springtime in Shanghai

Magnolia on Tree, Shanghai

Spring is here, sort-of, and some flowers are blooming. This magnolia is on a tiny tree in our housing compound. The tree is completely covered with these amazing blossoms. No leaves yet, just flowers.

I experimented with different illumination schemes but used a classic diffuse white umbrella key light with some hard, snooted rimlight to help separate it from the not-perfectly dark background. Setup shot is here.

The front petal blew out a little bit. I had to up the flash power and stop down the lens to get the depth of field I needed - the wind was blowing and I got lots of focus errors with the lens wide open.

I used a spray bottle to enhance the dew. I used my flashlight to help the autofocus work in the dark, as well as for composition.

published in CRAFT!

CRAFT Article Cover Photo

For those of you DIY/crafty types, you will be able to see an article in CRAFT volume 06 that my wonderful wife Summer wrote here. It was a collaborative effort; I was the photographer. I recommend CRAFT and its nerdier brother MAKE for excellent projects, page design, and yes, photography. This article teaches you how to make your own coloring book using Photoshop. So this is a meta-picture, with the original photo here. I took this cover photo using my small-flash setup and a homebrew light tent made of PVC pipes, fittings, and an IKEA shower curtain.

small-flash photography

Cromwell - My Small Dog

I have recently become interested in using small hot-shoe flashes for improvised studio-style photography. The model is my inimitable if annoying dog. Shot with a single Nikon SB-80DX and an umbrella. Inspired by David Hobby's excellent Strobist.

flickr tags complete

Hello! After a long process all weekend, all my pictures on flickr are tagged and described. Please take a look through them through my website, or on my flickr page. Let me know if you see any typos or errors in the tags or captions. There are travel photos, flash photos, as well as my published photos.

With that out of the way, it should be a good, productive week for blogging!

flickr updated

As you probably have not noticed, I have updated the design of the blog. I could not follow my own advice... But I think it looks nicer, more consistent with my website and less like a default blogger template.

In more important news, I have uploaded all of my 2007-present photos to my flickr site and I am in the process of adding tags and organizing them. I am trying to be a picky photo editor and it is hard to choose: technical quality and content quality are often weakly correlated. In addition to my best photos, I also archive all my published photos here as well as photos of projects.

Once the photos are tagged, I will have time for some new essays, and hopefully soon, my first how-to article.