My New Studio

It is DARK in Calgary.  The sun isn't coming up until past 9:00 and is long gone once we get home from work, plus it's been very cloudy/snowy this week.  I've been nervous about how I would take pictures without using natural sunlight, and surprised myself when I woke up at 6:45 on Saturday morning and knew exactly what to do.  After taking a few pictures of our balcony view on a wintery, foggy morning...

...I grabbed a couple lights I got at the hardware store last year and clamped them onto the hood of our stove.  I don't know why I hadn't thought of this earlier, since I have failed countless times at clamping the lights onto things like our bicycles and creating awkward tabletops out of flimsy boxes - but this setup is Perfect!

I messed around with bubbles for a little while, which are a lot harder to photograph than I initially thought, and had some fun photographing the actual lights.

I then decided to pull out some dog hair I had collected in Kansas City when I worked at Brookside Barkery as a dog washer.  I always enjoyed studying the immense amounts of hair that came off of dogs, and packed some of my favorite clumps into envelopes to photograph at a later time.  I'm really glad I did, because it is a lot of fun to mess around with.  Here are a few shots from my first dog hair studies.

Apart from a little hair getting into the stovetop (which made for an interesting-smelling breakfast), I'd say my new studio is a huge personal success.  I am glad I found a cheap, easy way to photograph things without sunlight - just in time for our first Canadian winter!

Bacon in the Sun

I love bacon.  And I love cast iron.  But I haven't really put the two together before, due to an on-again off-again relationship with bacon.  For the past year, since I've started using cast iron, bacon and I have been going through a rough patch.  But Canadian maple syrup brought us back together, and I was floored by how beautiful the bacon grease looked in the cast iron after the pan cooled down.  I took the next sunny opportunity on our balcony to photograph in my favorite type of lighting.

I like how topographical these images turned out - and I'd like to take more photos keeping this in mind.  There must be all sorts of subjects that can look like something they're not.

Just Add Water

Once you notice cigarette butts, it's hard to stop - they're everywhere!  It makes sense, really.  There are over four million smokers in Canada alone, a place where cigarettes are taxed sky-high due to health concerns.  In Calgary, smokers aren't even allowed to smoke on outside decks or patios, yet cigarette butts litter every sidewalk and street corner.

I couldn't stop thinking about these cigarette butts for a couple of days, so I figured I'd start collecting them.  This is something I wouldn't recommend doing - they stunk up our apartment, even through a sealed plastic bag and container.  But they were fun to mess around with.  First, I stuck some in an apple, which got my mind going, but didn't give me the results I was really going for.

Then I decided to put all of the butts into a glass and fill it with water.  I don't really remember why I decided to do this, but I'm glad I did.  It gave me a whole day of entertainment watching the used cigarettes turn the water from clear to a deep, murky brown.  

And it allowed me to take some photos of the butts piled on top of each other in a freeform sort of way. The water also saturated the sticks, giving me a new type of butt to work with.  

This experiment taught me the importance of taking simple objects and doing unexpected things with them.  I didn't know what to expect in the beginning of my first wandering thoughts about all the smokers in Calgary, but I allowed my mind and hands to work together without holding back.  I had a lot of fun doing it, and am happy with a step forward in my photography.  

Photo Booth 101

I don't think I've ever met somebody who doesn't like going into a photo booth.  It's easy, fun, hilarious, and a great way to capture memories.  And it seems like photo booths have gotten pretty popular to rent for big events, or even to make.  I tested out my first photo booth at my wedding last month.  It was an easy set-up - I used the PVC-stands I made last year to hold up a black fabric backdrop.  My light kit has been breaking down over the last year, so I could really only set up one strobe light - and I did so with a softbox attached - which basically looks like this:

I set up my camera on a tripod and to finish it off, I was planning to have a wireless remote (which allows someone to take a picture without having to actually touch the camera).  This is the one I got a few months ago, and after testing it out a few times, I was in love.  I had multiple notes around my apartment reminding me NOT to forget to bring it to Kansas for the wedding with me, and had the box packed in my bag a week before we left.  It turns out that I had taken it out of the box at some point, though, and hadn't put it back - so after all the hassle to remember it, I was duped by keeping original product packaging around (lesson learned - I'm throwing that stuff away from here on out!).  

I thought about bagging the whole process, but my brother suggested having my six-year-old nephew, Ben, run the show.  It was a great idea, and saved the night!  Not only did it give Ben something fun to do, but he takes his jobs very seriously, and was excellent at corralling various guests to the booth to get their pictures taken.  There were only a couple times I had to go over to reset the stands (as it was a breezy evening, and I had it set up outside) or reposition the camera to point towards the right spot (which we had marked on the ground in front of the backdrop with a rock, to let people know where to stand), and I ended up with hundreds of fun photos taken throughout the night!  Here are a few of my favorites:

I'm sure I'm going to be doing this again sometime, because it was just too much fun.  There are a few things I'll definitely do differently, though:

• Do the booth inside!  The elements are never friendly to such a set-up.
• Don't forget the wireless remote.
• Have a box of props for everyone to mess around with (maybe paper and markers for people to write something, random clothing accessories from a thrift store, or different "theater" props).  
• Make a different kind of backdrop, using paint, a colorful bed sheet, or streamers.  
• Do some research online, and look at these links:
• http://pinterest.com/nun69/photo-booth-ideas/
• http://sillybooth.ca/blog/
• http://whaleyoubemyfriend.wordpress.com/2012/01/06/diy-photo-booth-ideas/