Racetrack

I went to Keeneland today despite there being no racing. It was cool to be there without any other people around; I'm used to it being packed to the gills. I was able to take some nice solitary shots on a beautiful, mild weathered summer day. I wish every day could just be 72 degrees around here.

I also drove to nearby Pisgah Pike. It's a historic and scenic road near Versailles.

Down on the Farm

My family spent Sunday visiting the farm of my cousin Lanette at Lan Mark Farms. Lanette and Don raise sheep, llamas and cattle and sheer the sheep and llamas, clean and dye their wool and then process it before making beautiful products, including blankets, hats, jackets, and rugs. I can't believe all the work that goes into making these things! They have even patented their own looms that they're now selling to other textile craftsmen. We each made our own pot holder/trivet to take home. In the picture above, Steve works on tacking wool into his trivet. Then Don helped us feed our creations through the loom he designed.

Lori holds up her pot holder; below, Scott is pictured with his. Do you think he got a little into it?

A few scenes from the farm.

Lindsey holds a really cute kitten.

Lanette told me that this sheep is just a teenager. Sometimes they lay on their knees to eat grass...I'd never seen that before.

Tennis Tournament

Steve's USTA Team went to Regionals in Louisville on Friday and Saturday. I tagged along in the blazing heat Friday and took some photos of Steve in action. I played around with my shutter speed to "freeze" the motion but I still got motion blur from the racquet. Still, pretty cool. His team won Regionals, yay!

Fun with Fruit!

I've been trying to catch up on lighting assignments posted on my favorite blog, Strobist. If you want to learn how to light anything using a few off-camera flashes and DIY lighting equipment, this is the place. I'm finally on Lighting 102. This assignment was to shoot a piece of fruit with the flash bouncing through a lighting umbrella. I played around with the direction of the light in relation to my fruit, a clementine (yum!) and also used a snooted bare flash towards the end. For a quick setup, I thought these turned out pretty cool. All these shots are straight from my camera, I didn't bother processing them because I thought they looked nice without it. Food mags, here I come!

Umbrella'd flash camera right, about three feet from the clementine. My background was actually red but the light blew it out to a pink-ish tone. I love the reflection I got from a glossy piece of black posterboard...cheap!

For this shot, I held the umbrella and flash above the clementine. The light reveals just enough that you can make out the clementine.

Another shot of the clementine, umbrella'd flash camera right. This one is no-frills, but it's still a pretty nice shot.

This is almost the same shot as above, except that I removed the umbrella and aimed the flash straight up and held a blue piece of art foam above it to get the blue hue.

Here's the setup (the flash is camera right). Note my patient photo assistant, Winston, who was apparently in a flash-induced trance. I kept telling him not to look at the light.

Ruins

I really like abandoned, dilapidated buildings. They're haunting and mysterious, and enough time snooping around one to take photos gets under my skin. I ran across a stack of empty, rusted-out train cars that were all stacked up on top of each other. It was broad daylight and I was next to a moderately high-traffic road so I jumped out of my car to take some photos. Then I got a little skittish as I walked over to the train cars...they looked like the perfect hideout for homeless people so I chickened out and got back in my car.

But, I did find a really cool run-down district of Lexington that's worth coming back to with more (brave) people for some potentially cool photos. Here's one building:

And some barrels around the train cars:

I also went to they labyrinth that is Lexington Cemetery, following the "haunting" theme. They have some pretty old headstones.

This cute little chipmunk had tons of hiding places under tilted headstones...he kept popping into and out of places. But I caught him in one picture!

Off-Camera Flash 101

Today I spent some time experimenting with using off-camera flash to light objects. I'm trying to learn how to light from different angles and use reflective cards to limit shadows and highlights. Here are a few I thought worthy of posting.

A carved turtle:

And the setup; I fired the strobe into the white card so the turtle would be lit from camera left.

This is a detail shot of an album liner. I angled the flash low to show the texture of the paper.

It took forever to get that quarter to stand up.

A Little Trek Downtown

I quickly learned today that downtown Lexington on a Sunday is pretty boring. But I wanted to get out and take some photos so I headed downtown to walk around and get some shutter-priority practice.

Portfolio Headshots

Here are some more photos from my shoot on Monday. Charles is trying to round out his new model portfolio with some headshots. He's putting together a new comp card which I'm very excited about, since it will be the first to feature my photos! Many more to come, I hope!

Model Shoot

Yesterday I went out with Guy, an aspiring model, to take photos for his portfolio. We walked around campus and tried to find some shade since the day was a scorcher. Keep an eye out for Guy, I'm sure he'll be in some ads and commercials soon!