and feels fairly solid on my shoulders when carrying it around.  Fully laden it can get very heavy, so I tend not to fill it whenever possible, especially if walking long distances during the course of a location shoot.  It has a laptop pouch in the back of it that I rarely fill unless absolutely required for this reason.

But, to get to the list.  I find this generally covers many initial scouting requirements and will also suffice for quite a bit of basic shooting, enough to keep the clients happy.

Note : Some of the items in the list link to Nikon USA as they don't seem to appear on the Nikon UK website for some reason.

The Bag Itself
• Tamrac Cyberpack 6 Photo Laptop Backpack

Cameras, Lenses & Associated Equipment
• Nikon D200 + MB-D200 Grip with Nikon 50mm f/1.8D attached
• Nikon D300s + MB-D10 Grip (no lens attached)
• Nikon 300mm f/4 AF-S
  
• Sigma 10-20mm f/4-5.6 EX DC HSM
• 6x Nikon EN-EL3e Batteries (2 inside each body and 2 spare) 
• 4x 4Gb Extreme III 30Mb/sec CompactFlash Cards (for the D200)
  
• 2x 8Gb Extreme 60Mb/sec CompactFlash Cards (for the D300s)
  
• 1x 16Gb Integral SDHC Card (for recording HD Video on the D300s)
  

Lights
• 1x Nikon SB-600 Flash
• 2x Nikon SB-900 Flashes
• 16x GP2700 AA NiMH 2600mAh Rechargeable Battieres (4 for each flash and 4 spare)
  

Light Modifiers
• Lumiquest 80-20 Bouncer
• Lumiquest Mini Softbox
• Lumiquest Softscreen (built-in flash diffuser)
• 2x Lumiquest FXtra Speedlight gel holders
• Assorted Rosco gels, cut to swatchbook size for using in the FXtras
• FalconEyes "Flash Gun Bounce Kit Set" (snoot, 2x grids, and a flag/reflector)
  

Other Bits & Pieces
• Manfrotto 3001BN tripod & 3030 3-way Head (Bought this a few years ago when they still marketed as Bogen) - I'm usually hand-held with flash, so I don't need anything overly heavy or stable; it's just to rest the camera on. When I am shooting from a tripod at a client's location, it's usually indoors with the Sigma 10-20mm and MC-20 remote so no wind or shake to contend with really anyway.
  
• Hotshoe bubble level (Not really needed any more on the D300s, but still used on the D200)
  
• Various Hoya & B+W UV & Polarising Filters
• Nikon MC-20 10-Pin Remote Control
  
• Nikon MC-21 10-Pin Extension Cable
• A couple of Lastolite Tri-Grip reflectors & diffusers
• A couple of Microfibre Lens Cleaning Cloths
• A stack of business cards

That's essentially it, and somehow I manage to fit all that lot inside the Cyberpack 6 backpack (well, most of it).  I will generally also carry along the Nikon 70-200mm f/2.8 VR lens along in its own bag and just hang it over my shoulder (if it's not attached to a body at the time).  If I am taking the 70-200VR along, sometimes I'll remove the 300mm f/4 AF-S from the bag, so I can fit another SB-900 in there if needed.

This setup doesn't really account for any umbrellas, light stands, softboxes or environmental portraits, but it does the job nicely.  If I'm going straight to a business location, such as an office, with all the equipment and doing all the shooting there, I will usually pop the laptop into the back of the backpack so I can shoot tethered. Then I'll either take along a second bag containing light stands, flash brackets, umbrellas, reflectors, a couple of big white bedsheets to act as large diffusers, etc. or I'll just repack a single bag to suit the job.

So, there you have it.  That covers most of my arsenal of strobist lighting gear and other gadgets & doohickies.

Welcome to Kao's photo blog

So, I decided to setup a blog for this year's Talk Photography Photo52. Despite being very experienced on computers and the web, having been on the development teams of a couple of fairly large opensource PHP based projects and written many specific scripts and web-based applications for clients, I've never actually written on a blog before this. So I thought it was quite the leap for me.

Now that I've had a bit of a play around with it, I thought it'd be a good idea to setup a blog for other photo related topics that come up in the course of my daily life. Some days there are none, and some days there can be quite a few. Hopefully there will be enough that I can post to this blog regularly.

I'm going kick things off with the lovely Christmas present I received from my wife this time around. Thanks to Nikon's free SB-900 offer on the purchase of a D300s (see the pic at the top right), she went ahead and got me one for Christmas. It's been a couple of weeks now that I've had it and I have to say, it's a very sexy piece of kit.

I've not had that much of a play with it yet, but more than likely all of the photos for the Photo52 will be shot with it. Just for your info, the shot of the D300s and 70-200mm f/2.8 VR lens was shot with the Nikon D200 and 50mm f/1.8D lens. Lit using an SB-900 placed directly overhead in a 24" softbox, with another snooted SB-900 pointing into the business end of the lens to try to light things up a little inside there and stop it looking like a big black hole in the image. Just a quicky shot in the living room, so nothing special.

More soon.