Category Archives: Still Life

Colorful Umbrellas

It’s been raining for days here in Austin.  That’s great, as we really, really need it – especially Lake Travis. We have right at 2 inches in our rain gauge out on our patio now.  That’s the accumulation for the last 3 days.  The rain is very much welcomed and needed, but it has been very dreary to be outside for the last few days. Sort of leads a person to cabin fever.

The photo above has nothing to do with the rain in Austin right now. It’s just one of my favorite colorful photos.  After the dreary, rainy days I just needed something colorful to cheer things up a bit around here!  This photo was taken last August in Jamaica. They are some vendors who rent “sticky shoes” at Dunns River Falls. What ‘s that?

Dunns River Falls is a section of a river that cascades over a series of rocks while dropping a hundred feet or more in elevation. Someone thought that it might be great fun to “walk up” this rocky stretch of a river. Somehow that got turned into a very popular tourist attraction.

(Hint: you can click on the image to see a larger version, but if you do, be sure to hit the “Back” button on your browser to return to my story.)

Now you know why the vendors make a good living renting out “sticky shoes”!

Barb and I didn’t get into the water. We simply walked up and down the stairs next to this mayhem and took pictures.

I didn’t mean to get into a story about Dunn River Falls in Jamaica…. I just wanted to post something colorful to cheer up everyone while the rain continues to fall.  The good news about this rainfall is that we should have a very nice wildflower season this year!

Hey maybe just the act of making this post has helped. I think it’s actually starting to get sunny outside right now.  I think I’ll get cleaned up, grab my camera, and head outside for the afternoon!

Happy Valentine’s Day – Chocolate Lovers

I’m not sure where the connection between Valentine’s Day and chocolate comes from… Does it really matter?  Just be sure to enjoy some today!

I took this photo on my kitchen table, using natural light. I placed a large diffuser just out of the frame to the right of the plate. I then positioned a large white bounce card to the left of the plate. To capture the largest depth-of-field (front to back in focus) I set the 100mm macro lens to the smallest aperture it was capable of (highest f-stop number): f/32. With the camera’s ISO setting of 100, my handheld light meter told me that the proper exposure would be obtained with the shutter set to be open for 8 seconds.

Some Joker with a Knife

This is a Royal Flush gambling with some Joker with a knife, with the fuel of alcohol nearby….

Shot on my kitchen table, using a black velour fabric for the background. The only light was from a northeast-facing window to the right of the camera, and thankfully if was overcast late that morning. At first, I had bounce card on the left, but it took some of the mystery of the shadows away. I ended up putting a black flag on the left to absorb the light and prevent any light from bouncing back onto the scene.

I used a handheld Sekonic light meter, set the camera to manual mode with as small of an aperture opening as this zoom lens had.
I also used a ColorChecker Passport to set a custom white balance in the camera. The only post processing that I did (in Lightroom) was to remove a few dozen white dust specs from the black velour.

ISO 100
3.2 seconds
f/22
80mm