Learn through doing.

I guess I'm like many people in that I love reading and learning new things.  I think as we get older we and get deep into the world of work we start to realise how good our years of learning at school, college and university actually were.  We miss learning.  We miss discovering new things.  If we are fortunate we get to learn new things in our day to day jobs or we take up hobbies.  I am fortunate enough to learn a lot in my job but I also have a number of hobbies, photography being one of my main hobbies.

Over the past couple of years I have developed a ravenous hunger for all things photography and lately in particular lighting and specifically speedlghts.  Nowadays the wealth of information available on everything is vast with thanks to the digital revolution and I guess mostly the internet.  Through the internet I have discovered people like Zak Arias, Jared Polin (Fro Knows Photo), Joey L and David Hobby (Strobist).  These guys have freely posted endless amounts of information on the internet in both written and video media.  Another person and one of my favorites is Joe McNally.  He is a freelance photographer who does a lot of work for National Geographic and Nikon.  I mentioned in a previous entry about a Nikon video I had been watching, A Hands-on Guide to Creative Lighting and Joe features heavily in it.  The video looks at Nikon's wireless lighting system.  This is one area where these guys have a lot in common.  I have read and watched a lot of what they have on offer but I know that to truly learn you must practice.  With my students I could tell them how to do something until I was blue in the face but until they actually get hands on there is little chance of them actually being able to do it.

Recently I have been visualising setting up big shoots with lots of lights, where I can use specific lights to highlight features and people and bring in colours using gels and light modifiers.  Practice makes perfect as they say so I started to think about my workshop at work and how I could photograph some of the equipment using the opportunity to use the wireless system, gels and light modifiers.

The above is a Bridgeport CNC milling machine.  Firstly I placed a speedlight in the background with a red gel on it.  I then fitted a snoot to a second speedlight and directed the light from it onto the tool.  I set the shutter speed to 1/250 to kill the ambient and closed down the aperture to F14 which gives the nice star-burst effect on the gelled speedlight.

I finally added a third speedlight with a blue gel to add some colour to the body of the machine.

I was really rather pleased with the outcome, being able to try out several different techniques I have been watching and reading about from the guys I previously mentioned.

One thing I did learn at my cost, don't place gels directly onto the lens of the speedlight as my red gel now has a large whole in it!

Thanks

Simon

Lance is pants!

I have actually not spoken to anyone about this except a passing comment to my wife.  Even as I and type this I still don't really know how to put into words what I really think about it.

I read Lance Armstrong's book, "It's not about the bike" a few years after it was first published.  As you will know from some of my previous blog entries I enjoy sport and I guess I love pushing myself.  Reading Lance's book which covered his fight with cancer and then his come back to cycling and resultant 7 Tour De France wins really inspired me.  I love cycling and mountain biking and road cyclists have always inspired me due to their amazing endurance and stamina.  I loved the book and recommended it to other friends of mine.  I think I even gave my copy to my brother.  I know Lance didn't have a brilliant reputation as far as women went but for his sporting ability and achievements I was in complete awe.  I ignored all of the accusations in the press of his drug taking and doping, I guess I just put it down to jealousy.  People are never happy when other people do well and love to find ways to bring them down.  We can easily put people on pedestals and not want to listen when we hear stories about them that are not good.  Its like when you were a child and putting your fingers in your ears and shouting "I'm not listening!".

 I guess if I'm honest when the truth came out I was upset and even more so when I saw some of the interview he gave and how he showed little or no remorse, basically just justified it because "everyone else was doing it".

For flip sake, what age are you Lance!

Simon

A little bit of baby.

Like I need an excuse to use my camera!  I am afraid Arwen is going to be in front of my camera a lot.  I've been looking to get a baby shoot done for my portfolio for a while so who better than my own daughter :)  Guess I must get onto pinterest and do some planning.

Winter has arrived!

How your life can change in the blink of an eye.  My wife and I arrived at hospital at 01:29 on Sunday 13th and at 02:23 our beautiful wee daughter arrived, Arwen Winter Hodge!

Lack of sleep is just wonderful! Thankfully I get 2 weeks off from work at such times like these so there was no question of me going into work.

Talking about sleep, that sounds like a great idea so I'm out of here for now.

Oh and I'm sure you already guessed, the name Arwen is from Lord of the Rings :)

Simon

The Lord of The Rings

I had a lovely surprise when I came home today.  Finlay came running up to me with a DVD in his hand.  He quickly informed me, "mummy bought that for you and me and Lucie to watch."  Well it happened to be the old animation of Lord of the Rings.  Happy days.

It was lovely to light the stove and sit down on the sofa with the kids and watch some of this before their bath.  Not too sure that Lucie was too keen of the Dark Riders so I gave her an extra tight cuddle.

Simon

Nikon CLS

Anyone familiar with Nikon camera systems will probably also know of its Creative Lighting System (CLS).  This is a fantastic system.  In simple terms its a wireless lighting system.  The camera takes a light reading (metering) through the lens (ittl) and then sends information to the wireless portable speedlights.  This information sets the output of the speedlights giving a perfectly lit photo.  In theory anyway.  I have recently been playing about with this as my D300 acts as a commander unit and I have an SB-910 and SB-900 flash units.  I recently watched Nikon's DVD, A Hands-on Guide to Creative Lighting.

 In this they introduce and demonstrate their CLS and all the compadable units and then join the fantastic Joe McNally on a number of location shots where he explains what he is doing throughout.  A number of the examples are included in his equally fantastic book, The Hot Shoe Diaries.  The DVD is brilliant.  It is both helpful and imformative.  I have recently been talking to my good friend Gary Boal about setting up a big shot using lots of speedlights and this DVD has done nothing but inspire me even more.

Watch this space!

Good bye 2012, hello 2013!

Happy new year!  If I am honest I dont really do too much to see in the new.  I think for the past 8 or 9 years the most I have done is sit in front of the fire with my wife :)  I was having a think about all the photos I took last year.  I'm sure over 4000.  I was thinking about what are my favorite and I have narrowed it down to two. 

The first is of my son.  I say son but as my wife is due our third child anytime now I may need to change this to my eldest child.  I took this photo without much planning.  I changed it into black and white in lightroom and the more I look at it the closer I get to crying as I realise just how much I love him and unconditionally!

The second image is one from a family day out.  We were walking through the trees and the kids were just playing about, throwing leaves up in the air and picking up branches to use as walking sticks when I spotted this dead tree.  I love the colours.  I love that though the tree is dead there is still life in it.  Hope you enjoy it.

Thanks for your support over the past year.  I hope 2013 is a great one for you.

God bless.

Simon