RECENT TWEET
© Coal Miki. Found on Flickr.com.
The Canon Speedlite Transmitter ST-E2 is a portable infrared wireless transmitter designed to wirelessly trigger Canon Speedlites. For the most part, it does that well. But unfortunately, there some severe limitations that makes it a waste of money. If you’re in the market to purchase a ST-E2, wait and read this post first before making your purchase, you won’t regret it.
Lighting, when it comes to flash, is a whole different language for photography. You can speak it (on-camera flash) or be fluent in it (off-camera flash) and even then there are varying levels of proficiency. By no means am I an expect or profess to know everything, but rather I’m a lifelong student who wishes to share what I’ve learned so far. For the most part I’ll be focusing on the Canon Wireless Flash system, in other words, triggering your Canon Speedlites using the built-in Canon flash trigger. I’m going to assume that you have a basic, intermediate, or even advanced understanding of off-camera flash, why you are or should be using flash that way and the general concepts of lighting. If not, I suggest that you check out David Hobby, better known in the photography world as Strobist, and his amazing blog on off-camera lighting here. You can start the Lighting 101 lesson here.
In order to get the full benefit out of this series of posts, you must use Canon and also use Canon Speedlites. For those who use Nikon and Nikon Speedlights, go buy Joe McNally’s The Hot Shoe Diaries
This past Saturday, the crew got together and did two photo shoots with two amazing models, Jane and Stacey, on Treasure Island. Some of you might recognize Jane, as she was a contestant for Miss Asian American (MAA), winning Miss Photogenic for the 2009 MAA. Stacey on the other hand, has a ballet background that we most definitely will be putting to use in the next photo shoot with her. Treasure Island, named after Robert Louis Stevenson’s novel of the same name, is an artificial island in California that sits in the Bay between San Francisco and Oakland accessed via the Interstate 80 freeway. It is home to some 1,453 residents, and is a popular tourist attraction as you can see sea lions on the shoreline and also get a very nice view of San Francisco along with the Golden Gate Bridge and Bay Bridge (Interstate 80).
There are many condemned and decrepit buildings with warning signs of asbestos strewn upon boarded up doors and broken windows making for an urban explorer’s wet dream and, in our case, a great site for urban portraits.
For the photographers, this video will give you a great laugh! Joey Lawrence (or JoeyL) is the 19-year old photographer wonder-kid who did the Twilight movie posters. You can read his interview with David Hobby (Strobist) here and the MTV interview here.
But check out this hilarious video he made:
Having never heard of this Japanese manga: NANA, I did some research online by reading the Wikipedia entry and even reading a few chapters of the English translated manga to get some insight. Nadia and Steff taking some pity on me, explained their respective characters:
It’s about two rival bands, one is a punk band and the other is a rock band. Nana [Osakai] and Layla “Reira” Serizawa (Nadia) are the respective vocalists. Shinichi “Shin” Okazaki is a bassist from Nana’s band. He kept the fact that he was underage a secret from everyone, and was actually sleeping around with women for money. When he met Reira, it started out to be like that, but they ended up falling in love. One of the things that these two have in common is that they’re half Caucasian and have had a hard time with it when they were younger. They were always hiding their relationship though, due to their age difference and their band’s reputation.
Certainly sounds interesting. Sounds like if they were Facebook buddies, their relationship status would be “It’s complicated.”
© Robert Gumpert
Documentary photographer, Robert “Bob” Gumpert, is a good friend who produce some amazing and telling photographs. Since 1994, he’s been working on several self-funded projects, documenting the criminal justice system. With unfettered access to the jails in San Francisco, Bob is able to get up close and personal and interview many condemned souls as they tell him their story and struggles, in essence humanizing the institution that is often dehumanized in the media and society.
His latest project, Take A Picture, Tell A Story, Bob:
There is now a website for the latest segment of “Lost Promise: The Criminal Justice System.” ”Take A Picture, Tell A Story” (http://takeapicturetellastory.com/) is where you can find portraits and recorded stories from the two major projects of my 35 years in documentary photography. In “Locked and Found” prisoners in the county jails of San Francisco tell stories of their circumstances, hopes and sorrows. In “Tales of Work” workers tell of their lives and their jobs.
Visit the website and hear the stories.
It’s been awhile since we’ve last done an update on the blog as we’ve been busy in the meantime, but I’ll be putting up a series of new blog posts.
The first one is a photo shoot of the lovely ladies of United Underworld. The last time we had a chance to photograph the group was at the 2009 WonderCon event. You can see pictures of the photo shoot here and resulted in this shot that I really like:
Click in to see more.