Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays Etcetera!

This picture is a HDR created from eight different exposures. I bundled up against the cold winter night, and trekked out into the forest with two strings of Christmas lights and the UPS battery backup from my computer. After setting up the lights, I took a variety of exposures at f/4.0 ranging from 1/8 of a second up to a full 30 seconds. I then combined them using FDR Tools, cloned out the lights leading to the UPS (hidden behind that stump next to the tree) and then did a little contrast/color correction in Lightroom.  I'm pretty pleased with how well it turned out - hope you enjoy it!

Why is it that CSI's seem to be in love with their flashlights and afraid of light switches?

Whatever the reason, their illumination-phobia was my inspiration for Strobist's Lighting 102 Ultra Hard Light/Film Noir assignment.

Crime scene tape is actually a novelty guitar strap that I bought with the intentions of turning into a strap for my camera bag (before I shifted gears and bought a Lowepro backpack instead)

For the flashlight effect on my face I fitted a 12" cardbord snoot to my SB-600 got in nice and cozy and pointed it at my face (1/16 power zoomed to 85mm) Then, to illuminate the crime scene tape, I set a Sunpak 333 at half power parallel to the tape so it skimmed along, lighting it, but not contaminating the rest of the scene.

Afterwards, I discovered a slight glint off my belt buckle, so I burned that out in photoshop. Picture was sharpened and converted to a high contrast black and white in Lightroom. Exposure was 1/500 second @ f/8. Strobes were triggered with cactus radio triggers.

    

For the first time in what feels like months, the clouds finally broke and we had some blue skies and sunshine. I decided to capitalize on this nice, clear (and cold!) day by grabbing my camera and giving my new 24-120 VR a workout.

After bundling up, I ventured out into the forest near my house and wandered around getting some shots of the winter onslaught.

By the time I made it home, my jeans were soaked halfway up to the knee, my cheeks were rosy red and I had lost my glasses in a snowdrift (temporarily) but every time I grab my camera and go for a walk I have a good time.

Oh, and picture #4 is actually an HRD composite of four separate images at varying degrees of exposure. One of these days I might actually invest in Photomatix so I can do decent HDR images.