I was asked if I had any new year's resolutions today. I rarely do, so my first instinct was to say "no." But then I paused and thought. "Is there anything I want to be different a year from today?"
I want to be a better photographer.
The only way to make that happen is practice, practice, practice. Stealing a page from a whole lot of different people, I wondered if I could make one photograph every day in 2009. To be honest, probably not. But why not give it a shot? What if I could hit 300 days? That is a solid 82%. Perhaps not the loftiest of goals, but pretty realistic. To add a little excitement and consistency, I plan on only using my Pentax-FA 1.4 50mm.
So here I go, my first Photo Of The Day (POTD) for January 1, 2009.
By the time I came up with this goal, the only thing I could think to photograph was the pizza I had in the oven. I decided to add a little interest with some side lighting and not just the oven light.
To me this photo is just so-so. The photo I pictured in my mind as I was getting my camera out, is great. But I guess that is the whole point, learning to make better photographs.
Anyone interested in the photo details and settings, scroll down.
Light is from a hand held Nikon SB-25 at camera left. (pretty obvious) The flash was zoomed to 85mm and light was still spilling all over the place. I needed some type of gobo. The cardboard disc the pizza came on should work. I held that on top of the flash and it did a fair job of stopping the light from spilling out onto the oven knobs. I found that the angle I held the flash with the gobo made the biggest difference. (again, pretty obvious) The camera also had a difficult time finding a focus. My quick fix was to turn on the oven light, focus, turn off the light and switch to manual focus. I think I got me close, but the focus in the photo is pretty soft. I did move around a lot adjusting the flash strength after I set the focus. I played with the settings on the camera and flash until I got something that looked ok on the lcd. There is very little post processing, a little color balance and sharpening, all done in Lightroom.
Camera: Pentax K20 50mm prime lens ISO 200 Aperture f/6.7 Exposure 1/90
Flash: Nikon SB-25 triggered with AlienBees CyberSync Manual Zoom 85 & Power 1/32