128/365: Street Cat.

My little sister Natalie, on the street we grew up on.

Had a couple days of complete creative vacuum. No inspiration... We headed to eastern NC for a baby party and some Mother's Day hanging out back home, so there wasn't a lot of time to think about pictures till yesterday afternoon. Took a long drive around Ayden, my home town, looking for pictures in the flat farmlands of the Coastal Plains. Couldn't find anything photogenic enough to stop the car, and the sky was completely blank, no clouds, just boring blue, and no interesting pictures. Nothing, I mean, NADA. Felt defeated wihen I got back. Planted some in Mom's garden, had dinner, yada yada...then the sun dropped low in the sky and we decided to get a few family pics. I got out my reflector and shot some of the ladies (sister, wife, mom) and Mom and her husband, against the flaring backlight of the late afternoon sun. Got some good shots. Got me recharged. Kept it going as the sun began to drop, jst kept shooting images, bad ones aplenty, but some good ones too. Once the sun really had dropped, I planned on shooting the street lights around my house (don't have any in my neighborhood in Mebane), and as I was shooting, My sister came out with this cute cat hat on...

This is shot on a tripod, 2 second exposure or so, Natalie remains very still, but to draw the eye to her a bit, I popped an off camera flash manually towards her from camera right as my mom clicked the shutter. The long exposure allowed me to trigger the flash myself without worrying about syncing. More from this evening to come...

-llg