Our first and second day at Junction saw us shooting quite a bit of flower work. The rain has come pretty regularly, and we take advantage of the overcast skies by shooting on a macro level. I’m engrossed in high-speed sync flash work again, and I’m finding a few inhabitants along the way. Macro work is such a great exercise in patience and creativity, not to mention technique: FOCUS, FOCUS, FOCUS!

We do not go without having fun though! Macro videography can put you on the narrative level of an otherwise inconspicuous creature. Below is a few quick shots of a caterpillar my class named Tim…

Have Sixteen Legs, Will Travel from Jerod Foster on Vimeo.

More to come. We shot a cattle branding today on the Llano River Ranch, and we even had a student participate! I might even have a video of the high-speed sync flash work up later…

Early mornings and late nights, little sleep, and awesome light! Wyman Meinzer and I are back in Junction, and over the next 15 days, I’ll try to keep the site posted with little asides from our adventures with 15 college students, all of them here to dive deep in visual creativity! It’s an extremely productive two weeks, and the most gratifying aspect of the trip is to see the transformation many students undergo with their craft and passion! Annually, we see Texas Tech students, as well as students from across the nation (literally, non-traditional as well) come away with new, or re-newed, senses of their abilities, confidence, aesthetic, and general vigor for shooting!

Look for more on the site in the next several days! I received the Zoom H4n today, and just playing around with it for a little bit has completely blown me away in terms of sound quality! I’ll have more to post on this nice piece of multimedia gear later!

The above shot was the first thing I saw this morning as I was walking around campus! More to come!

Each Spring, I spend two weeks photographing in the Hill Country non-stop, and quite a bit of that is taken up with flowers, lush vegetation, rivers, and…er, flowers. Last year, I decided to do something different (in my book at least). You could say my inspiration came from Joel Sartore’s images of rare animals on black backgrounds, only I didn’t have a black background for the flowers I was photographing. All I had on me was a few Canon Speedlites and some Pocket Wizards. That’s all you need to knock those backgrounds to black, or at least close to it!

If you turn your flashes (I’m being brand-generic here, you’ll have to find your flash operator’s manual to decipher for your own gear) on high-speed sync, you can use insanely fast shutter speeds to kick the ambient light out of the frame whilst popping your subject with an ultra-fast dump of light! Most of the images in this post were actually shot at 1/8000 at f/2.8 with the ISO set to 50 (approximate, there are a few variations).

You can reverse engineer most of these light setups. I used two lights at back 45s on the Mexican Hats, and for the others, I just handled one flash to pull all the weight. TIP: use a sturdy tripod and a shutter release! A macro-lens or extension tubes don’t hurt as well!

Here’s a before and after look at how powered-up your flash will actually go (depending on when it  was made…I’ll let you figure that out).

Before:                                                                                       After:

Also, shooting with high-speed sync activated will drain your battery faster than normal, so it wouldn’t hurt packing extra batteries.

This is a fun technique, and it complements the repertoire of tools you keep in your flower shooting bag! Try it out next time you’re around a field of bluebonnets or pinwheels!

When I posted last about James Watkins’s hands, it struck me that most of the posts regarding lighting and photoshoots (in my world at least) revolve around using some sort of artificial lighting technology. I love using lights, and if you’ve read this blog enough, you’ll know that I’m a diligent user of several gonzo-sized sticks of dynamite-like photons, er, I mean studio and flash strobe systems.

What doesn’t get paid its due in this world of gear, gear, and more gear, are those times when “lights” aren’t needed. Take for example the photograph in the previous post. Uninhibited by gear, I was left able to just simply find the light. Although it doesn’t present itself to be as simple as we all would really want, when you do find it, you’re more likely to find it later! I was shooting an assignment for a magazine on the art classes held every summer in Junction, and I spent a great deal of time working in the pottery class, taking advantage of the beautiful, directionally diffused light coming in through the screen windows (below is a shot of the interior of the studio where the class was working). The shot in the previous posts, as well as the one above and one below were taken of Mr. Watkins in the right-hand corner of the building you see here. Non-directional light flowing in from everywhere, and the highlight kicker touching his hands came from the window to which he was sitting closest.

Directionally diffused lighting that occurs naturally offers soft, wrapping light that is more subdued in intensity, giving your camera (and you) a break in dynamic range limitations. The values in the shadows and highlights come a bit closer, and you’re able to capture detail in both areas more easily as opposed to shooting outside in direct sunlight at high noon (blech). In essence, it’s a naturally occurring softbox or scrim.

And this light rocks! It can be soft and subdued, or even more dramatic, particularly when it is more directional, such as the shot below taken in the evening. Notice that nice highlight on the artist’s hands.

Basically, this light is coming from behind and nearly level (in terms of the sun) with the window it is passing through. That nice, warm evening light makes everything dramatically tangible, and it’s something that many folks using artificial lights strive to recreate! Hats off to those who do!

So there, it’s always a good practice to review the light given to you naturally, particularly if you’re on assignment and needing to move faster than your assistant (or yourself). In this case, I don’t think artificial lighting would have done this work any justice, especially given the subject and his artwork!

Here’s another archive natural history piece for those of you looking forward to Spring. Taken just outside of Mason, Texas, where the granite rock seemingly grows from the ground everywhere! This particular area of Texas is home to a diverse set of ecosystems, where not only 100 miles away, inklings of the Chihuahuan desert come into view. In any case, this shot is a testament to good light and nice shadows making for pleasing composition. Many students in the Junction intersession photography seminar have seen this area. In fact, there was probably one standing next to me getting a pretty similar shot!

More to come!

The Llano River approximately 15 miles east of Junction, Texas. This is one of the finest spots on the river, and each Spring, Wyman Meinzer and I take a class of student photographers to visit and shoot the location! It’s always nice when it fogs up! (Canon 5D MkII, 24-105mm f/4 L)