Blog: 2007-12

New Monolights, Karma, Nice People

A couple weeks ago, I added a third Nikon SB-28 improvised strobe to my home studio setup, and I was basically all set for lighting gear, except perhaps for a softbox and greater variety of backdrops. Of course that means that Friday I saw an ad on CraigsList for a free pair of broken monolights. They'd been dropped, so I figured they might just need new flash tubes and perhaps some soldering touch-up.

When I picked them up at a studio yesterday, they turned out to be sturdy White Lightning Ultra 1800 units, and the tubes appeared intact. At home, the strobe function on one is fine (and, at full power, can shoot down small aircraft) and only the modeling light doesn't yet work. The other unit won't even charge, but I'm optimistic about opening it up and poking around with a DMM.

Additionally, while I was chatting with the photographer, I mentioned that I was planning to build a softbox. She digs around in a corner and hands me an old one of hers that she inherited and doesn't use. She also gave me various other studio toys she was getting rid of.

When I went to write this blog entry, I was going to say something about karma. The photographer was already in my email addressbook when she responded to me on Friday. I figured she was the photographer who, when she posted on CL last year a lens for $250, I wrote her to tell her she could get $450 for it on eBay. (I considered buying it and flipping for a $200 profit.) However, fact-checking just now showed that these were two distinct photographers, with names only slightly similar. So, if karma was involved, it was less direct than my original suspicion. Really, she was just a nice person.

I've bought and sold camera gear half a dozen times on CraigsList this year. Each time, the people I dealt with turned out to be surprisingly nice (CL has a disproportionate share of crazies and predators nowadays), and we always end up chatting about photography after the transaction. When much of the world is going to hell, it's especially encouraging to meet nice people who are enthusiastic about their art and craft.

The Microphone Stand is the Natural Enemy of the Concert Photographer

Some of my best concert shots have been ruined by a mic stand that jumped into my frame for a fraction of a second, to obstruct some crucial detail of the performer.

Google and "Is Santa Real?"

I decided to ask Google: is santa real?

Which I suspect is what children do nowadays.

I wonder whether Google has considered adding a special search result for this question, like it does when it thinks you're typing, say, a geographic location, a product, or an arithmetic expression. This special search result would be separated from the normal search results, so that Google would be maintaining objectivity in those. Clicking on the special search result could lead to a benign Google-created Christmas portal page for children.

Or perhaps that would be a slippery slope for Google, creating precedent for them handling certain "sensitive" queries specially. That might increase their exposure to political pressure or government orders to handle other queries specially.

Models, Cold, Snapshots

November 16th was a cold and very windy day in Boston. So of course I had a test shoot with an amateur model scheduled on that date. Moreover, it was to be on the Esplanade, which is a narrow park along the Charles River (think: cold). I'd warned her ahead of time about the weather forecast, but she was game, and she remained game even when the weather turned out worse than expected.

The planned assistant/escort wasn't able to come, so I carried the reflectors and lights myself, unused, and shot with only an on-camera speedlight. We shot in various nooks and crannies of the Esplanade, out of the wind as much as possible. Fortunately, given the cold, she had a stylish coat that worked well with the autumn foliage backdrops and her blue eyes, so I had her stay in that rather than trying the backback full of costume changes she'd brought.

There's a serendipitous snapshot I took that won't be going into my portfolio, but I like it nevertheless, hence this blog entry. While we were moving between spots on the Esplanade, the sun peeked through, creating some dramatic light that was almost surreal beneath the storm clouds. I stopped in my tracks, had her turn around, and snapped a few quick snapshots without flash while she tried to get the wind out of her hair. (That shot is unedited except for shrinking for the Web and stamping with copyright notice.) I knew at the time it was technically imperfect, but I didn't want to expend the last of her weather tolerance on this especially cold stretch of land, so I said something like "OK, let's go" -- rather than figure out a better composition, set up some fill, wait for the background to clear of joggers and walkers, and hope the ambient light held.

Besides, a snapshot has a nice genuine quality that is lessened when we start tweaking things.