David's space

After finishing my photography class at a community college this spring, I have delved deeper and deeper into the realm of photography. I have done landscapes, urban scenes, wildlife, and people, but only recently begun doing portraits on a semi-professional basis.

I did my first session two weeks ago. I was contacted by a family that I knew personally and who were familiar with some of my work. (See this photo for one instance). They informed me that they needed class pictures of their children and would I do them. I immediately accepted the job and launched myself into preparing.

I started reading books and searching the internet to find information on how to take the best portraits. I made a mental list of all the equipment that I would need, poses that I would use, and lighting setups that I would be able to pull off with my limited resources. I also created some photo packages and communicated all the necessary information to the client.

Finally, it was time to start taking the pictures! I set up my equipment in the family’s basement, using a wood-paneled wall as a background. My camera was a Pentax K1000 35mm SLR with an 80-200mm zoom lens, and for lighting, I used a Pentax 611 autoflash on a tripod with hotshoe sync. I typically held the camera at a distance of 5-6 feet from the subject (the lens was set at the widest setting), and the flash was to my left and farther forward at about 5 feet to the subject. I used short distances in order to avoid flash shadow getting in the shot.

My first subject was the family’s youngest daughter. She needed a few directions, but she responded well and was very patient as I struggled to get everything set up and working correctly.

My next subject was a boy a little bit older and who had plenty of spunk. He was, nevertheless, a real  charmer. I had experience shooting him before, and he was just as innocent looking as the photo mentioned at the top. However, I chose the photo at right because it portrays a more serious side, which I felt had more impact.

I should mention here that I had some interesting difficulties with my flashgun. I had two instances where it either did not fire or fired late, ruining the shot. I also had times where it went off prematurely for no apparent reason. However, even with faulty equipment, I still did surprisingly well. Due to these problems and others, the picture at below right is unfortunately the only good picture of this boy in this setting.

This brings me to my last subject. As I was working in terms of youngest to oldest, this was the oldest person in the shoot and the only teenager. Being that he was a bit older, I decided to vary my technique. I moved the camera and flash farther back and rotated the flash on the tripod to bounce the light off the ceiling. The chair was taken away, and I had the boy kneel with on arm across his knees. This gave me the following result:

That part of the shoot finished, I took everyone outside to shoot some environment photos. I attached the flashgun above the lens via a bracket and used it as fill. One of the photos in this series had camera shake (due to the slow 1/60 sec sync speed and telephoto zoom) and another was slightly out of focus.

All right, now that I’ve gone over the shoot, I should discuss a few bloopers. One was an experiment that I had during the initial round where I turned off the flash and attached my camera to the tripod to enable longer exposures. This threw my color balance off due to the tungsten lights that were present (below left). Another problem I had was with a couple of group shots that I did to wrap up. The kids were positioned with their backs to the sun, which meant that the lens had to face into it (below right). The resulting lens flare seemed, to my mind, quite awful.

I have found few movies that could provide a truly moving experience. The Disney animated film Bolt is one of them. This movie excels at story, voice talent, characters, and animation.

One of the truly great elements of the movie is its thoroughly engaging story line. Bolt features a dog named Bolt (played by John Travolta) who thinks his made-for-TV superpowers are real. So when Bolt thinks that his owner, Penny (Miley Cyrus), has been kidnapped by the evil Dr. Calico, he sets off to find her only to fall into a packing crate and be shipped off to New York.

Once there, he sets out on a mission to return to Hollywood and “rescue” Penny. Aiding him on his quest is Mittens (Susie Essman), a tough-luck alley cat who Bolt believes to be one of Calico’s evil minions. The duo is soon joined by Rhino (Mark Walton), an excitable hamster who is one of Bolt’s greatest fans.

Along the way, there are several heartfelt moments when Bolt sheds his macho image and learns what it’s like to be an “regular dog.” Mittens also changes as she lets go of her tough attitude, and both animals are able to have fun on the journey. It almost feels like the plot takes a break and is replaced by some light-hearted humor and scripting that sometimes borders on “cutesy.”

The movie also features some highly capable acting. The character of Bolt is voiced by John Travolta who delivers a flawless performance and gives feeling to Bolt’s many moods. Susie Essman gives a sassy yet endearing character to the streetwise cat. Mark Walton also played the character of Rhino admirably, infusing the nutty, overly-dramatic rodent with a sense of believability and off-the-wall charm. Miley Cyrus, however, seemed, merely passable, never quite making the character of Penny her own.

The characters of Bolt are rich and full of emotion and character. Bolt acts boldly and initially behaves much like a regal knight. He believes fully in his role as a “superdog” fighting evil and protecting Penny from all harm. Mittens, however, is everything Bolt is not. A down-to-earth cynic with a penchant for extortion and no love of adventure she constantly fights against Bolt’s staunch desire to return home. The most over-the-top nutcase in this movie, though, is Rhino. Throughout much of the film, he provides comic relief with his outlandish voices and antics. This film is truly a melding of Disney magic and Pixar imagination.

I am hardly an expert on what constitutes good animation, but I found the animation in Bolt to be first-class. The expressions and emotions of the characters rival the work done by Pixar for Wall•E. I found myself captivated watching Mittens teach Bolt the “puppy-dog look.” The visual effects work was also excellent, especially in 3-D. The animals in Bolt were so expressive and believable that this movie does for quadrupeds what Wall•E  did for robots.

I would highly recommend this movie to anyone that enjoys good family films. If you’re unable to see it in theaters, then it is worth the wait to see it on video.

The YAFRay team has released version 0.1.0 of their advanced raytracing system. The new system is a comple retooling of the existing YAFRay rendering software. But just what is YAFRay?

YAFRay (Yet Another Free Raytracer) is a standalone raytrace rendering system capable of producing high-quality 3D imagery. It’s capable of full GI and Skydome Illumination, as well as caustics and depth-of-field simulations. YAFRay’s .xml scene description format can be easily exported from many popular 3D applications including Blender3D and Wings3D.

Best of all, YafRay is, well, free. The latest version Yaf(a)Ray can be easily downloaded from www.yafray.org for Windows, Mac, and Linux.

Download Yaf(a)Ray

Last weekend I and my family experienced a terrible storm. Torrential rains and flooding made for a total pain.

From Saturday afternoon until Monday, water needed to be consistently pumped out of our basement. Hundreds of gallons of water were drained by filling buckets and dumping them away from the house. We had an electric pump, too, but that didn't seem to make any headway, either.

During that first long afternoon, we were fortunate to have some of our friends come and help relieve some of the stress of hauling water buckets for long hours. Eventually, we got two more pumps working, and everyone managed to relax a little while the basement drained. It felt good when I no longer needed to regularly check the water level and make sure it stayed down.