124/365: Northampton All-Stars

One of my company's clients is the UNC Kidney Center. A few years ago we did a billboard and commercial campaign for them, using images of regional folks encouraging others to ask, "Hey Doc, how are my kidneys?" at their next doctor visit (it's an easy test, but not a mandatory one, so outreach and education are key to preventing kidney disease with early testing). The areas of NC that are hit hardest with kidney disease are the poorer, rural areas, for myriad reasons...So we visited a few of these counties and shot portraits of some community-recognizable folks, then created custom billboards to run in each respective county. Yesterday, we kicked off another round of these with a trip to Northampton County, where I shot this wonderful crew. The final ad will most likely feature a composite of their individual headshots, but I like to get a group pic in as well. This first shot of the group was just a funny, whimsical moment I thought I would share.

This is a run-and-gun assignment every time, as the folks are usually waiting for us when we get there. I let the client talk to the subjects as my assistant Krista and I found a large white wall (really big, actually) and quickly set up two lights, both Bowens monoblocks: one in a large shoot-thru umbrella camera left, and one with a high-efficiency reflector behind the subjects, camera right, aimed to rake across the wall. This background light usually blows the wall to pure white across the frame in the vertical 3/4 length portraits I do of the individuals, but in these group shots, the left side of the frame was starting to dip below white as the light fell off, so I use photoshop to burn that area back up to pure white. Here's the setup:

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123/365: Decayed.

Had a client shoot in Northampton County, NC, yesterday. Along the way, there was this old farm house sitting a 1/4 mile down a dirt road in a field...looked like Mother Nature had reclaimed it fully. My friend Krista and I stopped at it on the way back, and found a way in. And what a find it was! Aside from the rotten floors and possibility of falling thru, it was treasure trove of rotting stories from decades long gone.

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122/365: I Heart Strawberry.

Today was the first day of open strawberry-pickin' at this farm near our house. Wife and Mother-in-law headed over first thing and picked a ridonkulous amount of strawberries, many of which have now been processed into jam and canned...Others have been consumed with ice cream, hazelnut fudge, and whipped cream (yes, it was horrible). THIS one got his mutant picture taken, on account of his heart-shaped malformed conjoined twin.

Strobist info: On-axis fill and specular highlight via an Orbis Ring Flash. Lumiquest softbox III above and slightly behind fruit, and diffuser-domed speedlight behind and below aimed at green wall. Photoshopped out the needle and rod that held up the fruit afterwards.

Here's the setup, sans labels:

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121/365: Axis, Bold as Love.

Something about the smell of fresh hay in the moonlight...reminds me of summers long gone, youth squandered in nights of restlessness in the countryside of North Carolina. Such a sweet smell, even if it reminds me of days past, I still love it...

Hit the road around 10:30 pm to find some night shots. The moon didn't come up for an hour or so, and I grabbed a few shots of these haybales before it made it up. Used a combination of long exposures on the tripod, light painting with my headlamp from the left, and, eventually, moonlight coming in from the right as it rose.

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120/365: Dying Days.

I haven't come up with my next them yet, I'm giving myself a few days to get back into the swing of shooting with a bit more reckless abandon. But with this post, and the previous, I may have an idea for a few shots, if it proves interesting...more to come...

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119/365: Oceanic 815.

The month of April, my 4th in this quest they call the 365, has been rife with late postings and catchup days. Initially, it was a workload, and workflow, issue: too busy with other, real, paying client type work to get to it everyday, coupled with my somewhat tedious and multi-step process for posting these shots, which is no fun after a day of busting ass...hit the jump for the real problem.

But then, enter a new problem, and a wicked time-suck...LOST. Never watched an episode till late March. We don't own a TV! I of course have heard about the show, and the zeal of the fans. I knew it was a bad idea, but there it was on Hulu: all the episodes, ever. So we thought we'd see what the fuss was about.

A month later, Wife and I emerge from the house, bleary-eyed, near-albinoc skin, and emotionally drained from the 5th season finale. Hulu doesn't have the first few episodes of the 6th and final season posted anymore, so now the addiction can be abated for a time...until come the day, when we'll have ourselves a nice little overdose party as Season Six drops on Netflix.

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118/365: Fun Slide.

Dogwood Festival in Mebane, NC this past weekend...hit the jump for a few more pics...

Walked around with camera and without inspiration, then paid way too much for a Polish dog. I was about to head out on the bike, but then I thought I might try to have some fun with ND (Neutral Density) filters. Used a 10-stopper on this one, giving me a 118-second shutter at f/14, ISO 160, locked on a tripod. The people become gooey...

Funny how still some people can be in a crowd for almost two minutes.

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117/365: Zeus is Z.

Well, it only took four days for me to think of a Z, and I didn't even think of it. Thanks Gavin for the suggestion. Gave me an excuse to publish this shot I got last summer in my neighborhood. Can't wait for summer storms to roll thru again.

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116/365: Yikes! is Y.

Wife called me outside yesterday. Big old black snake in the garden. Looked like he wanted to curl up in our garden hose case, or to eat the frog that lives in there. Not wanting either of those to happen, I decided to extract him - pinned his head with a stick, then picked him up. After a few seconds of adrenaline rush, I calmed down and the wife snapped some pics of me and...Sean. I will name him Sean. Let him go in the back of the backyard.

As an old friend once said, just a little something I picked up in church.

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115/365: X for Xtracycle.

In 2003, whilst prepping for a long bicycle ride (Maine to San Francisco via Seattle), I discovered an awesome company called Xtracycle. They manufacture a bike modification that turns your bike into a 'S.U.B.' – a Sport Utility Bicycle. With this frame attached, you can haul just about anything under 250 lbs and sized appropriately: kayaks, surfboards, guitars, chainsaws, watermelons, beer, humans... They hooked one up for my ride across the country, and it was more than perfect for carrying all my shit, including everything for camping, clothes, books, a 35mm SLR, a video camera, and a guitar. Let me say it: I absolutely love my Xtracycle. Here's a couple of her from the '03 ride.

The bike is still set up essentially the same as it was in 2003. In the posted pic you can see the epic handlebar 'console': Hillclimbers on the bar ends, aero bars, light, computer, mirror, and horn. Love that horn. For the pixel-peeping bikers out there, those are some old-school grip shifters (I bought the bike in 1997), which should probably be upgraded at some point.

Long-distance biking is a whole story in itself, the best way to see any country. If you want to know more, you can start with the trailer for the movie we shot while out there.

Onto the picture itself. I wanted to try rigging my camera to the bike to try to get some pictures that would otherwise be impossible. I started in the middle of day, and first rigged the 5Dmk2 to the back of the bike, where the meat of the Xtracycle is. I set it up so that I could remotely trigger the shutter from the handlebars, and dialed in a slow shutter speed (1/20 sec) that would register the movement of the scene around me, but hopefully record the bike in focus. That would work in theory, but my road is less than smooth, and the rig had more shake to it than I could freeze in most of the frames.

The shots are kinda random if you don't know about the Xtracycle, but they look good in rapid succession (thinking timelapse at some point) and the video I shot looked good as well, except for the camera vibration. I love how the sun caught the mirror in the second shot, pulling into my driveway.

Next I switched the rigging up and placed it up front, rigged to my front fork. I used two Manfrotto 'Magic Arms' (very wizardly) to lock the camera out there in space, one to hold the camera, and the other supporting the first arm a bit, really just a double-up for protection. This is why camera insurance is hard to find in these parts. After carefully checking that the camera was indeed going to stay put, I took a few test rides out in the street. Because my hands were now in the shot, I had the wife firing the wireless trigger from the sidelines. Again, I tried for the motion blur effect caused by a slow shutter speed.

This is the whole point in rigging the camera like this for a still shot: to show movement in a way that wouldn't be possible otherwise. If I had used a motion-stopping fast shutter speed, it may not look like I'm actually riding, and indeed would be a shot someone could get by shooting from that position in front of a stationary bike and rider.

On the other hand, if I could somehow be in that position under the handlebars, shooting a moving bike rider, I'd have to be moving in sync with them to get the frozen biker/blurred background movement effect. The key to the rig is that the camera is still (motionless) relative to the bike and rider. Paging Dr. Einstien...

Here's how that translates in full sun, in a turn.

Worked pretty well, and in fact I like that shot better than the headliner for this post. But I had to try the strobist approach as well, so I waited till dusk (so the strobe would actually do all the lighting on me and the bike) and rigged up the deck on Wifey's Xtracycle (yes she has one too) with a Canon 580exII.  Gelled it with a full cut of CTO for the tungsten white balance blue sky effect (see yesterday's post), and had her ride in front of me, while I tried to keep a consistent distance from her. If I went too slow or fast, the flash missed me, and the bike and face went dark. Wifey again used the wireless Pocket Wizard to trigger the camera, which had a PW in the hotshoe to trigger the flash back on her bike. Say what now? If you know Pocket Wizards, it breaks down like this, if you don't, skip this next dork out session: PW in her hand (set to channel 1) triggers PW near camera, wired with a motor drive cord, then a PW in the hotshoe mount (set to channel 2) triggers the flash back on her bike (channel 2 as well).

After all this, it was getting dark, and we needed to run the dog around the block, which we often do on the bike (she's fast). I switched out the flash to my own bike and removed the camera from the rigging and rode alongside my girls, handholding the camera with a looooong shutter speed and the flash to freeze some of the action. Pretty hit or miss, but I got one frame I like.

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114/365: W Welcomes You.

Spring is here, if a bit on the chilly side for damn-near May. Not too chilly for most of the flowers to reemerge though, and they are coming along nicely. I noticed the entrance to our vegetable garden looked especially inviting, welcoming, this year, with the sage blooming in the whiskey barrel, the two clematises really going great guns, and or course the xmas lights that we leave up all year...

This was taken after dusk, on a tripod, with a long exposure, I think 13-20 sec for this one. As the shutter was open, I walked around the scene and manually popped flashes with a 580ex2, gelled with a full cut CTO to balance with the tungsten white balance in camera (this makes the sky go uber-blue, see the technique here). You can see one flare from said flash on the left edge of frame.

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Rusty Gate Farm from Leon Godwin on Vimeo.

113/365: V is Video.

Not too long ago, my friends and I enjoyed a wonderful weekend at Rusty Gate Farm, owned and operated by the Hall Family, with major support from some Littles...Rusty Gate sits on the Tar River up in Granville County, NC, beautiful country that rolls and bucks rocks up from the earth. We capered and sang, shoveled shit and moved mulch, planted onions and erected Egg Mobiles, plugged mushroom logs with shitake spores and wax, fired shotguns and sank cars in the mud. I set up an umbrella and got portraits by a barn. I also set up a second camera to shoot timelapses while we worked. This video shows just about every frame I shot over the weekend, including the throwaways and setup frames in the timelapses. Krista and Ryan grabbed the camera for some of the frames, and someone else (maybe Weston?) shot 3 or so frames near the end. I loosely edited it all together for our enjoyment, but hopefully, you enjoy it too.

112/365: U is Ugly. Ugly as hell.

I pulled this radish from my garden in late spring last year...It was a bit late for radishes at that point, this one had absorbed too much water and had basically blown itself out. I hung it from some string and shot it in front of a black background with a small softbox on the left, and a silver reflector close up on the right. Merged 3 images in photoshop for this composite. I had titled it 'Ugly Radish' when I shot it, now I can publish it under the same name.

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111/365: T is To Tear.

I went through a number of words for T today, even got a shot of my dad Tim this morning in case I couldn't come up with anything else. Around 5 pm, I was pretty committed to 'Tacky' but then I had a thought, and I tried it. I think it worked out pretty good, fairly close to what I envisioned.

I stopped in a field near my house and grabbed the shot of me walking through it, arm out. At home, I created the tear in a sheet of paper, and photographed it over some black fabric to help composite out the negative area of the tear. The rest of the process was a lot of trial and error in Photoshop, painting out the right areas, adding shadows, and then adding the text and warping it to appear as if on the page. Click on the picture itself to see it much larger and up close, and let me know how you think I did.

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110/365: Stone is S.

As in, Stone Mountain, NC. Multi-shot panoramic stitched in PS. Had a great weekend hiking here.

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109/365: R is Random.

This scene presented itself whilst walking the woods in Wilmington. Uh...

108/365: Q is Quiet (Night).

Not so long ago I took a late drive back to the town I grew up in for a sad event. On the way back the fog was rolling in, and I stopped to try to capture it. Out in the country it was ever so quiet...just me and my thoughts. -llg

107/365: Portraits for P.

Shot at the 13th Full Frame Documentary Film Festival in Durham last weekend...This was my first year attending, despite calling myself a documentary filmmaker living in this area, but it won't be the last. I didn't get to see many films, but the ones I did see were great. Spent most of my time up in the press room, where the festival staff let me set up my grey paper backdrop and a big honkin' softbox. Every filmmaker or festival volunteer that came through, or that I met out in the plaza, I asked them if they'd step in front of MY lens for a few seconds. No one refused, so I got a pretty good number of shots, and next year I think I have some strategies for getting even more. Everyone was really nice, friendly, even being put on the spot for a portrait. Some were more comfortable than others, but I think I managed a decent shot of everyone, and it was a great exercise in my quest to learn how to make portraits of people that both reflect their personalities AND my own vision. Here's a smattering:

106/365: O is Old-School.

Well, I've been having troubles with the old 365 blog lately...They are good problems in a way, mainly being so busy with other photo and video work that by the time the day is over, I'm too tired of shooting or being on the computer to conjure a new photo for this. The other half of that problem is the current theme, the alphabet, and my desire to make the images conceptual, rather than literal. As in, A was Authority and not Apple. I know I threw all that out with 'K is Keith' but still the desire persists. But I'm finding that creating a new conceptual image everyday, based on that day's given letter, to be a real challenge.

Not to mention, it's April, and from what I hear, historically, a lot of 365 projects have fizzled out in their fourth month. Must be like thru-hiking the Appalachian Trail, when you get to Virginia after a month of hiking, about a quarter of the way to Maine. Many would-be thru-hikers get taken down by the 'Virginia Blues,' a combination of homesickness, boredom with the hiking, the realization that you've only just begun, and who knows what other mental traps you can mold inside your head as you walk down the Long Green Tunnel all day, everyday. The old blog is nowhere near as difficult or time-consuming, but there's a love/hate thing going on fo' sho'. And I have definitely wondered how in the world I'll be able to do this till 2011 and keep it interesting, for me, for you.

Well, I plan on pushing thru, not too worry, but I may do something a little different, like post 4 days worth of photos in one post, all using the same setup! Allow me to demonstrate.

 105/365: N is Neutrality.

Hee hee. I found this hat in the Lost and Found box at a theater I used to work in, circa 1999. Not to get too detailed, but my girlfriend and I had ducked into an unused stairwell to, ahem, pass the time, and there was the Lost and Found box, with this sweet Swiss flag hat on top. Perhaps it was wrong to take it, but some of my friends may argue it was this hat's destiny for me to find it, considering it's been around the world with me and is on my head right now.

As you can see, these four days of pics are all shot on a white seamless. We have some product shots to shoot for a client, and I had to leave the 'studio' up in my living room for a few days. A white seamless is basically a sheet of white paper, the professional versions are usually 9 ft wide or half that. About 12 yards of it is rolled up on a glorified toilet paper tube. To create the 'endless white room' effect, you drape the paper such that it curves gently from vertical to horizontal, eliminating any seam or horizon line. This can be done on a large or small scale, and for small stuff, it's really easy to do at home with white poster board from a craft or art store. The main consideration is that you want to light the paper as evenly as possible to create a uniform white. In these shots, I used a very large shoot-thru umbrella directly overhead to light the subject and the paper evenly. If you look closely, you can see that I haven't actually accomplished that: the paper is hotter near the umbrella. This can be seen in the next shot, which I didn't edit in post as well as I could have.

104/365: M is Music Makers.

You can see the white is off in the lower right here. This can be fixed afterwards in Photoshop or Aperture or your choice of program, but it's better to nail it as close as possible in camera. This is my harmonica collection, though 'collection' isn't right word, since many of them will be blown out within the year. Most of the harps here are 'working' harps, as in, I play them when I gig, but the Echo Harp up front, and the most awesome Trumpet Call, live at home, the latter in a badass wooden case. Thanks Mom for that one, it's the sweetest harmonica with trumpets sticking out of its ass I've ever seen.

103/365: Lee is L.

And finally, I didn't want to set up the 9' seamless to shoot a full length portrait of a person, so I opted for someone smaller. Some kid gave me this in Carolina Beach last year. Looking at him this close, I'm not sure it isn't Grant.

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102/365: K is Keith.

Too Literal? Mayhap. H thru K have been nothing but mandatory catchup archival shots. Very low on the conceptual scale, but shooting four days straight at a film festival left my brain without any concepts left...

The Full Frame Documentary Film Festival was a fun time, met some really cool folks, talked shop, films, and Morgan Spurlock mustaches. I was there to take photos of the festival as part of the volunteer photog team, but I finagled my way into setting up a portrait station in the press lounge, and got some 25 filmmakers as well as a host of volunteers and staff in front of my lens and lights. I'll be posting a gallery of those soon, but for now, I've had to catchup on all my missed 365 days. The last few shots have consequently been archival, but here we are, and I have a whole day to do 'L'...now, do I take the easy way out?

Keith is seen here in Old Snowmass, Colorado. Lit him with one speedlight in a shoot-thru umbrella. The color comes from three things: I'm shooting after sunset. The clouds already have quite a blue tint going. I set the White Balance on the camera to 'Tungsten', which shifts the color even cooler, bluer, to let artifical tungsten lights seem more neutral, and daylight seem uber-blue. Then I gel the flash with a full cut of CTO (Color Temperture Orange) which makes the light it produces go the color of a tungsten blub, that is, very warm, and therefore, balanced with my Tungsten White Balance setting. Keith appears a natural color, but he lives in a blue world.

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