49/365: BONZAI!

Shot a job today using almost every strobe in the arsenal, in two separate setups in two different rooms. Hours of setup for 15 minutes of actual shooting. Went well though. Very Zen.

On the way home, my friend Krista saw this Bonzai stand on the side of road and said, "That should be your picture today." Damn straight.

Doing HDR with a telephoto lens is tough, even with a good tripod. At 400mm the camera shakes a lot, and it can be tough for the exposures to line up in the process. The image stabilizer makes it worse , as the lens element jumps over to a random side and though the shot is very crisp, it's even more out of alignment  from frame to frame. The software attempts to correct for this, but I'm not impressed with it's ability.

The solution? Shoot a lot of frames, and hope for the best. Or as some of us say, "Spray and Pray."

I wanted this to look like a nice white backdrop shot, so I used the van that was parked behind to isolate the plants. I was tired though, and didn't feel like working my angle much to isolate it properly. I was trusting that I could get a good crop, but now I can't find one that works well. I COULD photoshop out the backside van on the left side of the picture, and if anyone wants to to buy a print of this one and pay me by the hour to do that, I'll be happy to. For now, real hours must be put to a real client ;)

-llg