Lots of Experimentation Here: C&C!

[JackRabbit]

Let's just say that for this picture, she's gonna have fun vacuuming all those sparkles up tomorrow. Soooo many sparkles ahahaha. Overall we had a fun shoot though and I was happy with how the pictures turned out.

Strobist:
Canon 430EZ shot through softbox, subject left, 1/2 power.

Quantaray PZ-1, behind subject and to the right, 1/8 power.

Quantaray PZ-1, in front of and under subject aimed in between the subject and the camera (used to light the sparkles), 1/16 power.

2
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First try at high key photography. I think overall, as a high key shot, I failed miserably. However, I really like the picture even if I failed to accomplish my task.

View in large!

Strobist:
Canon 430EZ shot through softbox, subject left, 1/2 power.

Quantaray PZ-1, behind subject and to the right, 1/8 power.

Quantaray PZ-1, backdrop lighting, 1/16 power.

3
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This was definitely my favorite shot of the whole night and to be completely honest, I thought this shot was going to be a total failure. Sometimes, my Canon flash (the flash I use for my soft box) likes to turn itself off just for fun, which is what happened for this shot. However, when this happened, I realized that the picture that we just took was the best one of the shoot, so I was pretty happy about that.

Basically how I did this was I sprayed water above the box and then dropped the bottle really quick and then had my sister take the shot.

Thanks to my sister for snapping the shot.

View in large!

VIEW ON BLACK!

Strobist:
Quantaray PZ-1 inside the box, gelled yellow, 1/8 power.

 

[PerfectlyFlawed]

the sparkle shot is nice.. and the 3rd is pretty neat..makes me think that your opening a treasure box..something magical...glow coming out.. is that what u were going for?

 

[LBPhotog]

nice shots! I think I'd like to see more of a "blowing" or "puffing" look on her face in #1, I think she looks really surprised ...

 

[Derrel]

You're getting more sophisticated in your multi-flash setups and lighting efforts. I like the first shot, with the sparkles, the most. Although none of these are world-class, I think it's really amazing to see the progress you have made over the last few weeks. Really impressive to see how much more sophisticated and successful you've become over the last few posts!

 

[JackRabbit]

Thank you so much! I really appreciate your feedback Derrel. And yeah I see the same thing in myself. I look back at some of the pictures at the beginning of my Flickr and think "did I really take that?" and then proceed to tear myself apart on all the things that I could've done to make that shot ten times better.

And yeah I really need to get some decent quality photographic equipment that is actually photographic equipment and not crap that I can find around my house. A decent paper backdrop would be a great start. I find my self in situations over and over again where I have to post process out wrinkles, creases, folds, etc. Anybody have an old white seamless roll they'd be willing to send a friend and fellow photographer in need?