“Hi Jason, we received your order for printing, thanks so much for your continued patronage.  Before sending to print though, we wanted to check and make sure the image is as you wanted it because of some items near the corners that caught our eye.  Do you want these items in the frame?  let us know and we’ll proceed accordingly.  Thanks so much!

What an awesome email, and in fact, I did not want the edge distractions.  So, in getting a reminder myself, decided it would make a good blog post for the day.  Here’s the final image I sent out to the vendor for printing:

It’s a nice image, and I am testing a few shots in some frames to see how a series might look together, so this is one I wanted to add.  However, if they had proceeded before I made edits, this is what would have gone through:

See the distracting elements?  I missed them the first time!  The lesson here is that it helps to have a checklist before printing too, and to include “clean the edges” in your checklist.  I think I am going to put one together here soon.  With that in mind, what sorts of experiences have others had in pre-printing stages?  Do you use a checklist to make sure you’ve done everything you need to do?  What would you include?  What would you leave to the lab?  I know a lot of folks let the lab do final edits on things like color correcting, white balance, and even cropping, while others like to maintain end to end control over their imagery.

Sound off in the comments – would love to hear everyone’s thoughts!

In any case, here is the long-awaited review of the Epodisc from the folks at Expo Imaging:

First – what is the Expodisc?  It’s simply a disc that defracts light as it passes through your lens in order to determine the proper white balance setting for your images.  Why is this a good thing?  It’s a good thing because light doesn’t always fall into the specific categories designed by your vendor.  It’s not always daylight, tungsten, florescent, etc.  These vendor pre-sets can get you close, but if you want spot on white balance settings in camera, this is definitely the way to go!  Here’s the short video I had put together a while back on how it works:

[display podcast]

Do I like the Expo Disc?  Absolutely – and if I were in an environment where lighting conditions change often, or it was tricky to determine (say those lights in gyms with the green phosphorous), these utilities are a godsend.  Landscape environments can also be tricky when you are dealing with things like snow, shade and sunny areas at the same time, and portraiture can be tricky too – say you have a bride’s wedding dress, the whites of the eyes, and the teeth for sample areas – which do you set?  Use the ExpoDisc and it will be spot on every time!

Thanks again to the folks at Expo Imaging for lending me the review units of the Ray Flash and the Expo Disc. It was a pleasure, and for those interested in learning more about their products, please visit their website here.

Happy shooting everyone – be sure you get your shots in, because there’s limited time left in the Circles contest for a lucky participant. Here’s the Flickr thread – keep on posting and keep on shooting!  We’ll see you back here again tomorrow!

We all know that tungsten light is a warmer light (think regular light bulbs) and fluorescents and flash produce cooler lighting. While it makes sense, until I read an article by Peter Kolonia in Popular Photography, I have never thought of combining warm and cool light to produce different effects in a photograph. Since I’ve not tried this yet, I don’t have any sample pictures, but they should be viewable over at www.popphoto.com so stop over there to see samples in action.

Basically, the article says that by lighting your subject with one tone and the background with another, you can produce some really interesting results. For simplicity purposes, here’s a chart of what combinations produce what types of results:

¹For a high key (all white) effect on the background, throw more light on the background. The more light you direct to the background, the brighter the resulting background will be for your photos. Conversely, as background lights get dimmer, the background itself will be more of a gray.

Just a few reminders Peter gives us:

Use a large space so foreground light won’t spoil the background light

• Experiment with exposure to get the right glow from the background (typically longer speeds thus necessitating a tripod)
• Using an old-fashioned fluorescent light can result in the “grunge” look of cross-processed photos

Well, I’d read about white balancing en masse off the eyes, so thought it might work out. But, with the sunny afternoon, pupils were dilated, and kids were squinting, so…I went with the next best thing – their teeth! Turned out to work okay, and I’ve got about 20 shots to share with the mother at work on Monday. In light of my “success” at setting white balance off a subject’s teeth, I thought I’d share that tip with the readership this Friday – take flight in charting new waters – shoot without a white balance card and just use what nature gives you.

Since I’ve not gotten the model releases signed by the mother yet, I can’t make a gallery of images, but I expect to have those on Monday, so stop back in to see the full gallery by then.  For some reason I can’t get to WTD so will add my “Friday Funny” later.  Alternatively, you can just stop over to www.whattheduck.net to enjoy the humor – I hit it every Friday and read the entire week.

Finally, I’d like to close this week out with a challenge – show me your shots!  Let’s see everyone get out there and take pictures.  Email me pictures taken from the theme for the week (or email me a link and I can download that way), and I’ll put a montage together here on the blog.  With me being a Canon shooter, I figured it would be fun to start with a related theme – RED.  So, show me shots with something red – anything you want, and I’ll put a gallery together of all of them and offer some thoughts and feedback on all contributions in a post the following week.  So, the dates that I’ll take shots starts today, and will end next Thursday at midnight.  Please re-size your shots to 800px on the longest dimension before sending.

Thanks for tuning in, and don’t forget to get out and shoot this weekend – remember the theme is RED!  Happy shooting and watch those apertures!

It’s done though (for the most part – still a little trim work to do, and some cosmetic work here and there), and I’ve got a few shots to share of it.

After all was said and done, I retired to the couch for about half the day to surf, watch HGTv (that channel is addictive), and catch up on my photo reading materials. It was a pretty sweet feeling to get all of that completed. Speaking of sweet, check out the new softbox I made this evening from the DIY’er perspective. Should be interesting to see if it works when I get back in my “studio”. Here’s a shot of that too:

Not the most professional of softboxes, but it should do the job well enough, once I get the inside spray painted with white. (Without it the can itself cast a nasty yellow glare on shots.) For anyone who is thinking of doing this, all you need is an empty container, a piece of paper, a utility knife and a little spray paint. If you want to forgo the spray paint, you could always use something like a Clorox jug (empty and rinsed of course…) cut in half. Ultimately, I’ll likely put some cloth on there and rubber band it around to act as the softbox rather than a sheet of paper but you get the idea.

For more lighting ideas, try getting an empty cardboard roll from a carpet store – you can get them dirt cheap (as in free) and cut to size. Spray paint a little white paint on the inside and you’ve got yourself a neat little snoot! What’s a “snoot” you ask? Go find out at Strobist – where you will find everything you ever needed to know about lighting but were afraid to ask!