on hiatus

for awhile. traveling to north carolina.

here's some recent tho, from anther fLint shoot and some left out from previous posts

and here's another one of my niece

and another of Jacob!

Day 9

Nothing new to post today. I was going to do some light writing but by the time I decided that's what I wanted to do, I couldn't let myself do it with just a boring old flashlight. I wanna get some glow sticks, some gels for the lights to give them color. I want to go all out. And probably run(lol) across the entire golf course in my backyard and do some huge project. so for now, here's my first venture into light writing a few years ago:

I found this guy on Flickr that's giving me a TON of ideas. If anyone wants to help, let me know! It could be prettttyyy cool.

Check him out, though!

Light Writing: Typically pretty easy, however, it's one of those things you definitely need to think out before hand, especially if you've never done it before. A lot of things can go wrong:

1.) While you're 'writing' your light source may at times turn away from the camera and will not get captured, so in the final photo your drawing has gaps

2.) Incorrect exposure. You need to use a really long shutter speed to do these--if your point and shoot camera has an M setting (Manual) or S (shutter speed/priority) then you have to use one of those. I mostly do these by myself so I usually put my shutter speed to 30 seconds to give plenty of time.

3.) Blur---use a freaking tripod!! Since it's a long exposure your camera has to stay still!

4.) Over exposure: The longer your shutter is open, the more light comes into your camera. If the room you're in isn't fully dark and you put your shutter to half a minute, then your picture is going to come out super bright and you won't see the light writing. At times like these you have to compensate---if you can change your ISO put it on the smallest number possible (100?). If you're shooting under Manual, bump up your Aperture to a bigger number (16, or 22) (changing both ISO/Aperture will guarantee a darker photo). As you practice you can adjust these as need be.

5.) Unfocused. You may think it doesn't matter if streaks of light are in focus, but personally I think it does. And being in a dark place doesn't really help your camera in finding something to focus on. Try putting your camera on self timer, turn the lights on in the room, go to your chosen spot and then press the shutter button on your camera or have someone do it for you. The self timer will blink and you'll have plenty of time to run and turn the lights off and go back to your exact spot before the camera opens the shutter.

You'll notice in your photos that you may show up as a big blur in them. The light you're using will often spill back onto you, illuminating your hand/arm/whatever while you're taking the exposure. You can fix this by cutting a hole in the middle of a paper plate (the size of the flashlight handle if that's what you're using) and then paint the front of the plate black, so that when the light bounces back onto the plate you wont see this giant white thing.

If you're taking the photo of someone light writing, you can do a few things to put them IN the photo.

1.) You can choose to do this at the beginning/end of the exposure, it's up to you, but you can (if your camera has the option) put your flash on REAR. This means when the exposure is done, your camera will flash and can capture your friend standing beside their work.

2.) Flick the lights on for a few seconds during the exposure. You'll have to experiment, but it works.

3.) 'Paint' over your friend with another flashlight from behind the camera. Again, it takes experimenting to see how much light you'll want and what's too much, but it will be worth it.

Hope this helps!!

Oh, my bad--if there are two of you making this photo (one behind the camera, one drawing) then it's often better to set your camera to BULB (B). If it has the setting. Mine, I have to put the dial to M for Manual, then I have go backwards thru all the shutter speeds (2 seconds, 16 seconds, 30 seconds, 1 minute, etc) until the last thing it comes to, which is Bulb. This means you have to keep your finger on the shutter button holding it down for however long you want your exposure to be. That way you don't have to wait the extra time if you finish early on say, a 30 second exposure. Hope this makes sense.

Erin.

Day 8

Jacob01
Originally uploaded by erinmwyatt05

Meet Jacob!

This morning I got to take pictures of the cutest little boy from church. He was perfectly tempered and super smiley.
Set up was normal. Strobe light camera right pointed at Jacob, another camera left hitting just the background. reflector right in front of him and then one right to his left.
Camera settings: 100ISO, f9, 1/160.

Day 7

For over a year now, I've been interning at Little Monsters Photography in Flushing, Mi (about 30 minutes from my house). Kari Coon, who is the photographer, is pretty awesome!! : ) She helps me out a ton---she's bought me smoothies, given me rolls of background paper, lent me her dog for a few hours, let me use her studio a few times to take pictures of Drew & Kailyn, and now--for this entry--lent me her son(in her studio) to photograph for a school assignment!! (Thanks, Kyle!!)



This is a picture of the set up. 1 softbox shooting into a reflector.
Camera settings: ISO100, f8, 1/160.

Final result (kinda breaking my photo-a-day rule:

and

and


I got a lot of good photos, the rest will probably be somewhere on my photography website (www.erinwyattphotography.smugmug.com)

one week in the blog world, down : )

and check out:
www.littlemonstersphotography.com

Day 6

This is my niece Hannah. She's super cute. I took this today, it wasn't a very good shoot. Exhaustion hit and she had bad gas pains. Somehow when I want to do good, I don't.

One strobe light, camera right.

What I would have changed: blanket is pretty long, I would have tried to hide it a bit better. I may go back over it and crop some...let's call it a rough draft


Since this entry sucks, here are some tips for getting kids to look towards the camera/smile.
1.) This toy, which can be bought at Target for less than 10 bucks, has been the main thing I use when trying to get kids attention while interning. It bends, it makes weird noises (like giggles I think), rattles, and part of it lights up. I stand behind the photographer and shake it a lot.

2.) Apparently at a lot of photography expos they sell these: This isn't the one I bought, but it's similar. The fan lights up and does different colors and changes patterns and stuff. Kids can't help but stare at it, and it's safe enough that they themselves can play with it without getting hurt (somehow). I got mine at Spencer gifts for about 8-9 bucks.

day 5-EPIC FAIL

So I have 2 minutes to get this entry done for it to be actually on day five.
But...I was super busy today and didn't have time to go try out a technique. So here's one I did try earlier in the week and failed at. I was trying to do this tricky perspective thing, where one object was closer to the camera and the other was farther away but I make it look like they are right in front of each other and one is huge and the other tiny. I don't know. Once again it's late and I don't want to explain anything. But I tried it. I didn't have any people handy so I pulled out my trusty action figures: Goku, a Masters of the Universe dude, a dinosaur, and Jane Eyre. that's right. I was going to do Goku vs. dinosaur and Jane Eyre vs. MOTU, but I couldn't get it to work, things were out of focus and I wasn't really into it (this is when I gave up and started shooting pictures of myself for that collage on day 3)
so in a fit of anger I deleted all my attempts at trick perspective and just took a regular old picture of my subjects. so that's all you get to stare at.
OUT!
(and J.E. is actually holding a quill. her weapon of choice)

Day 4

I really love GLEE on Fox. So in honor...


Just a basic setup. Strobe shooting across the photo into a reflector. one strobe on the background. Edited faces with Portraiture.

and....there are more photos on my Flickr page...(see left side of screen)

Day 3

I've done these kind of photos before (see below) so I'm kind of cheating here, & only on day 3, but I was originally trying to do some tricky perspective crap and my camera wasn't having it so it was a no go. Anyways, I love doing these, so at 11:30 last night I started shooting. I didn't mess with my lighting or test it or anything, but I shot at maybe....1/200, f16. Maybe. It's 2am and I'm really too tired to look it up.

(I learned a bit about this process at school, when I had a lame-o teacher who didn't even bother to teach me about layer masks, just had us use the History Brush.)

First, took the photos---each photo I was in it once (unlike my previous entry).

Put my camera on a tripod, 10 second self timer, then I just randomly went somewhere and stood. I don't think these things out beforehand, I just do whatever. Luck? Anyways, just did different poses, making sure that I wasn't overlapping myself with a previous picture (in a bad way).

Once I got in photoshop, I took the picture with the person farthest away from the camera and opened it as well as another picture with someone about equal distance away (i.e. the Erin's holding gray cards). I drag one photo and put it over the other, making sure that they are correctly lined up. I adjust the opacity on the top picture (picture B, to about 60%) so that I can see both B and the bottom picture (A) overlapping. Then, I select my History brush and drag it over the Erin in picture A. When I put my opacity back to 100%, picture A will disappear and all I'll see is picture B and the extra Erin (history brush brings forward your selection into the top layer, or B in this instance). I save the photo as a .jpg and then close all the windows out. I then open the photo I had just saved, as well as another new Erin, and do the same process over and over and over, bringing in new Erins, the last being those closes to the camera. I knowwwww there's easier ways, but this is mine.

Totally confused you?? It's hard to describe unless I provided screen shots.

that's it...

Here's a few other photos that I've done using this process...

HAWK AND SON PHOTOSHOOT

ASSIGNMENT FOR PHOTOSHOP CLASS

Day 2

Let's see. At the last minute I decided to try this....I've attempted it before but never got the exposure how I wanted it. So here it is....2 travelite strobes--1 camera right shooting across the photo, 1 camera left, shooting at the subject. I put the camera on a tripod, set the shutter speed to 10 seconds and the aperture at f16. (100ISO). I turned off all the lights in the room and the model lights on the strobes, hit the camera's shutter button, and triggered the strobes by hand (using the test button) at 2 second intervals. ta-daaa.

bonus photo: a bigger view:

Day 1

Not a very good first photo, but it was 1130 at night and I wanted to try some kind of motion with a flash under slow shutter speed. I also wanted to use a white background, but I couldn't change it by myself.

Specs: 100ISO, two travelite strobes camera left and right (shooting thru umbrellas); 1/6 at f18.