Myerson Photo Blog

We had a great little meetup this past Saturday. It’s always such a pleasure to see such a great turnout for our meetings - both returning members and newcomers.

Our monthly workshop was presented by Rick Bracht, who gave us a good introduction to the world of HDR - High Dynamic Range images. He showed us a live example; using 9 exposures of the same scene and the HDR functionality in Photoshop CS3, he created an image with detail in the shadows and the highlights. This would have been impossible with one exposure. Many thanks go out to Rick, for a great intro to HDR!

Next month’s workshop will be presented by member Josh Pearson, who will discuss the variables of printing your images at home - the different papers and inks involved in home printing, what the benefits are, and what effects each can have on your final prints. This is a lesson not to be missed.

As always in our group, we had a monthly challenge. This month’s challenge had many entries for the theme of wild animals. Member JP, with his astounding shot of red wing blackbirds taking flight, took home top honors, and with it the right to select next month’s theme: Self Portraiture. I can’t wait to see what our members come up with for January.

There were so many entries for the Comment and Critique session, that we ended up Commenting and Critiquing none, and instead showed all as a gallery. We’re going to address that eventuality at next month’s meeting

News of the group included a great honor for member Brandon Beecroft, who licensed one of his images to an Italian book publisher for a hefty sum. Congrats!

Also mentioned was the upcoming Stock Photo Shoot. The shoot will take place on the morning of Saturday, January 5. We have at least 8 or 9 models booked, and no fewer than 3 lighting stations. To date, 12 photographers have signed up to be part of the event, and there’s room for another 3 to join us.

I’ll put a plug in here for any of my readers located in or near Tucson: If you’re interested, be sure to sign up soon. There is some information at the Stock Photo Shoot link above, and I can answer any other question via email. It’ll be a great event and a fantastic way to play with some lighting equipment in a live setting, so I really recommend it.

Also, if any of my readers are local area photographers or photography enthusiasts but are not yet members of the meetup group, let me recommend joining. It’s a fun group, with a great mix of experience levels and talents. Check it out!

I’ve been planning to organize a group shoot for some time now, and it’s finally starting to take shape. I won’t go into the details too much at this time, but I can say that it’ll be early in January 2008. We’ve got a date, a location, and models are starting to sign up to be part of it.

The shoot will take place in an indoor gymnasium, and is being conceived as a sports themed shoot. The models will all be sports and fitness oriented. We’re looking for “extras” to fill out the crowd shots, so if you want to see a commercial shoot, but don’t want to participate as a main model or a photographer, we still have a place for you. Just leave a comment here in the blog, or email me.

A handful of photographers has already started signing up to be part of the shoot. If any of my readers are interested in joining the shoot as well, we have a signup page over at Meetup.com.

Not long ago, I decided that I needed to finally get my speedlight off my camera. I’ve been using Alien Bees strobes for most of my studio lighting, which works fine when I can do a studio set up. For those times when I need to be a little more mobile, my only lighting option is my Canon 430 EX. Up until now, I’d been firing it from the camera’s hot shoe, using a Gary Fong lightsphere to soften and disperse it some.

That set up is fine sometimes, but other times you just have to get the flash off camera. Fortunately, I already have Pocket Wizards to trigger the light. The only problem was that I didn’t have any way to attach the PWs to the speedlight. Enter Flash Zebra.

Flash Zebra (located conveniently at flashzebra.com) is a little online store that has exactly what you need: Flash accessories at a great price. Lon provides quick and reliable service. And, as luck would have it, he had this little beauty in stock. The cool thing about it is the 1/4″ - 20 thread hole, which lets me attach the now remote flash to a lightstand.

So, next time you need some flash accessories, be sure to check out the zebra.