Playing Catch Up

Today I decided to do two things that I have been putting off. First was to test out one of the new softboxes that I bought for the Speedlights and second complete the March assignment for the critique blog.

Fortunately Janet decided that she would sit for a few shots.

I was very pleased with the softbox tests. I decided that I only wanted to use the softbox with no fill or reflector to see how it looked. I wirelessly synced using the PocketWizards so these shots were done on manual. I want to redo the same tests using the SU800 and iTTL and possibly using the pop up flash as Commander and a slight fill to see that that looks. I also need to do some tests using the Honl grids that I got at the same time.

I really like the dramatic light that is possible using only one light.

Completing the March assignment was a little more complicated. I asked Michael Young to come up with the assignment and set the criteria. Michael has a mind like no other that I know, not only very creative but very out of the box creative. He immediately went to the Ides of March. It took him less than five seconds to decide what a March assignment should be about. Michael shared a lot of information associating the Ides of March with less esoteric subjects such as rebirth, fertility, the full moon, cattle, and the God Mars. He did everything possible to make the assignment easier but I think most of us were stuck on Shakespeare's Julius Caesar. I know that I was.

I had three plans, well only one originally. I emptied an egg so that I could run it through with a knife. Not possessing a dagger I hoped that egg equaled kitchen knife. That process turned out to be a little messy but with the Dremel I was able to get the egg ready for the shoot. I have a very interesting piece of driftwood. I also have a bed of Sword Fern that I had cut down last Fall and now has a lot of clumps of last years dead fern that have a very interesting texture among which is the new growth fern coming up. Fern is a very interesting plant with beautifully curled ends to the new growth. I wanted to drive the knife into the driftwood, let raw egg run down the knife, over the driftwood and settle at the base of the new growth fern. Then I wanted to shoot it backlit where the light would really glisten through the raw egg. I wanted to combine that image with an image of the full moon shot through clouds and trees, a shot that I already had from last year's hurricane. The one problem with this idea was getting the lights and the Nikon out in the front yard. Not exactly the best idea in this neighborhood to advertise that you have expensive camera equipment.

So I went to plan two which was very similar but without the full moon. I have an old Samsonite briefcase that I envisioned digging up a plot of the fern and putting it into the briefcase. Same scenario, backlight, dripping raw egg, just no combination with the moon shot. Now please do not ask me what the briefcase had to do with the Ides of March but upon seeing it in the corner of the computer room I felt compelled to use it. But digging up fern seemed like work and how was I going to clean out the brief case, like I am ever going need it again. So that plan faltered.

Plan three I got one morning before I combed Janet's hair. I asked her to pose as an old witch holding the knife and the egg. She agreed. That sounded real simple, no work, no dirt, no lying on the ground. That is my kind of photoshoot.

Janet is at that point where anything that I ask or suggest she is going to do the opposite. I set up the lights because I wanted to use flash on her face from down low for a creepy witch feeling and a spotlight from behind to make the mussed up hair glow. She didn't want her hair mussed up so every time I mussed it up she flattened it back as best she could. She didn't want to hold the knife up and when I suggested that she give me as mean a look as she could muster she smiled sweetly and closed her eyes. The one shot that I got that I thought would work was not when she was giving me a mean look at my request but when she wanted to verbally and emphatically express her objection to ever what it was that I had just ask her to do.

Plan three succeeded. I combined the shot of Janet with the full moon shot from last year and voila; I completed the assignment only two weeks late.

Now if I will only complete the other two things that I have been putting off: filling out the form to skip the 401K and IRA distributions for 2009 and tackling the income taxes before the 15th.