Week 27 – Red, White, & Blue

I collected comic books for much of my youth, bagging and boarding until my freshman year in college. It was then I realized that the buck and a quarter I just forked over for a back issue of Alpha Flight featuring Wolverine might be better spent. For instance, I could be buying some of the worst pizza ever served in up-state New York at the Pakistani food truck that rolled up in front of our dorm after the dining hall closed. Also, having a large stack of X-Men Annuals in your dorm room doesn’t score as many points with 18-year-old co-eds as you would think.

My gateway comic was G.I. Joe, a series that, because of its publisher, gave me entry to the rest of the Marvel universe with Spiderman, Captain America, and Iron Man becoming my favorites in that order. I didn’t buy as many Cap comics as I did Spidey’s because Peter Parker’s insecurities and humor always struck more of a chord with me than did Cap’s straightforward earnestness. Spiderman was constantly full of doubts, but Steve Rogers was always 100% sure he was doing the right thing. To an average teenage boy, you can guess which storyline had deeper resonance.

With the recent resurgence of Marvel properties in the cinematic world (long being the red-headed stepchild to D.C.’s Batman and Superman) I’ve enjoyed re-discovering the world of comics with my oldest who, like his dad at that age, will devour any form of printed material put in front of him. Cap’s old fashioned wholesomeness still doesn’t quite connect with me, but I certainly can appreciate the need for someone who believes in what he’s doing with a conviction so strong he can wear a flag on his chest.

Photo Info

Likes

I like how I managed to get Cap and most of the comic title in focus, or at least enough that you get the idea of what I wanted to be sharp without straining yourself too much.  I can’t take credit for it, but I love the retro graphic quality of the font on the comic title.  The horizontal red, white, and blue stripes feel out-dated even for the publish date, August 1980.  I think they’re appropriate for Cap who was always “not of his time.”

Dislikes

The focus is razor thin.  It would have been nice to get more of the title in focus but I just couldn’t arrange it so that it was entirely in the plane and still looked interesting.  I wish Cap was more dominant on the cover of the comic in the foreground, but of the issues I have left, this one was in the best shape.  Dragon Man, besides being a lame villain, doesn’t do much for the color palette.

Technical Mumbo Jumbo

Softbox directly overhead with 430ex flash set to 1/16th power.

This is an entry for a 52 week photo project I’m participating in conjuction with several other members of the Lancaster County Photography Meetup Group. I’ll be posting the entries here with either an anecdote, challenges in creating the shot, successes, or frustrations with my week to week results.

• You can find out more about the project and see other participant’s photos here:
  www.flickr.com/groups/lancaster-52-project

• You can see my entries in the project as a set here:
  www.flickr.com/photos/ranzino/sets/72157628691366537

Week 23 – Party

This is probably my least favorite shot in the ones I’ve created for the 52 week project so far. It’s a classic case of settling for, “good enough.” As always, I felt pressed for time and I thought I could achieve the shot I wanted pretty quickly. As it turned out, the dynamic cupcake shot against a washed out background turned out to be a a mix of beige “blah” against a grey-ish background. Not so appetizing.

So what went wrong?  Lots of things, but here’s just a few:

I picked the wrong cupcake.
While this is a tasty looking and visually appealing cupcake from Sublime Cupcakes (who have excellent, and ironically more “my” style shots on their web site), it didn’t provide that colorful contrast I was looking for against a white background.  I should have scrapped my original idea (high key cupcake) and changed my background to create more color contrasts against the earth tones of the cupcake and maybe even switched to a natural light setup to compliment the subject more.  Ultimately though, I think I should have picked a cupcake that would have popped more, not the one I was most interested in eating!

I picked the wrong candle.
White candle, white-ish background.  Genius.  In truth, we didn’t have any other kind of birthday candles in the house, so I settled.  Settling makes for average photos.  Don’t settle, keep pushing to make it better.

I should have worked the lighting more.
As it stands, the lighting is pretty flat, and not providing a lot of interest with shadows, etc.  Also, I gave up on lighting the background to wash it out.  The cupcake was so close to the paper roll I had rigged up that it was hard to light the cupcake and the background separately without light spilling into one another so I gave up on trying to make the paper all white.

The morale of the story is, if you want an exceptional shot and not just a blah one, keep working your shot until it’s not just good enough, but it’s the exact shot you want.  If you have sufficient willpower, that cupcake’s not going anywhere, it doesn’t mind if you take a little extra time to get it right.

This is an entry for a 52 week photo project I’m participating in conjuction with several other members of the Lancaster County Photography Meetup Group.  I’ll be posting the entries here with either an anecdote, challenges in creating the shot, successes, or frustrations with my week to week results.

• You can find out more about the project and see other participant’s photos here:
  www.flickr.com/groups/lancaster-52-project

• You can see my entries in the project as a set here:
  www.flickr.com/photos/ranzino/sets/72157628691366537

I am loathe to take a self portrait. Honestly, I’d much rather sit through the weekend showing of a Drew Barrymore rom-com film festival than get in front of the camera. To give you a frame of reference, the last time I did this was three long years ago. On the rare occasion the lighting bug strikes me, my immediate family is usually less than cooperative on the modeling front. Who can blame them? They do have a camera in front of their face half of their waking lives, why make the process MORE formal?

So, my choices are whittled down. I could procure a non-family member model, which would of course mean I would have to engage in practicing the social art of speaking to others, possibly even someone I don’t know. This is something I am also not a big fan of. That leaves only one other option, pulling double duty as model and cameraman. It honestly makes things a lot more complicated. Taping a spot on the floor, pre-focusing on a stand in, like a broom or my son holding up his hand to where my face will be, taking some test shots, constantly walking back and forth, on and on and on. Good times.

Anyway, it struck me that I probably should update my social media profile shot… well… just because I wanted to see if I could gel a flash and throw some light on a background.

Shot info:

• Yongnuo flash full power shooting straight right up against my basement wall (white painted concrete)
• 430ex in a small softbox above and camera right 1/16th power

I’ve never been able to touch my toes in the traditional gym class kind of way.  My spine just doesn’t cooperate.  To paint a more vivid picture for you, it’s not like I just can’t bridge the last couple of centimeters or so with the tips of my fingers oh-so-close to brushing the ends of my feet.  I don’t even come remotely close.  We’re talking at least a half a foot or more between the floor and the end of my upper extremities.

Embarrassing elementary gym stories aside (and I didn’t even get to the tale about Jason Atkinson pulling my gym shorts down in front of Lucy Chipeleski), what does any of this have to do with photography?

In amateur photography, as it was in Mr. Watohovich’s phys-ed curriculum, flexibility is pretty important.

Our local photography group recently had a photowalk at the Lititz Fire & Ice Festival.  The titular ice represented by frozen sculptures carved and placed in front of local downtown businesses.    We all thought the ice carvings would make for some interesting photo opportunities.  What we didn’t count on was the Fire in the Fire & Ice becoming a more appropriate moniker for the freakish 72 degree February weather instead of the chili cook-off it was intended to describe.  Those unseasonably warm temps  on the day prior to our walk left most of the sculptures in a slushy non-recognizable state, much like Meg Ryan’s face after her most recent plastic surgery.

This is where flexibility comes in.  As an amateur photographer with a limited amount of time to dedicate towards your craft you can’t always pick and choose the optimal times and locations to capture the subjects you’re interested in.  You have to make the best of whatever situation you find yourself thrust into.  Even if you’re able to plan ahead and get in the right places at the right time, other factors can always play the saboteur.

If, for whatever reason, you can’t shoot what you you had in mind, look for subjects that are more amenable to the conditions and environment you find yourself in.   I didn’t shoot one single ice sculpture on our photowalk, but I still came home with a wide variety of shots that I was happy with.

Don’t set your eyes so firmly on what you can’t shoot that you miss what you should shoot.

I love rust crust and decay.  Who doesn’t?  I guess when you spot a bit of it creeping up the side panels of your 1984 Honda Accord you’re not too enamored with it, but otherwise it’s fantastic, especially in the realm of photography.  Peeling paint, rusty fixtures and crumbling structures provide fantastic little nooks and crannies for light to dart in and out of creating compelling textures.

Because of my love of all things decaying, I felt compelled to take a trip down to Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia.  Eastern State Pen is a former prison which operated from 1829 until 1971, at which time it fell into severe disrepair.  Partially because it was considered the world’s first penitentiary, it was designated as a U.S. National Historic Landmark in 1966.  After years of neglect, the Pen was reopened for tours in the late 1980’s much to the amateur photographer’s benefit.

For an admission fee plus an equipment license for your tripod (which is good for the whole year in which you purchased it) you can wander the grounds and halls of the former prison and capture all of its decaying glory.  Most of the 7 spoke-style wings of the Pen are open so you have plenty of access to shoot abandoned cells, crumbling walls, and even an accurate recreation of Al Capone’s cell, who famously had an eight month stay at the prison.

I used my time at the prison to test out some HDR photography, taking bracketed exposures to capture all the detail I possibly could.  Eastern State Pen is mostly lit with natural light streaming in through a bevy of skylights.   During my short visit, which lasted about 2 hours, the lighting and subsequent shooting opportunities changed dramatically for both the better and worse depending on where I was in the prison.  Some of the cells even had blue gel-like plastic over their skylights which added an interesting eerie look to their contents which, maybe purposefully, made for some creative and dramatic photo opportunities.

I easily could have spent all day setting up my tripod, waiting for a change in light, and capturing another contrasty nook and cranny on patch of peeling paint, but real life beckoned.  In the end, I was pretty pleased with the results.  So if your photography buddies are itching for something different to shoot, why not suggest a day in the clink.  Eastern State Pen, will give em’ all they can handle.

Photos from my trip to Eastern State Penitentiary

Having grown up in Northeastern Pennsylvania, I’ve been hiking in Ricketts Glen State Park since well before my college years.  Not long after I took up photography, it became one of my favorite places to make photos as well.  Next to bright vibrant colors, water is probably my

second favorite photography subject. During most parts of the year Ricketts Glen State Park provides, as good ol’ Maverick would say, “a target-rich environment” for all things falling H2O.

If you’ve never been to Ricketts Glen you really owe it to yourself to schedule a day to hike around the falls trail.  It’s not just that there’s 22 waterfalls within such close proximity, it’s the beauty and power of each one of the falls.  After my first eye-opening trip to see the frozen falls this past winter, I can now say I’ve seen the Glen in each of the 4 seasons we fully experience here in the Northeast.  There’s just something about the roar of the water continually pounding the rocks and the little nooks and crannies with beautiful runs in between each set of falls that keeps me coming back year after year.

That’s not to say that some days aren’t better than others to be at the Glen from a photography standpoint.  Ideally, you’re looking for a moist, overcast day with maybe just the hint of rain in the air.  When it’s raining, everything in the park glistens, from the round-off rocks smoothed from eons of water flow to the heavy green canopy surrounding you on all sides.

Unfortunately, the weekend I was able to get up this spring the aforementioned canopy wasn’t quite as green as I had hoped.  I had forgotten that Northeast PA is about 2 weeks behind in terms of leaf budding than where I live 2 hours South.  So that would be strike one.  Strike two manifested itself as a beautiful, cool, cloudless day.  For everyone else NOT taking pictures of waterfalls, it was idyllic weather.

My hiking partner for the day was Rob, a fellow photo enthusiast from Lancaster County.  Rob and I got up about and hour and a half before the crack of dawn so we could drive up to Red Rock and get into the park and headed toward the first set of falls before sunrise.  Given that we had consumed an unhealthy amount of some of the best Mexican food in coal country the night before, I will consider this journey one of my greatest lifetime achievements.

You generally want to get into the park fairly early on days where there’s going to be direct sunlight.  Once the sun gets over the mountain ridge and above the tree canopy your ability to get long exposures on the falls without getting blinding white spots pretty much disappears.

We were able to shoot a fair amount of falls before the point in the trail called “Waters Meet” where, not surprisingly, two forks of falls trails converge.  After that point, the sun was bright enough and had risen high enough in the sky to render our “photo” hike into just a “regular” hike.  There were still some neat wildflowers along the path (Lots of Red Trillium) that provided some nice macro opportunities, and it’s always nice to sit and reflect at Adams Falls near the parking areas at the end of your journey.

We were down in the count, but a day spent hiking, talking, and grabbing what photos we could here and there is better than a day spent mulching my flower beds (much to my neighbor’s chagrin).  There were no strikeouts on this trip.

As I was returning from my hike in Tucquan Glen this morning, I was stopped by a man who was a part of  a larger group who had camped near the stream overnight.  He asked me for directions on how to get to “The Pinnacle,” which I assumed was further up the trail in the direction from which I had just come.  I told him since I  didn’t know other parts of the park very well, I didn’t want to steer him the wrong way.  I had only just been down towards the end of the trail where the small sets of falls are located.  He looked a little puzzled then asked me, “So where exactly did you come from?”

I guess he thought 9 am was awfully early for a hiker to be returning from this direction.  I told him I had passed his camp and its sleeping-bag-encased inhabitants at about 6 am, prior to sunrise.

Yep, we photographers are a strange breed.  Then again, I think sleeping overnight, in April, in the woods, with only a hammock tied up between two trees separating you from the wet cold leaves on the ground is crazy.  So who am I to say what is and is not strange?

In preparation for my upcoming trip to Ricketts Glen State Park and its bevy of waterfalls, I decided to purchase a few neutral density filters for my standard walk-around zoom lens.  I wanted to hedge against getting too much sunlight during my trip to the falls, plus I want to play around with some really long exposures when I’m down at the shore, or anywhere else I get near water.

Truth be told, I’m not in the position to buy the best of the best in the filter department.  I knew I wanted at least two filters, so I could stack them and increase my exposure times.  I ended up getting a .6 and .9 ND filter from Tiffen.   With the ND filters in-hand,  I got up in the pre-dawn hours to head out to one of the only spots in Lancaster County with an acceptable modicum of easily accessible running water: Tucquan Glen.

After my test run today I was pretty pleased with the results.  I’m definitely not a pixel peeper, so if I lost some sharpness or the color is off I would never be able to tell you.  All I know is the filters cut the amount of light I was getting into the lens, big time.  With the lack of bright light puring into my camera,  I was free to get more creative with my exposures.

I’m pretty excited about testing them out again this weekend at Ricketts Glen.

Tags: Long Exposure, ND Filters, Tucquan Glen, Water, Waterfalls

We organized a short-notice photowalk for the Lancaster County Photography Meetup group this past weekend.  Because I’m apparently bereft of original ideas, I suggested we get together and cruise through Downtown Lancaster and more specifically, Central Market.  I wanted to get inside Central Market partly to hedge against possible chilly outdoor temperatures and partly because I wanted to pick up some of the tasty wares for sale there within.

I think Central Market offers some great opportunities for photography.  From the variety of colorful produce on sale from local vendors, to the vibrant characters behind the stands themselves, there’s no shortage of subjects if you’re really looking for them.  However, shooting in Market is not without its perils.  Even on the brightest of mornings, Market can be a little on the darker side due to the high dark ceilings and the lack of available natural light.  Towards the middle of the floor, I never find myself shooting below iso 800  at the widest aperture the lens at hand can muster.

A few of us braved the chilly streets for a half an hour or so and made our way up to another one of my favorite spots near Downtown,  St. James Episcopal Church.  The church was open for Christmas pageant rehearsals so we got to warm up inside and enjoy the beauty of the morning sun streaming through St. James’ ornate stained glass windows in the sanctuary.  There’s a compact little cemetery behind the church filled with age worn gravestones and, I’m sure, a fair share of Lancaster city history.

Considering it was colder outside than the inside of Tiger Woods’ house these days (rim shot), the turnout was decent, and I think we all got in some quality shots.  At the very least, we had some decent photo chit chat and some piping hot cups of Cocoa Joe at the Prince Street Cafe afterward.  If that’s not enough to get you up at 8 am on a Saturday morning, then there’s no helping you.

Tags: Downtown, Lancaster, Meetup, Photowalk

Good ol’ natural window light.  It’s still my favorite.

You can set up all the fancy flashes, umbrellas, soft boxes, and fill cards you like.  I’ll take light streaming in through a window seven days a week and twice on Sunday.

To me, it always represents the closest after-the-fact reproduction to what your eye is actually seeing, and it looks fantastic to boot. Oh, and did I mention it’s free, unless of course you don’t have a window. You could always ask to borrow someone else’s, so you’ve got that going for you.

Tags: Lighting, Natural Light, portraits, Window Light

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Who?
I'm an amateur photographer with a love for all types of photography. Although it seems like I just started yesterday, photography has been a serious hobby for me for almost a decade now. "A decade" sounds impressive. Much more so than "since 2001."

I've learned so much from the people I've met during my own personal photographic journey, and I'm grateful for all the information and advice that was given to me freely and with much enthusiasm. Hopefully, through this site, I can pass on a little bit of the knowledge I've gleaned over the past few years to those who stumble across this url.

For those who live in the greater Lancaster area, I'm also the organizer of the Lancaster County Photography Meetup Group. If you live nearby (or even if you don't) and want to get out and about with other photographers, join us for a meetup!




Beauty can be seen in all things, seeing and composing the beauty is what separates the snapshot from the photograph. - Matt Hardy

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