Living Statues 2016

Like each year, I make it a point to come to Rehovot for the summer Living Statues Festival. This would be the festival's seventh year, my fifth coming to it.

Like each year I get the usual flash from the side shots, the closeups on the performers using a longish telephoto and the wider view with the audience close by using a wide angle.

Like each year I try to do new things, try out new techniques and equipment in a situation that is one one hand very difficult, with people packed tight trying to see the performances (and it is so hot and humid this time of year!) and on the other hand this setting is great because, unlike candid street photography, you can feel free to take as many pictures as you like, try new things at length, and the results are usually interesting even if unconventional (something that doesn't always go well on fashion and model test shoots).

Photo Recipe

Today we have a short one, bringing together my two great loves: food and photography. In fact, this very blog had started with a food-photography post I put up almost four years ago!

This time I wanted to participate in a photographic-recipe contest arranged by the student body at my institute. I don't know if the contest ever did happen or if I just missed the deadline, but I was making food one day and decided to document some of the process.

It took me twice as long to make the damn thing because I had to stop and fidget with the flash for some of these shots... but once the food was cooking I didn't have that much time for setting it up just right, and when it was ready I wasn't thinking about the pictures anymore - I was way too hungry!

A list of ingredients + instructions after the break...

Living Statues 2015

Like every year I find myself coming back to the Rehovot living statues festival. Being my hometown it is convenient to come visit and go have a look at this year's statues with my folks.

So this festival was in July, and just like the last few times, I came ready with a flash pole, and got the most drama out of these nightshots as I could.

I like to compare the new innovations to the statues from previous years, particularly when I can recognize some of the performers and see how they come up with new costumes each year. I can maybe even see my own work improving from year to year... but I leave that for you to decide.

Brides and Beach

So last summer we did our second bridal photo-shoot (the first one here),  this time on the beach of Caesarea. I had been contacted by make up artist Danit, that already had the wedding gown vendors and the location chosen. We only needed to find two models, which led us to the beautiful Maria and Karina that star in this post. I had also contacted my friend Yael to video the whole shoot.

The schedule for the shoot was clear. We arrive at 16:00 at Danit's house, and begin makeup and hair on the two models in parallel, switch them, and then drive 15 minutes to Caesarea beach to be there at 17:00, with plenty of time to spare before magic hour. In practice, everyone was late (there was horrible traffic), getting ready took longer than I thought, and we had ended up arriving at the location less than half an hour before sunset. So we scrambled, we skipped over some things and went straight for the money shot.

Living Statues 2014

This year the living statues festival was in the summer again. That meant it was hot and uncomfortable for the participants and the photographers.

Most of these were taken with the Tamron 17-50 (my goto all-purpose lens) and a flash on a monopod to get some side lighting.

A similar setup was used on the last living statues event, and also on the one before that, and the first one I went to.

Living Statues 2013

Once again we are here with the Rehovot Annual Living Statues Festival.

This took place last month, but I took my time editing the photos. There's just a lot of other stuff going on, and even though I have lots of good ideas for photography, I very much doubt if I would have the time to go through with them in the near future.

This year the festival moved to a new location, at the "Founder's park" which was lit up with chains of fluorescent lights, and several large glowing globes. All making nice background for the statues.

It was kinda crowded, even though it was the last day (out of three), but I still managed to find a few good angles. I made a first round with a long lens and tripod (hard to manage around the people) and then switched to flash and wide angle. As always, the real pleasing images were mostly the ones taken with my macro lens.

Vampire Diaries

Well, actually they are fruit bats, not vampires.

I had been on the way home from work one evening when I noticed these critters flying around a tree. Some of the branches were down as low as eye level.

I went home and came back a few days later at the same hour (around 8 pm) with a light tripod with a flash on top, and my 105 lens (this is my longest lens unfortunately...)

The bats weren't so far away and I popped a few hundred images until my flash ran out of batteries.

enjoy!

Winter Shoot part IV: Double Trouble

Today we have twice the fun! a double decker sandwich of modeliscious images. It was pretty hard to narrow down around 150 images to just these 20, which is, in itself, quite a lot. But considering we have two models for you today, we can make it work (hopefully with less talking and more picture presenting). 

Models: The beautiful Sarit Elisha and Yarden Shoval

Make up for Sarit: Lemlem Mesfn. 

Make up for  Yarden: Sarit Elisha

Organizers: Oleg Luft, Chen Rachel Smadja, and Sshimrit Israel. 

Gadgets: Flash & Accessories

Today I want to recommend a few items for photographers. I know most people never bother getting anything more than a spare battery for their camera, but some of you must have already made their first steps towards a physical photography toolbox.
Most of these are relevant for DSLR users, and a lot of stuff is useful for people getting into the off-camera flash business.

Some of your gear will obviously be expensive: camera bodies, lenses and flashes are never cheap. But some of the peripheral stuff doesn't have to cost so much. A lot of it can cost way less than it does buying it from a retailer.

Remember, these are only recommendations I make based on my experience. You may be disappointed with some of these gadgets while I thought they were awesome.

BTS: Photo Shoot

In the third and last post about the photoshoot I went to a few weeks ago, I wanted to show a little bit of the "behind the scenes" of the event.

I always liked taking pictures of people taking pictures. Not surprising, when you have eight photographers and about the same amount of models, that even without trying too hard you get a lot of pictures of the photographers at work...

I tried to show both the look and feel of the day, and some of the process of the post production, giving a few images as they came out of camera.

Night Catalog

Last November I helped a friend make a catalog for a line of LED products for pubs and clubs.


I took this as an opportunity to learn more about product photography, although this project was very different than most product catalogs.


Since the whole point was to show the self-lit products, I wanted to make everything in a nocturnal environment. This made some things very easy (the backgrounds were easy to black out) but it also presented some problems. The main difficulty was that the LED lights are much weaker than my flash, and I had to go to very small apertures and very long exposures to get them at the same power.


So I had to resort to other lighting sources. Making sure the colors match and that the background stayed as dark as possible were also concerns that kept this shoot interesting.

The second part of the shoot was a month later at a pub, showing off the products at their intended surroundings.

Living Statues 2012

As I promised you (and even before exam season is over) here are the photos from this year's Living Statues Festival in Rehovot.

This year I worked with a wider lens and stepped up closer to get more of the scene in. Less tight portraits though. The real fun was my lighting setup which is shown below...

DUMBFSA

Today I want to talk to all the people who have digital cameras but never bothered to read the manual. Or tried to read it but it was too complicated. For all my friends who 'just put it on automatic'.

I know the internet is full of guides to help out beginners who want to get more out of their pictures, but I always think it must be too long/boring/complicated for most people - fact is, most people I know (that aren't serious photographers) never did read any of that stuff, and quite a few times ask me basic questions about photography, most of the time about how to work their camera. This includes SLR owners (not just point-and-shoot moms).

So here is the most basic things you should know to get the best shots off your camera.

D.U.M.B.F.S.A - Didn't Understand the Manual, But Felt Silly to Ask.

Food and Flashes

Doing homework for Strobist instead of homework for school... Taking pictures while making food and trying for once to give my shots a real 'studio' quality. I must say this was a lot of fun...

Conceptions change. If you had asked me what my opinion was about photshopping images when I was just starting with my first digital camera I would be very much against it. "The photograph has to represent reality as it is" and all those opinions I still hear. Since then I have moved on to use Lightroom regularly and even when I was traveling I did some RAW format editing post-capture inside the D90. Today I have no doubt that making these adjustments to a photo is just another step in the process. Which brings me to another conception I had about photography: natural light, unposed subjects and pretty much no planning of pictures at all, for the "natural picture".



This works out pretty well when traveling, especially if you can't afford to stay in one place for three days just to catch the perfect light on the mountain top - which is what I should be doing if I want to "pose" the landscape for the picture. You take the mountains, villagers and wildlife as it comes along, which was just fine for everything I did in Nepal last year (examples: https://picasaweb.google.com/112701265842357765172).


However, things changed when I finally bought my first strobe. The SB700 is a small, easy to use and optically wireless flash (fully compatible with my D90). This and reading along Strobist lighting 101 and now 102, got me doing a lot of new stuff.