POTW 1/26/07; And a Neat Technique

It's Friday, which means I'd better charge up all of my AA NiMH's for a triple dose of hoops tomorrow. Got McDaniel College - way NW of Baltimore - at 3:00p and then I have to be at American University in Washington, DC for two more basketball games, starting at 7:00p.

Yikes. And The Sun does not reimburse speeding tickets, either.

But Friday's also mean POTWs around here. And this week there is a little bonus, too.

Leading off is Melissa's wonderfully simple shot of a young girl draped in a scarf.

The photo clearly has that "less-is-more" thing going on. The expression is great, too.

Oh, and it was apparently Melissa's first time using small strobes off camera, too. Guess she did okay, huh?

Question is, what'll she do next?

Next is a cool shot with the gridded strobe shooting on the right through the drink by a guy who must really like bacon.

Can't argue with a name like "Baconisgood," and I cannot find much to argue with about that shot, either.

Neat idea. And I'm not completely sure, but I think that is Bacon himself in the photo.

Last but not least Dan Quan's highly stylized portrait, which mixes tungsten-balance ambient daylight with gelled flash.

He's been working this setting for a little while now, and seems to have it down. There's some post work done in Photoshop (a little color enhancement, and a branch-ectomy) but he is working that tungsten-flash-blue daylight thing pretty well. I'd suggest overwarming the flash on her face - perhaps an additional 1/2 CTO - to get it closer to the final result in camera.


Techneek of the Wique

Okay, I just love this photo by James Hamilton.

Not even so much for the image itself (heck, there's extra strobe gear in the photo just sitting around on the piano stool) but for the possibilities the technique opens up.

Click through on the photo to see James' description, and there is even a setup shot here. I am thinking of doing this with both lights on the same axis, as a cool (literally) portrait technique in a boring room.

I get lots of boring rooms. Lots.

On a neat housekeeping note, we passed 5,000 Flickr group members yesterday. Cool beans.

But amazingly enough, that's only about 5% of the number of the different photogs who cruise through here in a typical month.

So, I guess you 5,000+ would be, like, "cadré," or something. And no, I am not buying a round for everyone, either.