James Spader's Stand-In for "White Palace", 1989

This is another St. Louis Galleria advertising photo from 1989.  I'm drawing a blank on the model's name and the purpose of the shot, but I remember that he was working as James Spader's stand-in when "White Palace" was shooting in St. Louis.  I heard he went on to work as Spader's stand-in for several other projects.  The agency said he'd left for LA when I tried to book him again the week after this shot.

The JPEG here looks really flat for some reason; the print I copied has a fairly long tonal scale.  I was going through my "flash blur" and split toning phases at the same time.  I had a nice North light studio in the Globe Democrat building, so I was able to shoot a combination of strobe and ambient light while hand holding the camera to create the flash blur on static subjects.  The leaf shutter on the Hassleblad really helped to fine tune the degree of blur.   

Technical: Hasselblad 500CM, Zeiss 180mm f/4, Agfa Pan 25, f/5.6 @ 1/8s, hand held.  Lighting from North window light, single Broncolor strobe head and single Lowell DP for the background.  Print on Agfa Portriga Rapid #3, partially bleached in potassium ferro-cyanide, toned in Kodak Rapid Selenium toner diluted 31:1.  Copy with Nikon D700, Nikkor 50mm f1.4G, f/5.6 @ 1/8s.  

Calumet Four Channel Radio Flash Trigger Set

Sync cords evil.  I hate to think how many sync cords I've purchase and how many shots I missed because they failed.  As I dusted off my vintage 1984 Broncolor Flashman (named when the Sony Walkman was at the height of its popularity) power packs with the idea of using them for a project, I realized I did not have a reliable sync cable.  So, rather than buy a $20 cable, I decided to pop for a budget model radio flash trigger from Calumet $39.  After a quick test this evening, I'm kicking myself for not buying one in 1984.  Well, not too hard - Broncolor charged about $900 for their model back then.

The piece on the left is the transmitter, which goes in the camera hot shoe.  The spring pin is a little long, so it takes some effort to put it on a Nikon D700 for some reason.  The larger piece on the right is the receiver, which can be attached to the strobe with a clip or the supplied Velcro tape and plugs in to the strobes sync jack.  The plug felt a little loose, but there were no mis-fires in my test.  I was able to trigger the strobe from just fine about 60 feet away, through a wall.  

On a side note, for the test, I bounced a single head off the ceiling with the Broncolor Flashman set at 1/4 power, the lowest setting.  It lit a 10x14 room so well that at ISO 200 I had to stop down to f/22!  I'm truly amazed that the Broncolor packs still work after 26 years.  By the time I bought my first Broncolor kit, I'd worn out three Balcars, three Normans and one Pro Photo kit in the course of nine years.  I guess it pays in the long run to buy the best if you can afford it.

St. Louis Galleria Ad, 1989

Rummaging though my old fashion work, I came across this photo I did for the St. Louis Galleria in 1989.  It is unremarkable as a photo, but it has a back story...

The two models, whose names escape me, I'm afraid, we flew in from Chicago for the shoot.  They were real troupers, though, and we cranked out about 15 setups in different locations at the mall in one grueling day.  The next day, when I made the straight print for this picture at about 9:00AM with a 2:00PM deadline, I was horrified!  In our haste, we missed some price tags and signs, the male model's pinned up pant cuff had come undone and the chemistry between the models just wasn't there.  With no time for retouching or a re-shoot, what to do?  I decided to see if I could blur the unwanted detail by printing through fog and haze filters, but I couldn't preserve enough detail in the faces.  Finally, I grabbed a Cokin A216 "Speed" filter and made this version after a couple of tries and cleaned up the print with split toning and selective bleaching on Grade 3 Agfa Portriga Rapid paper.  I just barely made the 2:00PM deadline, fingers crossed that my client would accept the artistic license.  As it turns out, the Galleria ran the picture a number of times and, much to my surprise, the photo earned several awards that year.

Technical: Hasselblad 500 CM, Zeiss Sonnar 150 f/4, Kodak T-Max 400, f/8 @ 1/8s, available light.  Printed on Agfa Portriga Rapid Grade 3, partial bleaching in potassium ferro-cyanide, Kodak Gold toner.
Print copied with Nikon D700, Nikkor 50mm f1.4G, ISO 200, two photo grade fluorescent tube banks, RAW file processed in Lightroom.

Dried Flower #4, Solarized

This is yet another mummified flower from Susan's potpourri bowl, interpreted here using a strong reversal monochrome solarization technique in Nik Color Efex Pro.

Technical: Nikon D700, Micro-Nikkor 105mm f2.8, ISO 200, f/16 @ 1/6s, manual focus, tripod, cable release, tethered to a laptop.  RAW file processed in Lightroom 2.6 to crop and adjust color, then edited in Nik Dfine, Nik RAW Sharpener, Nik Vivenza, Nik Color Efex Pro and Nik Output Sharpener.  A "Raw Umber Sepia" preset in Lightroom added the toner effect.  

Dried Flower #3

The potpourri bowl offered up this little mummified flower.  The leathery petals still have vivid magenta, red, orange and yellow in spots.  Photographed on a Calumet portable light table, lit with a single Calumet Quattro 5500K fluorescent beauty dish.    

Technical: Nikon D700, Micro-Nikkor 105mm f2.8, ISO 200, f/16 @ 1/6s, manual focus, tripod, cable release, tethered to a laptop.  RAW file processed in Lightroom 2.6, Nik Dfine, Nik RAW Sharpener, Nik Vivenza and Nik Output Sharpener.  The fluorescent lighting isn't exactly 5500K, so I use the X-Rite Color Passport system to make a custom camera profile for Lightroom.

Obama comes to STL

Me and the wifey got to meet the President last night. Here's a little photo journalism from the evening.

Back Yard Fall Color Variations

This past year, my plans to seriously shoot the fall foliage never came to pass, but I did manage to grab a few shots from my back yard of this line of trees along Fish Pot Creek.  I've been working on sorting and archiving this weekend, and came across this shot.  The picture has a little clean up with Nik tools, but the colors were naturally saturated by the setting sun.

 
When the light is relatively flat on foliage, I like to see what a monochrome conversion with the contrast kicked up looks like.  While this version has no indication of fall, I like how "silvery" the leaves became.

Because it is almost as easy a clicking a button, if I'm in Nik Silver Efex Pro anyway, I try a solarization.  This version that looks has that line drawing or etching I thought was interesting enough to share.

Technical: Nikon D700, Nikkor 24-85mm f2.8-f4, ISO 200, 70mm @ f/8.0 @ 1/20s, handheld.  RAW file processed in Lightroom 2.6 and Nik Software Complete Collection.

Child Mummy #2, St. Louis Science Center

Revisiting a portrait I took of the child mummy at the St. Louis Science Center with Nik tools, I thought I'd try a warmer approach.  Considering that the mummy sits in a plexi case and is lit with a combo of sunlight and mercury vapor, I'm amazed by how clean the Auto WB is on Nikon cameras, even early models like the D100.

Technical: Nikon D100, Nikkor 24-85mm f2.8-f4, ISO 400, 85mm @ f/4.0 @ 1/15s, auto WB, handheld.  RAW file processed in Lightroom 2.6, Nik Dfine, Nik RAW pre-sharpener, Nik Vivenza, Nik Color Efex Pro.

Dead Leaves Redux #1

Looking at the first Dead Leaves post from 2008, the picture feels a little flat.  I decided to throw the entire Nik suite at the picture to see it could be improved.  The workflow was Lightroom minor adjustments, Dfine, RAW Pre-Sharpener, Silver Efex Pro Landscape Sepia style w/Orange filter, Output Sharpener for Display, Lightroom JPEG export.  The result is definitely crisper, with a longer tonal range.

Technical: Nikon D100, Nikkor 24-85mm f2.8-f4.0, 84mm @ f/8.0 @ 1/60s, macro mode, on camera fill flash, handheld.  RAW file processed in Lightroom 2.6 and Nik Suite as above.

Port Glass #3

This is my first real test of shooting tethered with Nikon Camera Control Pro 2, a Nikon D700 and a 17-inch laptop running Windows 7.  There are a number of permutations for configuring how files are handled.  For this setup, I created a new Lightroom catalog for for the occasion, set it to watch a folder on the C:\ drive and move the files to an external hard drive.  Then I set CCP2 to save files to the watch folder.  Shooting with Lightroom running in full screen mode, the images show on screen in Lightroom about 10 seconds after the shot with camera adjustments applied.  The shooting experience is very nice.

A few months ago, I was running the trial and have an important observation has to do with the USB cable that comes with the camera.  First, it is a bit short at 5 ft.  Second, I experienced several lockups that I blamed on the software, chilling my enthusiasm for tethered shooting.  When I started to think about going tethered again, I bought a better cable at the same time I ordered CCP2.  Amazon.com has a line of very good cables branded AmazonBasics.  The heavy duty 6ft. gold plated A-Male to Mini-B USB cable is $3.61 and the 9.8ft heavy duty gold plated USB extension is $5.92.  This time around, the transfers were fast and stable.  I shot burst tests with and without the extension and the extension didn't seem to slow the transfers.

Technical: Nikon D700, Micro-Nikkor 105mm f2.8, ISO 200, f/22 @ 1/2s.  RAW file processed with Lightroom 2.6 and Nik Silver Efex Pro.