Blog Week Day 5 – Farewell to Waterloo Bowling Lanes

Posted on May 10, 2013 by owencherry

Tomorrow night Waterloo’s last bowling alley, Waterloo Bowling Lanes, will close its doors. Soon it will be demolished with a 7 story condo taking its place. I, along with many other Waterloons, are saddened by this. The lanes have been open since 1949 and will be sorely, sorely missed. There’s something special about a run down 5-pin bowling alley. Nostalgic Canadiana, maybe.

Last night, Mitzy and I made light painted composite images of the building to honour its closing. The technique is the same as the one shown here, with 5-10 shots making up each composite.

D300s with Tokina 11-16mm f/2.8 PRO DX at 11mm f/11 4s ISO 200

ObG Thursdays – I Spy a Spider

Posted on May 2, 2013 by owencherry

This week’s oldie-but-goodie comes from the front porch where last summer a spider took residence. I got creative with the lighting here, using a full three strobes. I controlled the strobes with Nikon’s CLS (Creative Lighting System) using the built-in flash as the controller.

The main light was a Nikon SB-900 with 1/4 CTO gel (the one that is supplied with the flash) and a Nikon SB-700 and Metz 48 AF-1 were both used as rim lights, un-gelled. I programmed the CLS settings in the camera as follows:

Overall exposure compensation was 0 EV
Main light was dialed down to -0.7 EV (on Group A) and had a 1/4 CTO gel
Rim lighting was increased to +0.7 EV (both on Group B)

Happily I also had a Mitzy to stand behind the web!

The photo was taken with the D300s with AF-S 60mm f/2.8 G Micro at f/8 1/100s ISO 400.

And here’s a bonus close up.

On the Walter Bean Trail with Mitzy

Posted on January 1, 2013 by owencherry

Mitzy and I went for a walk in the snow on the Walter Bean Trail last week. Despite being only 10 cm, it was still the biggest snowfall since March, 2011. Here are a couple of shots, both with cinematic crops that I feel work quite well.

First, one with the AF-S 85mm f1.8 G. Mitzy was standing in a sunbeam poking through the trees. I’m finding this lens to have extremely accurate focus and wonderful subject separation. This is at f/4 and Mitzy still pops from the background. The bokeh is still great at f/4 as well. Unfortunately I overexposed her face, leading to some poor skin tones when I recovered the highlights.

Next is a manually focussed shot with the 35mm f/1.8 DX at f/1.8.