Elaina’s First Birthday and Baptism

It’s seems like yesterday, when I first photographed little Elaina.  I couldn’t believe it was already a year, when her parents asked me cover her 1st birthday and baptism.  This kid is so photogentic.  She loves getting right up to the camera.  Congratulations Kelly and Dave for a healthy and happy 1st year!  The party was great, with the added bonus of a banana bread cake!  When it comes to desserts I am a sucker. 

On the photography  end of things, I have been taking a great liking to the Gary Fong lightsphere.  It seems to work wonders when bounced off ceilings, and the nice thing is you get that fill light from the front as well.  So far it was worked excellent for me.  I have used it on one wedding and a bunch of portraits.  I will give it a test with a live music shoot this Friday. 

Enough with the rambling, here are some of my favorites from the day:

She was full of expressions

Mother and daughter

Playing with daddy!

This was the most impressive cupcake/yoodle display I have ever seen!

Fixing her braclet

Those are some small shoes!

The baby looking at a photobook of herself with family.

A bachelor's of baptism!

Sharing a moment with grandma

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

"I am gonna huff, and puff..."

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My personal favorite of the day!

Birds in the shower!

Our aviary, also known as "Our Shower"

For those of you that know Courtney or myself, you know about our 3 birds.  These guys while, they can be a pain, really do provide us with hours of entertainment.  Twice a week the 3 feathered creatures come into the shower with me for a bath.  They just love when I angle the shower head on them.  They sit and open up their wings and let the water fall on them.  Sometimes they even get lazy and fall asleep in the shower.  No point really to this post, just felt like posting something random.

 

From left to right: Simon, Alvin, and Theordore

Hummingbird Studio!

20090815-hummingbirdpanosetup, originally uploaded by craig.proulx.

I recently got the chance to setup and play with the hummingbird studio I have test out all summer. With the help of my father, we had a pivoting bracket madeup by a local metal shop. The beauty of the bracket is that it is fully adjustable! You can use it in many different ways, even as a macro light directly affixed to a camera body! I hate being stingy on info, but I don’t want to give away the details just yet, as he might decide to patten and market it in the near future! The studio itself is basically a bunch of speedlights (580ex, old 550’s, 540ez’s) setup in front of our muslim aka little piece of foamcore clamped to the side of a gazebo where there is a feeder setup. People think we are crazy for having over 12 flashes between the two of us, but surprisingly, you can find these perfectly older units that have been slightly used or sometimes even brand new for very cheap money. In most cases you don’t need to concern yourself with TTL because the best way to do a lot of this strobist stuff is on manual anyway. These older flashes, while they may not have the latest and greatest technology, can still act as slaves from masters such as 550’s or 580’s. We chose to use a 3 way sync cord, in comination with the wireless feature for this setup. As you can see, two of the flashes have battery packs, which are nothing more than 8 additional AA’s connected to the flash. It greatly increase the recycle time, and I swear by these things when doing weddings! For those of you wondering about the batteries themsleves, please note that I am relatively new to the rechargable battery world. However, I have been successfully using the duracell NI-MI AA’s and have no issues. You want to make sure you buy the pre-charged ones, though, because there are two different types of rechargables. One is a slow discharge and one is a fast discharge. In a nutshell, one type will stay charged for months at a time when not being used, while another type will only last a week or so before draining down. I found out the hard way, but luckily not on a paid job! The reason now for all those flashes is to freeze motion. I have to admit that I am not completely satisfied with my photos, but a lot is due to the fact that I believe I had some stray ambien light in the frame, that I failed to notice. These flashes have something that higher powered studio lights don’t…shorter flash durations! In fact, when I added an alien bee 800 to the background, the longer duration of the alien bee caused even more ghosting than I had without! When trying to freeze something like a hummingbird, the most important thing is flash duration. Keep all the power dialed down as much as possible. Even 1/128 power if you can! In this case, we wanted plenty of coverage to really bring out all angles and sides of the bird. Side lighting and backlighting, also provides separation from the background. The shutter only has to be set at your sync speed, and no faster! Some manual focus these shots, but I find the autofocus to work very well. Hummingbirds usually come into feed and then backoff a couple of inches from the feeder where they hover before going back in to feed. It is at this hover point where I will lock my focus and wait until they return to this postion before tripping the shutter. I must appologize for again not having the best example to show you, but I thought this was a fun experiement and now I know exactly where I want my improvements! Remember, you really need to watch any stray ambient light. Your exposure should be a nearly completely black frame without your flashes going off. Ambient light will cause ghosting. Set your shutter to near sync, and find an f stop that will kill this light. Position your lights, meter them, and wait! Below is my panorama of a hummingbird sequence. It is composed of 3 separate exposures. Next year, I will try and nail it in one. Don’t know if it’s possible but, I am sure gonna try!