Here’s a photo I took at Halloween in 2011, late at night on our way home from a party. Mitzy had spent a solid week making her Fantastic Mrs. Fox costume and I’d had a hard time getting just the right photograph of it. It was a misty night, and cold, but I convinced Mitzy to stay in the parking lot across the street from our apartment while I grabbed a tripod. I positioned her under the street light and took just one shot.
D300s on tripod with AF-S 17-55mm f/2.8 @ 38mm f/4 1/4s ISO400
I took this shot in the Summer of 2009 during the Kitchener Blues Festival. The reflecting pond water feature outside of city hall had been drained and a beer tent set up. Unfortunately there had just been a torrential downpour, flooding the pond. The surface is very flat and level (since it is also used as an outdoor rink in the winter) giving the water not much place to go. A group of people armed with squeegees started pushing the water away from the beer tent. I caught these two taking a break, where the smooth still water was incredibly reflective.
This was shot with the Pentax K20D and Sigma 24-60mm f/2.8 at 1/50s f/8 ISO 400. Yes, there is a bit of Photoshop to remove a few unwanted objects.
I’ve decided to start a weekly post called Oldie-but-Goodie (ObG) Thursdays where I’ll revisit an old photo of mine and explain a bit about how/why it was taken. Last week’s post was technically the first installment, so here’s the second!
I call it The Wrestler and it was taken when a friend, Colin Hunter, asked me to cover a wrestling match for a book he was writing on the world of amateur/semi-pro wrestling. He got me full ring-side access at Club Element, in Kitchener, and free reign to set up lights (incidentally, Element is kind of sketchy, as I found out when entering the washroom with my camera around my neck and getting harassed extensively by the manager. I think he was worried I was going to document the washroom!).
I set up three lights around the ring, each pointing into one side of the ring. This gave me the opportunity to have rim light at nearly every angle and still have fill in front. I triggered the flashes (2 Vivitar 285HVs and a Pentax AF-500FTZ, all at 1/2 power) with cheapo ebay triggers that were about 80% reliable. As It turns out, it is quite difficult to juggle fast moving action, slow Pentax autofocus, flash refresh times and unreliable flash triggers… but I’m happy with the results that I got! There are a lot more from the day here.
Pentax K10D, DA 16-45mm f/4 @ 21mm, f/4.5, 1/80s, ISO 200.
Owen Cherry Photography 