New Blog!!!

Hey everybody out there, I have now transferred by blog to my actual website. You can find it at www.greggriffithdesigns.com/blog! Now go read it because I will not be updating this one anymore!

7/52 - Troy

Another week and another lesson learned. It is amazing how each and every week I see something different come out of nowhere and throw me for a loop, this week it was his aviators. I was shooting with my 60" reflected umbrella and because of how big it was it could be seen reflecting on his glasses in just about every photo. Luckily it was something that I caught while we were still shooting and since moving the large umbrella was not really an option, I opted to just move his face instead.

This shoot was also one of the hardest for me to pick a favorite, do not be surprised if I post many "alternate" shots from today. This one was picked because I really like the expression I was able to capture as well as the lack of a reflection in his shades.

The only issue throughout all of the photographs is that I was getting a little flash shadow on the right hand side. This was most likely caused from my triggers not being able to shoot at 1/250th of a second. Next time I will have to make sure to try shooting slower and see if it is still happening, or just invest in some better triggers!

7/52 - Troy, originally uploaded by griffithgreg.

Looking Back At What I've Learned

I don't know if I ever shared this photo back when it was taken, but I was doing some flickr house cleaning when I came across this photo. It made me think just how much I have changed as a photographer in just over a year.

When this was taken, August of 2012, I am not even sure if I owned an off camera flash yet [*Edit* - Yes I did, but I got it in June and it definitely did not start leaving my cameras hot shoe until at least late August], but I do know that if I retook this shot today it would be there.

Now, I am not saying this is a bad shot by any means. Well that's if you don't count his right arm getting cut off and the harsh shadows from the sun to his back. I still think it shows off just what kind of style I have and what I like to do, just fundamentally it could have been better.

Just a few thoughts I had when starting my day today.

Old Dusty Road Alternate, originally uploaded by griffithgreg.

6/52 - Catherine

Six weeks in and not only have I taken a different person's portrait each week, but I have only used myself once! Seems like a pretty good thing to celebrate. I know it will get harder as time goes on, but that's still pretty good.

Well here she is, my bride to be (83 days), Catherine. She is so gorgeous :-). I was able to get her to pose for a quick portrait today during the Super Bowls half time show. So, when you eventually read this, thank you very much!

For this shoot, I created a home made snoot with drawing paper and foil. I knew I wanted to have a solid black background and since I do not have any backgrounds at all, it had to be done with very directional light.

6/52 - Catherine, originally uploaded by griffithgreg.

5/52 - Grandpa Griffith

As many might know, I went to Houston this weekend to take care of a few things for my upcoming wedding. While in town, I met up with my grandparents and asked my Grandpa if I could take his portrait for my project this week.

I really was not quite sure where I wanted to take the picture, but decided to just let him sit in his chair on their porch to keep him as comfortable and natural as possible. He is quite the character and the little smirk he has in this picture I feel represents his personality really well.

What was nice about this set up is the sun provided an awesome back light while I brought my 60in umbrella about 3 feet from him and set it at 1/16th power to allow just enough light to get him off the background.

I am really happy with how this one turned out and even though I tried to put more negative space in the other shots, I felt this helped keep the background as blown out as possible.

5/52 - Grandpa Griffith, originally uploaded by griffithgreg.

4/52 - Adam

Meet Adam, he just married one of my oldest friends Emily. I had the opportunity to shoot their wedding this last weekend and it was a blast. This portrait was more of a happy accident than actually doing it on purpose. He was just getting ready to walk down the aisle, when I got him to give me a quick glance to snap this shot. What I really like about it, is the hint of the groomsmen just in the background. They are just subtle enough to show what is going on, but do not overtake the photograph.

One thing I did learn while shooting this wedding as a newly found strobist style portrait shooter is you do not have time to be a strobist style shooter, haha. I tried setting up an umbrella for a couple of shots, but soon broke it down and stuck with my flash bouncing through the ceiling and my newly acquired Gary Fong lightsphere.

Just in case you are wondering, I did not post one of Emily (the bride), because I wanted her to see the photos of her self first.

4/52 - Adam, originally uploaded by griffithgreg.

3/52 - Carolyn

First off, I would like to thank my soon to be sister-in-law, (still sounds weird to say that) for stepping in front of my camera and letting me take her picture.

I knew going into this photo that I wanted it to be black & white, and minimal, but other than that it was a toss up. I started out trying to get a solid white background, but with a single flash and my Cactus triggers failing on me every other shot, it made it quite difficult. I made a few adjustments to my flashes location and took a test shot. Something close to the 50% grey you see above is what I got. I really liked it so decided to keep going with it.

I still seem to have trouble communicating with my models during a shoot. Hopefully that is something that I am able to work on throughout this year and eventually get super comfortable with.

3/52 - Carolyn, originally uploaded by griffithgreg.

1/52 - Happy New Year

A new year, a new photography project and soon I will have a new blog as well. I will keep you posted on that.

It has been over a year since my last big photography project and a lot has changed since then. The last photography project I tried, I wouldn't say failed, but I was not completed. I found myself getting really lazy and my photographs were reflecting that. So since I was unhappy with the results I decided to scrap the project and try again some another time.

That time is today, except this time I am taking things a little bit slower. I promise these descriptions wont be so long in the future and hopefully I can start to record flash data for anybody who is interested. That is all for now, I hope everybody has a great new year.

1/52 - Happy New Year, originally uploaded by griffithgreg.

Pedernales Falls State Park

This last weekend, Carolyn, Catherine and myself went for a hike at Pedernales Falls State Park. It is only about a 30-45 minute drive from downtown Austin and despite the lack of rain in central Texas, it was quite a site to see. Without the usual water rapidly coming down the river, it exposes these massive rocks that would normally just be peaking out of the surface of the water. I managed to get a few good shots while out at Pedernales Falls and hopefully I am able to go on more hikes in the coming weeks, especially since Texas has decided to finally have temperature below 85 degrees for once.

Pedernales Falls Again, originally uploaded by griffithgreg.

Pedernales Falls Panoramic, originally uploaded by griffithgreg.

Time Lapse Camera

Not quite sure if you remember my Time Lapse project from way back when, but I ran into quite a few problems with my equipment. Firstly, putting the strain of taking thousands of photos with my DSLR with the only purpose to be importing it into a video was starting to get costly. It actually cause my 40D to Error 99 on me a few times. Today, however, I stumbled upon a camera that would help get rid of all of those problems!

It is a Digital Time Lapse Camera, from PhotoJojo. Go check it out:
http://photojojo.com/store/awesomeness/time-lapse-camera/

For $150 and being water proof it is quite nice! It even gives you a few different choices on how often to take the pictures and then saves it all in a video for you!

It is a nice alternative to taking quick and easy time lapse movies, but I think I would miss the creative control when it comes down to editing the final JPEGs to get my own personal look and feel into the project. Since I am not that much of a After Effects guru, I think I will just settle for the rare occasions that I use my DSLR for this.

Night at Panama City Pier

While I was on my trip to see the Space Shuttle Atlantis take off for the final time, we stopped in Panama City for a couple days. One of the nights, I went down to the beach with my family around 10:00pm and snapped a few shots of the pier that was there. This shot is one of my favorites from the trip and I even have a black and white version of this same shot that I really like just as much. Maybe I will post it at some time in the future.

Night at Panama City Pier, originally uploaded by griffithgreg.

Atlantis Says Goodbye

Have not posted in a while, mostly because my flickr Pro account ran out and I am afraid of loosing all my photos. Anyway, I had to upload a picture from my trip to see Atlantis take off. It was an amazing experience that I will never forget.

Atlantis Says Goodbye, originally uploaded by griffithgreg.

Learned Alpha Spotter 62

I am a sucker for destroying the rule of thirds in photography. That is all.

Learned Alpha Spotter 62, originally uploaded by griffithgreg.

Teddy via Argus C3

I am not sure if I have mentioned it yet, but I received a new camera from eBay. The camera that I am talking about is an Argus C3. Before I received the Argus I had no knowledge of what it was capable of or just how much of a cult following it really had. So the day I received it, I bought a couple rolls of film to pop in and start snapping. Lets just say a good 99% of the shots either did not turn out at all or were so blurry from camera shake that it was near impossible to make them out. The only one that came out well enough for me to show was this one of Teddy.

Since the last roll finished, I took apart the camera, cleaned the lens and viewfinders and also found out I had been shooting on Bulb mode the entire time I have been using this camera. That would explain all the camera shake on the photographs. So hopefully the next couple rolls will come out better now that this has been fixed.

Teddy via Argus C3, originally uploaded by griffithgreg.

Battle at F-Stop Ridge

I just found it and had to share it with everybody. Great video.

The Ordinance of James

Well, as some may know, this weekend I went to Austin to attend the wedding of my life-long cousin Brandon and his new wife Lindsay. The wedding took place just outside of Austin, at a little western styled town, specifically for events such as this. Anyway, back to the reason you peek at my blog in the first place, the photos of the weekend! Well, I am sad to say this shot is the only one I took all weekend, at least with my DSLR. Granted I had my camera at my side for a majority of the weekend, the desire to shoot was rarely there. I think I just wanted to enjoy the wedding and just take it all in, except for when I first arrived for the rehearsal.

When I first arrive to the wedding site, I was greeted by this old pickup truck. I think old rusty beat up cars are some of the most fun objects to photograph and I had been wanting to do an HDR of one for a while. Alas, as I was setting up this shot, I was shocked to find that I had forgotten my tripod mounting plate. If you have ever shot HDR photos, then you know that a tripod is a must. I gave it my best hand-held shot, but in the end it just wasn't sharp enough with all three shots. So i went ahead and used the middle ground shot to create my HDR. I think it turned out quite nicely, but now I wish I would have taken more while I was there.

P.S. I would like to thank my friend Matt for helping me name this photograph as well. THANKS MATT!

The Ordinance of James, originally uploaded by griffithgreg.

Lake Travis Panoramic

Just got back from Lake Travis today and I am exhausted. This panoramic is over 19MB so click on the full version and check it out in the original size. More pictures will be coming very soon, but definitely not tonight. Now I will go sleep...

Lake Travis Panoramic, originally uploaded by griffithgreg.

Half Self-Portrait

I have been wanting to shoot portraits a lot lately, but have not really had any models to take pictures of. So I decided to set up in my backyard and take this one you see here. I really have been wanting to try this dramatic half face lit shot, you might have seen lighting like this before, but to me it reminds me of the original Mighty Ducks movie. You know, when they print the picture of Coach Bombay and his coach from when he was a kid in the local paper? Oh, you don't...well go watch it on Netflix then.

Even though this picture makes me look dark and depressed, I promise I am not. I just thought this turned out to be a good shot and wanted to see what comments I got about it. I do wish my eyes were a little more sharp, but that is really hard to accomplish when I focus on a stick before I stand there.

Half Self-Portrait, originally uploaded by griffithgreg.

Steel Flower

Well here it is, the first (kinda) shot from the film I ordered from the Impossible Project. It is of a steel flower that is just out front of my grandmothers house. I tried to frame it up as best as I could, but it was quite odd using the viewfinder in the Spectra. The reason I said 'kinda' about it being my first photo is, as you can see with the two behind it, it is not the only one I took. The first two where complete failures. The film did not exit the camera properly and because of this, the chemicals on the film smeared taking the image along with it.

I must say once this shot was finished developing I was quite happy to see something appear from nowhere. It has been almost ten years since I have seen a Polaroid used and if the film was not so expensive, I could see my self getting addicted to this camera quite easily.

Steel Flower, originally uploaded by griffithgreg.

Polaroid Spectra

I just recently got my hands on an oldie, but goodie. A Polaroid Spectra. While I was still in grad school, I had heard rumors of a company reproducing the classic instant film of the Polaroid. At the time I thought that was pretty cool, but really thought nothing else of it since I did not have a Polaroid to use. Well, on Monday, my grandmother let me borrow this fine piece of classic photography so I could see if the rumor were true. Today, I received a package, inside of it was one box of PZ 600 from The Impossible Project. They are currently reproducing the classic film to be used in these models and I can not wait to use it. I will be sure to post all of the photos I can as soon as I get them scanned in.

Polaroid Spectra, originally uploaded by griffithgreg.

Another thing I want to talk about is a question some people have asked me in the past, do I listen to music while photographing? The answer is kind of tricky. If it is sports or portraiture, the definite answer is no. It would become a barrier that I would need to get around in order to produce good photographs. However, if I am just walking around or doing still life photography of course I do. I find it helps keep things fun. One song in particular I want to share with everybody is by Sunset. Go ahead and have a listen below. Golden Reverie is a song that always seems to get me calm, it kind of says "Hey, slow down and just enjoy life." So sit back and give it a listen, see what you think.