Nacionale » still life

Rock Stacking

Mike — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 07:34:47 +0000

Here are some more beach tumbled rocks stacked in different ways.

Cast and Crew

The Parisian

Sliver

Sun Worship

4 Little Rocks

Mike — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 08:12:56 +0000

I had a blast with this evening’s 365. I was going through some of the stuff that Nate and I had picked up recently during one of our beach trips and I found these 4 little rocks. The biggest rock was just a bit longer than a quarter as you can see in one of the images below.

Anyway, I started off by stacking the rocks on top of one another and then tried to stack them in different configurations. The last couple were quite challenging especially given how small these rocks were. I could have made it a whole lot easier by using some wax or something to hold them together, but that would have spoiled all the fun. I think I might try doing this again with a different set of rocks some other evening.

The cast and crew photo

Easy Peasy

The Alternator

Cantilever

Wobbly Legs

Getting Over It

Mike — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 06:09:52 +0000

Slept horribly last night. Felt crummy all day. Spent the entire day at home. Highlight was getting the kid to eat a good dinner including some collard greens sauteed with olive oil and garlic. (He loved them! Yay, me!) Nate didn’t take a nap so he went down pretty easily. Since the wife is still in Vegas, I can’t go surfing tomorrow morning. The good news is that I will be sleeping in for as long as Nate will let me.

Okay, I know that everything I just wrote has nothing to do with the photo below, but it might explain why I’m resorting to my second night in a row of shooting some on my kitchen counter.

Cerith Shell

Superman with a Loop Light

Mike — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 05:05:55 +0000

Today really tested my resolve to not break the chain. I woke up with a fever and body aches so I hardly got out of bed until I needed to pick up my son from school. My wife left for a photography convention in Las Vegas so I’m flying solo until Tuesday night. I really picked a crummy time to come down with something.

After putting him down for the night, the last thing I wanted to do was take a photograph for my 365, but today would be my 50th day since I started so I couldn’t not shoot something. So I looked through Nate’s toy bins, I saw Superman. I figured a classic super hero deserved a classic lighting pattern for his portrait so I went with a loop light.

I’ll be channeling my inner Superman this weekend as I try to keep Nate entertained while trying to kick whatever bug I’ve got.

Superman

Shells #3

Mike — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 06:11:12 +0000

Early morning meetings usually mean that I’m shooting something in the evening after my son is asleep. Easiest to shoot things lying around the house. We have a lot of shells lying around lately so I just grabbed a couple for tonight’s shoot.

Gizmodo is running a photo contest this week for what you can shoot in complete darkness except for the light of a single candle. There are no fancy prizes or anything, but I thought I’d try to kill two birds with one stone. I thought having just one candle might create too contrasty an image so I built a little sweep using some white paper and paper clips. The white paper served as a nice reflector to fill in some of the areas that would have been in dark shadows otherwise.

I thought I’d add a photo of how I set up my shoot on the kitchen counter. Of course, when I actually snapped the photos, all the kitchen lights were turned off.

Shell 1

Shell 2

How I set up the shot

Shells #2

Mike — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 06:19:57 +0000

The family trip to the tidal pools yesterday was not without its fair share of collecting shells and little bits of sea glass. Here are a couple shells that we found yesterday.

Shell 1, Perspective 1

Shell 1, Perspective 2

Shell 2, Perspective 1

Shell 2, Perspective 2