Matthew Botos

In the spirit of Halloween, I decided to have some fun with Digital Photography School’s “What’s in your bag?” Assignment this week. The idea spawned from the Ansel Adams quote,”The single most important component of a camera is the twelve inches behind it.” It was a full evening’s worth of work, but a very entertaining challenge!

Of course, the real fun comes in explaining the process behind the shot. Or shots - this is actually a composite of one of the bag and one of my head. To keep it believable, I kept the same lighting in both and marked the position of the bag so everything would line up. The bag went first, since it was easier than the self-portrait!

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Thanks to Lee Torrens of Microstock Diaries, I got to attend PhotoPlus in New York this week and ask my question of microstock superstars Yuri Arcurs, Andres Rodriguez, and Kelly Cline. It was an interesting panel discussion that touched on many aspects of microstock and its impact on the industry and photographers.

The answers to my question, “What aspects of microstock photography do you find most personally satisfying?”, were that you can shoot what you like (as long as it’s marketable), and that it can provide overall business success and residual income.

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The photographers I’d most like to meet aren’t the big names in commercial or fine art photography, but the ones whose blogs and books have taught me the most about the subject.  David Hobby, the Strobist, is definitely at the top of that list, so it was great to meet him at PhotoPlus this week!

I ran into him at the Lumiquest booth, where he was snapping a picture of an ad he shot for them featuring himself and his son. He’s a really friendly guy; he asked what I liked to shoot and gave me a few lighting tips, like adding in a random bit of light to keep things interesting. I asked him about his own plans after building up Stobist and leaving the Baltimore Sun, and it sounds like we’ll see some exciting things from him in the future.

I wasn’t thrilled with the stills I got shooting the On the Bike series, so I took some inspiration from Chase Jarvis and threw all 128 frames into a video:

My video skills are pretty lacking, though I suppose I could just tell you the abrupt ending is a nod to the Sopranos. I exported the photos as 480px JPGs from Aperture, added a last frame with credits, and loaded the image sequence into QuickTime Pro.

Finding the music was an interesting exercise; I went looking for music licensed under Creative Commons and found Jamendo. A few songs by Convey had good strong openings; I settled on a 12-second clip from View from Above.

I got a few new toys this week, including a HonlPhoto 1/8 Speed Grid. Grids are pretty standard for throwing a tight pool of light from a studio strobe, but tougher to find for portable flashes. The 1/8 cuts it down to about a 2 foot circle from the original 105mm zoom at 5 feet:

The circle inspired me to play around a bit with some James Bond poses:

The light is pretty directional: there’s just a bit of “mullet shadow” behind me. The grid’s construction is quite solid and it’s plenty big enough to cover the front of my Canon 580 EX II. I’m looking forward to using it for some more dramatic portrait effects in the future.

The recent announcements that Nikon’s D90 and Canon’s 5d Mark II DSLR cameras would also offer high-definition video seemed like a bit of gimmick, but Vincent Laforet’s Reverie proves it’s no joke (even at only 1/4 resolution). Proving why pro photographers are pros, he used his connections and skills to snag a pre-production model for a weekend, and cranked out a $5,000 movie showing what the camera can do in low light, on the hood of a car, and hanging out of a helicopter.

There’s also a behind the scenes movie, and he’s promised some full-resolution clips soon. In his original post describing the project, he said “It has the potential to change our industry.” A lofty statement, but backed by his reputation, and some pretty impressive proof. Given past statements from David Hobby (The Strobist) about the increase in photojournalism videos and commercial shooters like Jim Talkington and Chase Jarvis providing clients with both photo and video, and it looks like Nikon and Canon are making a serious move in the direction of the future.

I had a blast shooting the Summer Showdown mountain bike race at Bear Creek this weekend. Not only were the riders doing a great job on a tough course, but I was really hitting my stride with Strobist sports lighting. It’s been a nice evolution from basic motion freeze with a manual flash at the Rally in the Valley, to ETTL flash and some motion effects at On the Rocks, to off-camera flash with gels, motion, and multiple positions at Bear Creek.

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As one of the Winners of the Ask a Microstock Superstar Competition at Microstock Diaries, I’ll be at the PhotoPlus Expo in New York on October 23! In addition to the big names on the microstock panel, a number of other well-known pros will be there, and the expo is supposed to be huge. It should be a great opportunity to network, so do leave a comment if you’ll be there.

It goes without saying that Colorado is full of photo opportunities; I took about 1300 shots during the week. Given the scenery, they were mostly landscape and nature, with a few portraits to remember the trip by.

The most useful piece of gear I took - and I took almost all of it - was actually a circular polarizing filter. It did wonders in making the sky bluer, taking the glare off lakes and streams, and cutting some of the haze off distant mountains. The runner up was a strap for my sunglasses, so I could just drop them from my face and replace them with the viewfinder.

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I’ve had a number of Canon cameras over the years that I’ve liked, and currently shoot a Canon Rebel XTi and 3 Canon lenses. But looking at recent gear announcements and the general buzz around them, Nikon really seems to be pushing the envelope further these days.

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