Where the Heck Am I?

Oh my. I'm still very much around folks, just been highly occupied with work. I have by no means forgotten about the variable ND filter / long exposure tutorial episode and one way or another I'll try to finish that up by the end of this month.

In the meantime I've been working on a few other projects. For one, my mother creates these really cool crocheted hats; some even have accessories like neck and wrist bands too. They're all made by hand and each is essentially unique or one-of-a-kind as she doesn't create duplicates. I built a website for her that I also administer, and every time she makes about 10 new hats I whip out the camera gear and take shots of her garments. In fact you can see those photos (and her lovely hats) right here: http://www.shadesofcrochet.com

For these shoots I use a paper-roll background and I have to say that I really love it! There are no wrinkles or seams to worry about in post, so editing the shots pretty much just comes down to a little color correction, cropping, and resizing for the Web. As for lighting setup, I have my Olympus FL-50 flash on the left acting as the main light source, a slave flash behind the styrofoam head illuminating the backdrop, a hot light (my three bulb fluorescent one) adding a little extra shine to the hats on the side-right, and a final slave flash on the far right (closer to the camera's position) to give some ambient lighting. All this is triggered by my E-3's built-in flash, set to 1/64 power; this is just enough to set off the slaves (I'm using a slave trigger for the FL-50). Works quite well overall.

The next project I've been hard at work on is a website for my dad's artwork. I'll post the addy to this later as we're putting the finish touches on that.

Lastly, I've been designing sunglasses that I'll be making out of wood. I think they look awesome and in my humble opinion are eco-friendly; there's enough plastic in our lives already. So why would I take on such a project? Interestingly, this all started because of my new eyeglasses I got a few months ago. I happen to have a huge head, so I often look for wide frames that fit comfortably. Luckily, I managed to find such a frame, but they were so wide that the plastic sunglasses I already had could not fit over top. After searching endlessly from store to store and not being able to find a replacement, I simply got fed up and made these:

Finally, a pair of sunglasses that fit perfectly well. The temples and frame are made from alder and the two wooden hinges on the side are poplar. The only metal in the sunglasses can be found in the hinge pins, and the only plastic bits are of course the lenses, which I took out of a previous pair of plastic sunglasses. Here's another shot:

I have a few more shots on my Flickr Photostream. Hopefully I can make an OK living from producing these unique items. I should be able to keep the costs down and make them affordable enough; perhaps I'll get lucky and some stores will carry them too... I will keep my fingers crossed.

Anyway, a busy life is a good one in my opinion, but it does detract somewhat from a few fun things and can wear you out a little. But I manage to recharge myself with a little gaming and reading at night, not to mention some music too. Do keep your eyes peeled at my Tweets (at least I've been using that more often lately) and my Facebook page for video updates. L8r!