How does it feel to be a ghost?

Selfs
Originally uploaded by Josh Bobbitt

Cross and Blossoms.

Blog 0414
Originally uploaded by Josh Bobbitt

Taken at Lexington Cemetery. Fiddled with in LR2 and PS CS3.

Cows on Yellow

Retreads-9
Originally uploaded by Josh Bobbitt

It's an old image that I've always liked.

Window Light and noise.

Corral-34
Originally uploaded by Josh Bobbitt

Embarrassing failures have always been great teaching tools.

This is one of my favorite images from a shoot I did this Sunday. I had several complicated lighting setups, but we did this one with just some window light and a gold reflector to open up the shadow side of her face a little (and just a little, as you can see).

However, if you view this image at any size, you'll see that it's pretty damn noisy.

If you check out the EXIF data, you'll see why. I shot it at ISO 1600. Because I'm a bonehead who forgets to check important camera settings before he starts shooting.

The whole shoot was in 1600. I tried to process in ways to minimize the noise, but that's just a stop-gap.

However, shooting right now, for me, is about learning. This wasn't a client that had invested a lot of money in the shoot, so I could afford to experiment and even fail. It took a pretty significant mistake, but, without a doubt, I learned an important lesson.

It's kind of like the time my high school Latin teacher forced me to stand in front of the class and drilled me, military style, on 3rd declension endings because I hadn't learned them like I was supposed to. (I can still recite them at will.) Or the time that a manager forced me to carry around 10 bottles of steak sauce in an already full apron during the rush at restaurant because I had forgotten to ask a table if they would like any. I never forgot again.

That, it seems, is the learning process. Though I'm a hard-headed dumbass who doesn't always get it right, sometimes I have to fall on my face to remember to look at my feet.

Happy Accident.

Blog 4-5-01
Originally uploaded by Josh Bobbitt

It's not all planned, folks. This image mostly happened because I forgot to turn on the speedlight I was using as the main, and the reflective gun just happens to be picking up a touch of the ambient in the room.

For bonus points, guess who.

Cones

Blog 4-4-01
Originally uploaded by Josh Bobbitt

Pink love

Blog 4-3-01
Originally uploaded by Josh Bobbitt

I took this at Lexington Cemetery last week. I was just looking to take pictures of these tress, but I saw this couple walking, and I couldn't resist.

Daffodils

Blog 4-2-01
Originally uploaded by Josh Bobbitt

More nature photos. Hopefully next week, I'll have some different stuff to post.

Self portrait

Self-01
Originally uploaded by Josh Bobbitt

I couldn't think of a better way to learn than to do some self portraits.
I feel like that's incredibly vain, but nobody is a more cooperative model than me. Most were exceptionally blurry, but I really like a few, including this one.

It's a pretty simple setup. I'm shooting in aperture priority. EV is down 2 stops. Main is a softbox above me and camera right, close to the axis. Fill is a shoot-through below me, also near the axis. Clamshell-ish setup.

Pink on Pink

Blog 3-31-06
Originally uploaded by Josh Bobbitt

More spring nature shots. Hopefully I'll have something of a different tenor soon.

Purple and Green

Paris 3-22-10
Originally uploaded by Josh Bobbitt

Brown on Green.

Georgetown 2-21-02
Originally uploaded by Josh Bobbitt

Spring, it seems, is almost here. However, my fascination with the Sigma 70-300 is fading. That's what I used for this image. It's not bad in smaller sizes, but at full size, the sharpness is DEFINITELY lacking. I guess that's cheap glass for you.

Brown on Blue.

Georgetown 2-21-08
Originally uploaded by Josh Bobbitt

More than anything, I liked the combination of colors in this shot.

Backlit pink.

Blog 3-27-06
Originally uploaded by Josh Bobbitt

I like the color and the backlighting.

However, it looks like the JPG compression introduced some clipping, maybe in the red channel. That's a bit frustrating.

Goose portrait.

Blog 3-26-06
Originally uploaded by Josh Bobbitt

Spill

Blog 3-25-06
Originally uploaded by Josh Bobbitt

Found this almost entirely by accident somewhere I hadn't even planned on going, and I absolutely had to shoot it.

Bee on Bradford Pear

Paris 3-22-07
Originally uploaded by Josh Bobbitt

Damn you William Wordsworth.

Paris 3-22-08
Originally uploaded by Josh Bobbitt

This shot isn't that great, the English major in me just wanted a chance to reference Wordsworth.

Pump.

Blog 03-22-01
Originally uploaded by Josh Bobbitt

Close

Blog 03-21-01
Originally uploaded by Josh Bobbitt

Nikon D80

2 SB-600's fired via CLS into white foam core reflectors.

Hope on a chain.

Blog 03-20-01
Originally uploaded by Josh Bobbitt

I've been trying to resist the urge to talk about the images I post, hoping that they'll speak for themselves, but I can't resist on this one.

It's cold again today, and I loved this picture as an expression of the hope that, soon, it'll be very warm, every day.

Shakespeare strictly not allowed.

Blog 03-18-01
Originally uploaded by Josh Bobbitt

It's still brown outside, although the green is creeping in, so I'm still kinda stuck indoors with whatever subject I can find. I'm probably getting maddening with all of these black and whites, but I really like them (if you can't tell). Hopefully soon, things around here will be green enough to start getting outside.

Rose

Blog 03-15-01
Originally uploaded by Josh Bobbitt

Nikon D80

(Seems to have lost some detail in the JPG compression. Hm.)

Panorama

Blog 03-13-01
Originally uploaded by Josh Bobbitt

A pano. Stitched in Photoshop CS3.

Tree

Blog 03-12-01
Originally uploaded by Josh Bobbitt

Nikon D80 70mm 1/400 @ f/5.6, ISO 100

Shoe

Blog 3-12
Originally uploaded by Josh Bobbitt

Nikon D80, 1/125 @ f/8.0, ISO 100

Blog 03-11-01

Blog 03-11-01
Originally uploaded by Josh Bobbitt

Found this goose hanging out with a bunch of his buddies yesterday. I think he knew I was taking pictures, so he posed for me.

Nikon D80 70-300 @ 220 mm, 1/125, f/8, ISO 100.

Tulip, Black and White

Blog 03-10-01
Originally uploaded by Josh Bobbitt

Nikon D80, 1/200, f/8, 300mm, two SB-600's fired via CLS.

Macro

Macro
Originally uploaded by Josh Bobbitt

It's warming up here, but it's still unbelievably brown outside, so I'm still relegated to interesting things I can find indoors.

Blog 03-08-01

Blog 03-08-01
Originally uploaded by Josh Bobbitt

This is another old shot that I've had lying around, and feel like I've finally finished it.

I'm not really sure what that means for my work—whether it means I'm developing creatively, or whether it means I've become stagnant. Either way, I like the shot.

Nikon D80 18-135@22mm ISO 100, f/7.1.

Alpha/Omega

Blog 2-26-01
Originally uploaded by Josh Bobbitt

This is one of those shots I keep returning to. I took it in May of last year, and each time I return to it, I interpret it a different way. It started as a full color shot on a (very sunny day), and now it's morphed into what you see here. I think this incarnation of the shot is the best one so far, though I think there's still room for re-interpretation.

Nikon D80, 50mm @f/1.8, ISO 100.

Tulip

Tulip
Originally uploaded by Josh Bobbitt

Took this shot upstairs.

Again, the background is my 36x48" softbox. Shot with my D80 and a Sigma 70-300 macro.

Lit with an SB-600 bounced off an umbrella camera right. Post-processed in LR and CS3.

GTD in my world.

Again, no shot today. Instead, just some thinking about getting things done and organization.

For Creatives, I've always that getting things done was a bit of a bugaboo.

We're often engaged in our medium for passion rather than income, and the lack of structure and corporate environment forces us to self-impose systems of organization and productivity.

I couldn't have cared less about either of those things until recently. Now, I'm doing my best to organize the creative part of my life. Now, I'm continually increasing my intensity in these areas of my life.

For me, work is a forgone conclusion. It takes care of itself. However, shooting, blogging, and the like is a different story. It takes intensity and intentionality on my part to develop those things.

Starting today, I've invested in a new, systematic approach to organize my goals, my needs, and to generally be productive, and get things done.

I think it's pretty simple and low-tech. I bought three Moleskines, ruled, 5x8.25". Each of these has its own role. The first, I've labeled "Shooting." This one goes with me into the studio (which, of course, is just our upstairs). The plan is to use it to write about shoots. Lighting setups, challenges, things that work, things that don't work. It's a way to organize and remember my shoots so that I can learn from successes and mistakes and get better. As a secondary goal, I hope those notes will help with this blog, and sharing some of my creative processes with a (hopefully growing) community of folks to refine those processes.

The second is labeled "Productivity." I intend to use it for all of the things I need to do—blog ideas, website idea, business ideas. Eventually, that may too broad of a category, but I think for now it will get the job done.

Lastly, I've labeled one for "Daydreaming." This is one is for long-term goals and things I don't yet have the ability to put into action. There are lots of things that bounce around in my head that I think would be great ideas for the future, or things that I need to work toward, but they often get lost. I hope this notebook will be a space where I can record and return to those things, hopefully finding action steps that will make those goals a reality.

So that's it, my new, low-tech system for GTD. I'd love to hear from anyone else. How do you get things done in your world? How do you stay organized? How to track short and long term goals and growth?

Review: Scott Kelby's 7-Point System for Adobe Photoshop CS3.

I've decided to do something a little different today. Instead of trotting out more images, I thought it would be nice to do a bit of a review. I don't know if it's going to really have all of the conventions of a review, or be exhaustive, or any of that stuff. Mostly, it's just going to be me talking about a book.

Scott Kelby's 7-Point System for Adobe Photoshop CS3.

Photoshop is a monster. A big daunting monster with a million buttons and menus and sliders and palettes. Tweak those buttons and menus and sliders and palettes the right way, and you can have the monster lying flat on its back, begging for you to rub its belly. Tweak those buttons and menus and sliders and palettes the wrong way, and the monster will chew through the best of images and lay waste to them, cranking out bit after bit of destroyed pixels.

Mostly, I'd always tweaked the monster the wrong way. I knew how to use a lot of what Photoshop could do, but the synthesis of my knowledge usually left my images a wreck.

So when I picked up Kelby's book, I was really expecting miracles. I just wanted the beast under control. I'd read Kelby's Digital Photography Book (both volumes) and I was impressed with his straightforward style, so I thought I'd see if he could help me tame the monster.

Kelby's stated goal is take all of those intimidating dialogues, and show folks like me how to harness them in order to improve our images (my paraphrase). He absolutely succeeds in that goal, and does it in a straightforward style that we've come to expect from Kelby.

I've found a lot of things in the world of photography to be less clear than they could be. I've bought light stands, umbrella holders, and softboxes, and I've scratched my head at why none of them include instructions. I've stood in front of equipment, feeling like photography was a secret cult, and I had not yet been initiated. I felt like the guy in the Ray Charles song, "Them That Got." "If you gotta have something before you get something, how you get your first is still a mystery to me."

Kelby's great strength is that he makes things unbelievably clear. Above all, I feel like this is the value of Kelby's book. There is incredibly little ambiguity. Most other Photoshop books have that moment when I stop, and realize that I'm clueless. The introductory book that I'm reading assumes that I know more about the program than I do. Kelby never assumes I know more than I do. That makes the books an incredible learning tool.

That is, first and foremost, what Kelby's book is, a learning tool. While he's got a 7-point system, his system isn't magic. It still requires skill and creativity to consistently apply his system. Editing photos with his seven steps still requires a good eye, and a judicious use of effects.

The best example is his treatment of "the Lab color move." Lab color, I found, was great for getting surprising punch out of my colors. However, Lab color can also turn photos into cartoon wonderlands where everything is oversaturated and silly looking. The skill of the artist is never removed from Kelby's equation.

Without a doubt, I recommend this book. If Photoshop still looks like a monster that chews up your photos, or even if you've begun to placate the monster, but feel you need help making him purr a little more, you can't go wrong with Kelby's approach.

Covered Bridge, Switzer, KY.

I took this shot with my D80 and a Sigma 10-20mm back in the late summer of 2008. I've always liked the shot itself, but just recently did the crop you see here and layout with the whitespace/text. It's still one of my favorite shots. (And in color, no less.)

Train

Nikon D80

You like me, you really like me.

So, I just noticed that I have comments. I apologize to those who have commented that I've completely ignored. I wasn't being rude, just ignorant.

Black and White flowers.

Nikon D80, Sigma 70-300 Macro, SB-600 with bounce umbrella camera left fired with CLS.

Purple Flowers

Jacob, Buffalo Trace.

My friend Jacob at Buffalo Trace Distillery in Frankfort, KY.

Nikon D80, 50mm f/1.8, ISO 1600.

Lexington Center

Lexington Center, downtown Lexington, Kentucky.

Nikon D80. 18-135 @ 20mm.

Hops and Malt

If this looks a lot like yesterday's Bourbon Barrel image, that's because it's supposed to it. Originally, the Bourbon Barrel piece was just a work in itself. However, I decided that it needed a companion piece, something complimentary, and I couldn't think of anything better than beer.

The Bourbon piece was easy. I had that image lying around on my disk for a few months now. It just took a flash of inspiration, and I created the layout in just a few minutes. The beer piece was indescribably harder.

When I think about my photography, two things I think about quite a bit are vision and voice. I hope that everything I do is the work of some vision, and I hope that I'm developing some sort of consistent voice.

The Hops and Malts image was the end of a strange process. I'd constructed a great image in my head of a beer montage. I wanted it to center on Kentucky Ale, a great local product. I ended up with this:

That's not a terrible frame. Sure, the hops and malts are outside of the DOF. The wheat is much too light and distracts attention away from the beer. But I did some things well. Getting the light bottle to have distinct edges on a dark background was tough. It required a consultation with Light: Science and Magic, and some well placed Gaffer's tape, but I made it work, and it was rewarding to see a disappearing bottle transform. It was equally enjoyable to snoot one of my strobes to make sure I had enough light on the label to give it the detail the shot needed.

However, what's clear is that this shot lacks voice and vision. It may be on its way to being technically sufficient, but it's lacking the voice that the barrel shot has. What I had imagined turned out to be the furthest thing from what I needed.

So, frustrated, tired, and hungry, I re-imagined the shot. I decided to strip down all of the nonsense and complication and give a voice to my subject—beer.

So I switched to a macro lens and took lots of shots of hops and malts. I got in close to what beer fundamentally is, and I found the voice that the project needed.

It's a thrill, working out the creative process like this. It's frustrating to see our expectations and best laid plans fall flat on their faces (even though it may be through not fault of our own) and exhilarating to break through the things that may be keeping us from finding our voice.

Bourbon Barrel

Taken with Nikon D80. Raw conversion in Lightroom, Greyscale conversion and layout in Photoshop CS3.

A toe in the water.

If I've learned anything about photography in the last two years, I've learned that it's hard. Harder than it looks. Framing a scene and pressing a shutter is the easy part. Figure how to expose scenes properly isn't too bad. Photoshop isn't even really as scary as it seems. But doing excellent, faithful self-expression? That's the hard stuff.

It's not possible to say "what" photography really is. Really, I guess it's just ones and zeroes that are recorded on a sensor when I push a silver button. But anyone who has ever heard a shutter click knows that it's something more. Those ones and zeroes are a peculiar kind of magic. Beyond the zeroes and ones, I've begun to think that photography is about the desire to constantly learn about the craft and the need to faithfully express a vision.

Those things are what I hope this blog can become—a constant exercise in learning and an attempt to express a vision that will become more solid over time.