Cotoneaster in blue vase

Cotoneaster in blue vase, a photo by Bruce M Walker on Flickr.

I've been working on a lot of still-lifes lately. Concentrating on getting the light just so. Here's one from last evening.

Colchicum in water

Colchicum in water, a photo by Bruce M Walker on Flickr.

Common name: Autumn Crocus.

It's a fall flowering crocus that was in bloom a couple of weeks ago. I couldn't get a shot of it in situ as the flowers were all flopped under a very scruffy shrub. Louise okay'ed snipping a couple of stems, so I headed into The Studio.

K20D, DA* 16-50/2.8 @ 50mm/f:5.6, ISO 100, 1/160th.
AF540 flash in Fotodiox 24" softbox right, white card left, black
foamcore behind and under.
Cowboy Studios wireless trigger. Lr 4.1, Ps CS5

Sometimes I get the blues

Street musician "Ragtime" John Layton performing with his rare Brazilian Del Vecchio wood resonator guitar on Lakeshore Road in Long Branch, Toronto during Shop the Shore 2012.

Pentax K100D Super, DA 18-55 @ 31mm/f:4.5, 1/1000th sec, ISO 1600

Lightroom 4.1, Silver Efex Pro 2.0, Photoshop CS5

I gave this three-tune EP a listen today -- very nice electro-pop.

The ABC's of Longboarding

Longboarding with Riyaz from Louise Peacock on Vimeo.

Louise did a fabulous job with this. That's me asking a couple of questions and trying to keep Riyaz lit with a reflector in the last half.

Looking back at the 2012 Mississauga Independent Film Fest

Matt Campagna,  Festival Co-Founder

My wife and I attended the 2012 Mississauga Independent Film Festival this year and took in a lot of great Canadian short movies and documentaries. Louise talked to the organizers and some of the very talented and creative filmmakers at the event. Read about our experience in her article for Film Annex ... 

(Photos by me.)

Fester Fish - Fester Makes Friends

My friend Aaron has released his latest Fester Fish episode, which he finished post-production on yesterday. Aaron is just about to enter his fourth year at animation school, then it's out into The Real World for him. Here's to a great final year, Aaron!

She is deciding my fate

She is deciding my fate, a photo by Bruce M Walker on Flickr.

This is one shot from a set of shots I did while helping my wife Louise on a documentary project she's creating about a local business called the Trap Door Boutique. The owner, Gabrielle Neveu, sells clothing and fashion "for the artistic professional" in the Junction area of Toronto's west end.

This was a guerrilla shoot. We were operating within the boutique during their open hours, working around customers who were mostly bemused by our activity. (I think some even came in because they were nosey and saw the lights.) We were in and out in two and a half hours.

I was providing lighting for Louise to do video footage of our models, Marzi and Julie, getting crazy with the clothing that Gabbi was styling for us. I was sneaking in and shooting stills as best I could. Since this was for video I couldn't use flash, so I opted for a $30 garage work-light, 2 by 250 watt tungsten halogen bulbs on a short stand, that we had bought previously to try. To make this light less harsh and have it come from above rather than casting upward shadows, I added two light stands: one with a 44" silver reflector and the other with a reflective umbrella. I then aimed the two 250 watt heads from the work-light at each of the two reflectors.

When I measured the light with my meter I discovered that 500 reflected watts doesn't actually go far. I was forced to shoot between f:2.8 and f:3.5 at 800 ISO and shutter speeds between 1/30th and 1/60th sec for the entire set. But the resulting light was unique and interesting. It was nice to work with WYSIWYG light: easy to see where shadows would fall and great for focussing.

Tricky to work with the work lights though as they threw light everywhere, so accidental direct light leaks and flare were hard to avoid. I even had trouble with flare in the viewfinder! I just accepted the harsh shadows in some cases as creative accidents. ;-)

Then there's the heat: oh my gawd. Sweat was pouring off me. I also was forced to shoot in close proximity to the light heads because we were in a very confined space between the clothing racks, changing booths and the cash desk.

But despite all the restrictions, my keeper rate was astonishingly high. Louise chose 248 out of 302 shots to graft into her doc footage. I rejected many of those as too soft for me, and narrowed my personal keepers down, but it's still a large number. The seven in this gallery are just the extra-good ones that I've retouched first.

So here's the Flickr gallery. The first seven shots are from this recent shoot (this past Wednesday), and the rest are from an art opening in the same boutique last fall.

More images to come ...

Pentax K20D, DA* 16-50/2.8 SDM, 800 ISO, f:2.8-3.5.
Lr 4.1, Ps 5.5

Model/MUA: Marzi Leszczyk
Model: Julie LoTauro
AD/Videographer/Hair stylist: Louise Peacock
Wardrobe stylist: Gabrielle Neveu
Location: Trap Door Boutique
Clothing: TBD
Lighting/Photographer/Retouch: Bruce Walker

Creative Split Toning and Lightroom

This tutorial nicely explains split-toning, and demonstrates some fashion/portrait creative uses for it. But it goes far beyond that. Watch what Mark does with some other Lightroom settings to get good use of vignetting and other Lr features.

Dragonette - Rocket Ship

This is great tunage. Fun electro-pop that you're bound to love if you dig Dragonette's top-40 hit Let It Go. Bonus! Free download too.

Ponytails For Decency

A few weeks after an old lady attacked my bookstore owner friend (Eddie of Dencan Books) with the crumpled-up ball of my work comes word of a fresh complaint.

Stockings and garters and heels -- oh my!

A number of my more recent images, printed on canvas and framed, are hung in a store window down on Lakeshore Road in Toronto. When Candi and Jim, the store owners, put them up I warned them about the Bookstore Versus Little Old Lady episode and pointed out that two of the images in their windows were large renditions of my pin-ups. They laughed and said something to the effect that "Oh don't worry: this is the Lakeshore. Anything goes here."

So apparently last Friday a dual-ponytailed young woman, 19 or 20, came into the store and waited patiently to get Candi's attention. She insisted that those pin-up images were inappropriate and should be removed from the window. Candi said "rubbish" and the girl said, "but they are in their underwear -- women and children could see them!"

Candi, displaying her stubborn and mischievous streak, retorted that there's an enormous illuminated billboard down near the Gardiner Expressway (a 6-lane elevated highway that runs right through downtown Toronto) showing a man wearing only his Stanfield undershorts and that if she could get them to remove that, Candi would remove my pin-ups.

The girl left. But will she return with a mob? Stay tuned ...

Dorothy

Dorothy, a photo by Bruce M Walker on Flickr.

A portrait image from my recent Hollywood Glamour themed shoot. The key light here is a ringlight installed inside an 18" softbox, attached to a monopod and hand-held a few inches above Dorothy by my assistant.

Model: Dorothy Weiss www.dorothyweiss.com/
Photographer: Bruce Walker www.modelmayhem.com/1440574
MUA: Vivian Orgill www.modelmayhem.com/135165
Hair stylist: Ladylyn Gool www.modelmayhem.com/2096721
Photo Assistant: Marzi Leszczyk www.coroflot.com/marzidesign
Location: The Gallery Studio Cafe www.thegallerystudiocafe.ca/

She takes requests

Keys, a photo by Bruce M Walker on Flickr.

Another image from the Hollywood Glamour creative shoot I did with Dorothy Weiss at the end of May.

Full description here.

Model: Dorothy Weiss www.dorothyweiss.com/
Photographer/Retoucher: Bruce Walker www.modelmayhem.com/1440574
MUA: Vivian Orgill www.modelmayhem.com/135165
Hair stylist: Ladylyn Gool www.modelmayhem.com/2096721
Photo Assistant: Marzi Leszczyk www.coroflot.com/marzidesign
Location: The Gallery Studio Cafe www.thegallerystudiocafe.ca/

Flash metering tip: one-button wireless trigger

If you have ever bought one of those inexpensive wireless triggers through Amazon or from eBay, like the great little kits from Cowboy Studio, you may have wondered what to do with the little cable that comes with it. The Cowboy Studio NPT-04 kit ships with one that has a PC sync connector on one end and a 2.5mm micro plug on the other.

That curious little cable

There are actually a few uses for these cables. The manual suggests one: wireless triggering from cameras that lack a hotshoe but have a PC sync outlet; eg medium format film bodies. But also, with a 2.5mm micro jack to 1/4" plug adapter, you can connect the output of one of the receivers to the sync input on a studio strobe or monolight and fire that wirelessly, perhaps at the same time as one or more speedlights in a complex setup.

Now, if only my meter had a hotshoe mount on it ...

Trigger those flashes directly from your light meter

But today I discovered yet another really handy use: connecting a wireless trigger to your light meter and get an instant flash meter reading capability! This will work with any flash meter that has a PC flash sync outlet and a function for doing "cabled" readings. My Shepherd/Polaris meter (Dual 5 aka SPD500) has this capability (select Cabled Flash via the Mode button), and so does the Sekonic L-308 and L-358. I imagine that any decent modern flash meter does.

Doing this simplifies the two-step process of first arming the flash meter then manually triggering the flash(es). Instead, all you do is push the measure/trigger button on the light meter; the flashes fire, and you have your reading.

This works especially well if you have a spare trigger as you can leave it connected and dangling from the light meter. This means not having to worry about forgetting to replace the trigger on top of the camera like I seem to do over and over during a busy shoot where I'm frequently altering the lighting setup and needing to re-measure.

Step by step

So for those of you not used to this, here's what you do. You will setup your lighting arrangement, stands, umbrellas, softboxes, etc., making sure to pop wireless receivers onto the hotshoe feet of all your flashes and turning them on. Set your camera on manual, dial in for example, ISO 100, 1/125th sec shutter and set the flash meter to match those settings. Then when you are ready to measure the light to get the correct aperture, you merely hold the meter near your subject's face with the dome toward the light and press the Measure button. POP! (that's the flashes going off.) Now you will have the correct aperture to use on the meter display.

Aren't you glad you didn't throw that little cable away? You did? Whoops! Well be sure and keep the next one.

Address Book Blues and I Hate Cellphones

Cellphone holder

A little rant for today.

I decided to get a slightly more modern cellphone on the weekend. You need to know that I am one of those curmudgeons who only uses a cell sparingly and only for making actual phone calls--short ones like "I'm going to be late".

I'm also really cheap and I hate the ridiculous fees charged by the local incumbent telcos for voice and data plans and refuse to be taken by them. This means that I only buy older tech and use a pay-as-you-go "plan" to keep it configured on their networks. My old Motorola V120c, new in October 2001, likely one of the oldest cellphones in existence still in working order, is holding less battery charge lately. And since the 60 day air-time top-up was due, I figured time for a new one.

I had done my homework: all the pay-as-you-go plans out there rely on you forgetting to top-up and therefore losing your accumulated minutes. "Oh gee, too bad, boo hoo! - say those a-holes at Rogers and Bell.

I had discovered that 7-Eleven sells phones, mostly Nokia, and SIMs that connect to the Rogers network. Their pay-as-you-go plans expire after a full year, so you don't have to remember to top-up so often. Seemed like the least expensive solution. I wanted to be able to sync my Mac's address book to this phone so I made sure to select a model with Bluetooth, the Nokia 2720 Fold, a new model in September 2009.

If you're a well-read Mac person you may be groaning inwardly now. Yeah, I have since discovered that Address Book sync'ing on the Mac is problematic, older phones aren't supported, and the coup de grace: Apple has completely removed syncing suport from Lion, the latest OS.

Luckily, I'm still running Snow Leopard, I was able to figure out how to hack one of the newer phone-plugins to fool iSync into accepting my 2720 and sync to it. if I want to upgrade to Lion, I can get temporary relief by copying iSync.app and my DIY plugin over to it after the install.

But this took all of Sunday and most of today. Plus I've learned one of the critical reasons why Apple sells so many iPhones: the Nokia phone is one of the most exasperating devices ever created. I have become really adept at removing the rear cover and extracting the battery. That's the way you get the phone's attention in a number of use cases.

For example: fire up the FM radio and listen to it for 5 to 10 minutes. The phone's user interface becomes completely unresponsive. Pull battery, wait a few minutes, replace, reboot.

Tinker with Bluetooth software -- pull battery, etc., etc.

Oh. My. Fecking. Gawd.

I've also learned that I'm somewhat clairvoyant. I can see quite clearly that this phone is going to die by being submerged far out in Lake Ontario at some point in the future. Maybe then I'll overcome my extreme frugality and get an iPhone.

The Boss

The Boss from Alex Emslie on Vimeo.

In the press: SNAP Bloor West - Postmodern Pinups

I'm in the local Toronto Junction area events paper, SNAP Bloor West ...

SNAP Bloor West - Postmodern Pinups

Held Over!

Frolic, a photo by Bruce M Walker on Flickr.

Why is Marzi so happy, you are wondering? It's because my Postmodern Pinups exhibit is now held-over for the entire month of June, that's why!

Dorothy

Dorothy, a photo by Bruce M Walker on Flickr.

Theme of this shoot was Hollywood Glamour ala George Hurrell. Played fast'n'loose with that though. George would have used about 4 or 5 fresnel-lensed hotlights. I used my Pentax portable strobes. The secret sauce though is a ringlight installed inside an 18" softbox, attached to a monopod and hand-held a few inches above Dorothy by my assistant (who is probably nursing sore arms today. Sorry, Marzi!). Other lights in this shot: AF540 in a 42" bounce umbrella camera-left, and a snooted AF540 hairlight well back camera right.

Huge thank-you's to Dorothy, Vivian, Ladylyn and Marzi. You guys rock! And a giant thanks to Derek for letting us crawl all over his Cafe. Go down and catch some jazz, and have a steak while you're there. Tell 'em I sent you. :-)

Model: Dorothy Weiss www.dorothyweiss.com/
Photographer: Bruce Walker www.modelmayhem.com/1440574
MUA: Vivian Orgill www.modelmayhem.com/135165
Hair stylist: Ladylyn Gool www.modelmayhem.com/2096721
Photo Assistant: Marzi Leszczyk www.coroflot.com/marzidesign
Location: The Gallery Studio Cafe www.thegallerystudiocafe.ca/

Dust and Dance

This is quite brilliant. Dancer is dusted with flour, makes athletic leaps while back-lit with strobes. Any direct light paths from strobes to camera are blocked with black cloth. Finished shots from this project are on Flickr ...