Smithsonian NASM – Apollo

The Smithsonian National Air & Space Museum on the Mall in DC is one of my top 10 favorite places in the world.  I just love it. So much of the stuff I nerd out about all in one place.  Plus you can touch a piece of the moon, seriously.  Anyway, here are a few shots from my walk through the Apollo exhibit the other day.

Sunset

One thing I can surely say is that my apartment often has a great view of the sunset.

Everett and Ralph on Provia

During two of my One Shot sessions last week I also took a frame of Fuji Provia slide film. I don’t shoot regular film in the 4×5 very much because it involves going into Chelsea to get processed and then picked up and the scanned, etc. But I wanted to remind myself of the quality.  The answer is that the quality is stunning, if your technique is perfect. Also below is a little phone snapshot of a 13×19″ print of Everett (Looks dark in the picture, but it’s just because my desk is not well lit). And I can tell you that the results look pretty amazing. That much better than if I had taken the shot with my 5D3?  I’m not sure. Maybe I’ll do a little test at some point.

Ralph from the iPhone

My Canon is in the shop, so when Ralph came over today to take a couple pictures with the 4×5, I decided to see what I could do with just my old iPhone 4 as well. Here’s what I got.

Early Morning Street Photography

Noah Scalin

I took some new author/fancyguy portraits for artist Noah Scalin at a store called Evolution earlier this week. Noah’s the guy behind the Skull-A-Day project from a couple years ago. That’s an interesting place.

Also, I lit this shot with a $150 used Nikon SB80 speedlight in a $40 Adorama 16″ softbox.  You don’t need a lot of kit.

Andy Ihnatko

Earlier this week I got the great honor of spending some time with and making some portraits of the great tech writer Andy Ihnatko.

Definitely near the top of the list of nicest subjects ever.

Kristy Leibowitz

Quick portrait of photographer Kristy Leibowitz last week at the Corner Bistro. Yum, burgers.

Brian Brushwood

So I’m in Austin Texas last week with nothing to do. Honestly, the only option was to call up magician, Scam School principal, and TWiT podcast host Brian Brushwood to see if he was up for  playing with fire. It’s ok everyone, Brian literally wrote the book on fire eating.

Super simple setup. Two bare Nikon SB80 strobes in manual for the side lights. One on a stand (I only brought one) and the other sitting atop the standing lamp that was in the room (Improvise!).  One other Canon 580 Speedlight with a tiny Westcott 5×8″ softbox on it handheld by me above and slightly in front of the camera. Simple.

A dinner setup from some very nice room service people and we were all set. Below is a setup shot so you can see my beautiful light placement.

Parking Lot