I met Jimmy through some mutual friends recently, and she’s been nothing but awesome since.  She asked me to do some headshots for a project she’s working on, and of course I agreed.  She’s a pretty laid back person, not your typical girlygirl, and as a result is a blast to hang out with.

After we got the shots for her project, we just goofed off for another 20 minutes or so and snapped off some frames.  I like this girl, she has a really great sense of expression, and is just very fun to work with.

These shots were taken out at Ivan’s house (his garage).  Where it was extremely warm.  Key was the brand new LumoPro LP160 flash fired full blast through a Westcott 60″ shoot-through (both of which I’ve had for a month and hadn’t used until this day!).  Lit our backdrop from behind with my old Minolta flash firing through the sheet to help eliminate shadows to create the pure white background.  Camera was f/8, 1/200th @ISO100.

Steve, Andrea, and I recently went on a day trip out to Davis.  Why?  Well…  There was a Super Street Fighter IV tourney at Drom’s Comics & Cards, so we thought we’d give it a shot.  Seems that we were pretty much the only two people there who didn’t really know anyone else.  So, odd.  Plus, they use PS3s.  Our fightpads are for the 360, because the PS3 fightpads (which Steve also has) are worthless (Damn you, MadCatz!).  Since neither of us are joystick players, we had to throw down on some janky-assed Sega Saturn pads.  Lame.  Despite the competition we faced first round, we both went out in a blaze of fail.  Missing hadokens and air tatsus left and right.  Miserable.

So, on the way back to the car, I randomly snapped this picture of a bike rack at the Amtrak station.  No-look shot, just a one-off.  I didn’t really shoot much there, but perhaps next time.

Once in a while, great ideas are had.  They change the way you think, the way you look at art, and maybe society.  When these ideas spring to life, they can enrich your existence in ways never before thought possible.

This is not that kind of idea.

This is pure unadulterated humor, sprung forth from the sick twisted minds of sick twisted people.  And therefore, it is awesome.  Travis, the duder behind the oh-so-magical Whiskey For Breakfast, has come up with a rather amusing premise for what I’d call a comedic photo essay.  He’s had part one of this series up for a while now, but I’m just now getting to blogging about it.

The shoot happened the weekend of the iPad launch, and instead of standing around with a bunch of geeks and nerds, we drove around town shooting ridiculous photos of Steve in a bodybag.  All in all, good times.

More will be surfacing through the cracks of Travis’ demented frontal lobe as it leaks out.

Check out Whiskey For Breakfast, or follow Travis on Twitter.  Have an idea for a bodybag shoot?  Contact Travis on Twitter with the hashtag #thingstodowithabodybag.

Wow, what a weekend!  I had the pleasure of running a “photo booth” at the SCTA’s annual awards dinner/dance.  Let me tell ya’, crazy, fun-loving, exciting people, these teacher-types are.  It’s a good thing that word didn’t get out that I work for a major school information software company in the support department, otherwise this would’ve been an even more frantic night!

After the awards dinner, the lights went down, and the party attitude went up, and from then on it was just a blast.  Fun people to shoot, albeit directing people was nearly impossible–loud music and a party atmosphere does not lend itself well to “Turn a bit left, chin up, bend the knee” instructions.  It was all I could do to keep everyone away from the “backdrop”, and even in front of it haha…  Either way, I’m not stressing, it was fun.

This shot was way zoomed out on the 24-105mm f/4L (Official review of this lens, btw: Holy mother of god is it SICK!!), and you can see the impressively powerful and reliable Paul C. Buff White Lightning X1600 over on the left.  Had two of these bad-boys blasting at only just around 1/4 power–if that, on 45 degree angles camera left/right.  Didn’t light the backdrop, although I should’ve.  I would’ve ended up getting small flash that I planned on lighting it with broken or knocked over, so I didn’t worry.  Either way, even though the “fourth wall” has been busted down on this shot, I like it as it kind of turns out to be a behind-the-scenes shot, as though as the’re going crazy inbetween “real” shots.  Works for me.

The rest of these photos can be found on my newly created Facebook fan page for my photography:  http://www.facebook.com/pages/digitalnoisephoto/102304529848

Why Facebook refuses to have decent URLs for fan pages is beyond me… But there you go, you should Like it.  Because I have more stuff coming soon.  Hint:  It has a hot girl in it.  Stay tuned.

Last Friday I went to the River Cats home opening game.  I’ve never been to a River Cats game, never been to Raley Field.  Haven’t even seen a ballgame since maybe high school.  Maybe.  Gotta say though, it was a good game.  The Cats ended up winning 8-4, and all was right.

I couldn’t get to my seat without squeezing myself through a pretty crazily packed row, so I just didn’t.  Stood at the edge of the concourse for most of the game, the ol’ 70-210mm f/4 strapped on, on my el-cheapo Walmart monopod on my Induro ball head.  I could’ve done much better with something out to 300mm, but hey, it’s better than nothing.

Either way, I had a good time, got some alright shots, and realized that I need an IS lens if I’m shooting that far extended even on a monopod hehe.

Maybe I’ll put more from the game up later, but it’s late.  I just needed to get something up tonight, it’d been nearly a week.

Ivan and I were killing some time in downtown, and I decided I wanted to shoot something.  We ended up in Old Sac, and he had the brilliant idea of trying to get access to the third deck of the Delta King, with the iconic Tower Bridge in the background.  The manager was nice enough to let us up there, and so we just put together a fun experimental shoot at night on Sacramento’s beloved Delta King riverboat hotel and restaurant.

I’m still working with my very less-than-adequate strobes, and it was pretty dark, so I was working with fairly long shutter speeds, between .5 and 4 seconds, depending on other settings.  Overall it was an interesting experience.  Basically, I learned to not wait until it’s actually dark to make a dark background.  A 30 minute jump on the shoot and I’m sure it would’ve come out better.  Either way, it was fun, we got some relaxing productive time, and basically had a good evening to end the weekend.  I’m just thankful that Ivan puts up with my crap while I’m trying to figure out crazy stuff like this, it’s much appreciated.

Anyways…  Technical details, summed up (it’s late, I’m tired):  The Minolta firing through the shoot-through camera right up close, the Phoenix firing bare about twice the distance as the Minolta, from camera left feathered behind him a bit.  Canon EF 50mm f/1.8, ISO 800, .5/sec @ f/11.

I’ve been a bit quiet here on the photoblog, but the camera hasn’t been coming out too terribly often recently.  Such a shame.

In fact, it almost didn’t come out last night, but Sarah managed to talk me into doing a group shot.  I can’t begin tell you how great it is to have someone who actually is excitedly supportive of it, it’s a nice change.

This is our group.  Well, most of it.  There are a few key people missing, but for the most part, this is the gang.  Most of them are the regulars, although a few are new, which I always welcome.  As crazy and retarded as we end up sometimes, it’s a good group, and we all have fun.

From left to right:  Ninja, Jeff, Tony, Luke, Heidi, Colby, Sarah, Ivan, Eliza, Ray (sitting), Bill is behind Alisa, and me.

And yet again, photography while drinking equals mistakes–notice how I ghosted myself with the lights off in the background?  Yeah.  I was fully aware of it being a 4 second exposure, but I took off early on all shots.  Why?  Because I had a restless gang of drunkards who were giving me grief! Just kidding hehe.  But I did end up ghosting myself in all of the shots, which I guess I would say was the only real issue I have with these, other than the fact that not all the back row are lit.  Still, for doing this super rushed, I’m pleased with it.

Strobist info: 4 second exposure @ f/5.6, ISO 200, 50mm f/1.8 lens.  Minolta Auto 118x flash triggered by Cactus v4 triggers, with my Phoenix flash slaved with a hotshoe slave (even though the phoenix has a built-in slave.  wtf was I thinking? haha!)

So, I don’t normally go for the crazy post-processed artificial look, but because of the MASSIVE flare coming from the VAL’d light back camera right, I thought I’d go for it instead of attempting to fix it.

Dragged Ivan, Krissy, and Luke up to the top of the 27th Street Parking Garage on Saturday and made them brave the crazy cold winds so I can take silly pictures of them being, well, silly.  Good times though.

The more I look at this photo, the more I like it, but I know it’s definitely not my M.O., so to speak.  Either way, as long as I enjoy it for what it is, and Luke likes it, I guess that’s what matters.

I may put up more from that night later, but for now, I’m doing exactly what I said I wouldn’t do tonight and am up WAY too late.  Night!

Figured I should probably get another one of these posted.  I’ve been procrastinating on a lot of these because Photoshop is borked on my machine somehow, and a lot of these require extensive use of cloning to get rid of unwanted background stuff.  Lightroom doesn’t have much in the way of precision when it comes to this sort of thing, but it does the job in a rough kind of way.

Here’s one of the early shots into the shoot.  Love how this came out, been one of my faves from the get-go.  I pause almost every time I browse by it.

And I guess you could blame my friend Veronica for making me feel like I’m not doing my duty of posting new pics, and therefore getting me to do one of these when I should be showering and going to bed.  Which I’m doing now, as it’s getting late.

Like it?  Not so much?  Post your thoughts in the comments!

Been talking about it for a few weeks now, but I went and did it Thursday night.  I cut my hair!  It’s gone!  WTF!!  Yeah, I know, I’ve lost my signature “metalhead” look, but even then, I guess I wasn’t too metalhead-looking.  Either way, the long hair is gone, the short hair has returned after like, a decade’s absence.

Obviously taking pics of oneself requires more effort than I’m willing to put forth, so I had Steve help me pull the trigger.  He enjoyed it though, so it was fun times.

So what do you think?  Like it?  Don’t like it?  Leave your thoughts in the comments!