And here is a wide shot of the quickie AlienBee setup.  BTW a Vagabond with two AB1600s at full power doesn’t last very long!

These are all done on my kitchen table with a fat slice of mushy bread as my incense holder (I didn’t have any clay or play-doh).  Post-production is done in photoshop to create the colors.  I used a black background from a 50″ reflector (black cloth side) and an AB1600 strobe snooted down to minimize light on the black backdrop.  Camera was on a tripod hooked up to a Pocket Wizard for remote firing, which allowed me to play with the smoke as it rose.  I used my 5D Mark II for better cropping (since smoke is all over the place) with manual focusing @ f14, 1/200, iso200.

milk on milk

add some chocolate milk and you get …

No this is not a marble.  Liquids don’t make a teardrop shape without friction, so the viscous surface retains a spherical shape.

This is the “crowning” I was talking about

And here is the board I built, using a Hi-Viz optical kit.  One gray wire goes to the optical trigger, while the other goes to my strobe.

Now I have to go clean my kitchen before Judy kills me; it has rainbow splashes all over!

Oh yeah, strobist info: 580ex sync’d to the circuitboard at 1/128 power.  camera at iso400, f14, shutter on bulb varying from 2′ to 4′

BTW the original has the dimensions of 11,579 x 2917 pixels.  Man I love my 5D mark II

Here is Lawrence of Furious Photographers at his booth.  They had on display a great photobooth concept that blows most other photobooths out of the water.

Here is that same booth in effect…

and here is the cutest damn pic of Lawrence and his girl, Julie, using the booth

Here is Doug of Furious Photographers.  Pretty unique pose.

Okay that last one doesn’t really portray Doug as we know him.  This one is better

He was posing Judy for a boudoir session we did in my hotel room, though Judy would kick my butt if I put up images from that shoot.

And here is the Furious crew doing their thing, and as for Gavin Photography…

Go Judy.  It’s your birthday.

But seriously, Judy is my muse.  Here’s us going to dinner.

And waiting in the lobby

and dammit if Judy doesn’t give me the coolest photo ops

We ate at L’Atelier that night

Amazing presentation.  I’d say that one is a “One bite”

And this one ranked a “Two bite”

But seriously, here is the man himself, Joel Robuchon (which made me REALLY regret not taking French in high school)

The mom would get so tired that she’d lay on her back while they milked

Broccoli is a definite favorite!

FOUR sleeping in one ball

The mom and 5 / 6 babies

Here he is sleeping in the tube

Judy playing with him

And here is the tube running across my computer desk. His food is on the other side, just to make sure he gets exercise!

and here are Furball and Dodgeball, both of which are Robovorski (robo) Hamsters

Oh yeah, all of these images are straight out of the camera. I didn’t even adjust contrast or anything.

And there she is making friends with my new Octabox, oh yeah.

And here’s some of Judy in action when she does some real work for me:

Asian pose, fo sho.  And I love that panicked look from her stepping into my shot!

And we took some photographs of the local skaters. Makes my knees hurt from memories past!

You can see the whole gallery on my Flickr profile HERE

What you need:

• Heavy duty scissors
• Flash
• Case that flash came with

The case comes for free with your flash. I almost never use mine, but after the modifications I actually do. Notice that the inside is lined with a nice black felt that absorbs light like my girlfriend’s cleavage.

Cut a hole in the bottom, staying inside the stitching

Now you DIY guys, you can leave it like this and make a little velcro tab to flip it open and to close it, but again I’m too lazy to do that



After cutting the whole end:

Now you can use the case (wary of the open end, but it protects it well). WHen you use it on the flash, tuck the little flap into the space meant for the plastic stand:

And TADA!!!

Now for some tests about four feet from my wall o’ photos

24mm

105mm

24mm with snoot

105mm with snoot

I was surprised to see that when you narrow the light in-flash down to 105mm, it actually creates more light falloff. That must be due to the angle of light exiting the flash. You’ll use more power at 24mm, but the edge is nice and crisp.

The nice thing is I can carry the snoot with the flash, eating up no space at all in my bag and protecting the flash from damage (I put the flash bulb end in first to protect it with the bottom of the case). We used this at the first LA Strobist meeting and the guys seemed to like it.

I used my Canon 40D with the 16-35mm f2.8 and a 580ex flash, which all total to more than $3K. I wanted a way to incorporate my camera into the costume to take pictures in a fun way. My girlfriend said, “Why don’t you put it in a stuffed animal?” and I was like, “Yeah, I’ll be in pajamas and take pictures out of his butt…”

This was the unintended affect of shooting out of his butt (photos by a friend)



I forgot that my face would be in his crotch the whole night. Everyone thought I was either a pervert or a child molester. Great! But at least I got to take my camera to a bar with NO hassles at the front door.

Here is the front before and after lifting the front flap



Here is the back, including the IR sensor port made with a toilet paper tube. I could lift the back of the shirt to all IR light metering and focusing if it was too dark.

And here is where the flash with a plastic omni-bounce attached came out of the back of his neck. This gave overhead bounce lighting that made the pics look much better than all the point and shoots.

Note that I had to insert the two parts separately and attach them inside of the bear. Here are examples of it in action. Notice the overhead lighting and soft shadows (compare that to the flat flashed look of point and shoots). Oh yeah, looking at a bear’s butt made almost everyone laugh or smile and made the camera less intimidating than it usually is.