Paint it Black

As far as set up goes, there's hardly anything that's simpler than a Black on Black set.  With a simple stand to hold the black velvet background, an overhead medium sized soft box, another stand to hold the pole or dowel that will have the simple black object attached to it and some white fill cards here and there (as well as the object to be photographed) it's pretty much all there is to it.

The tricky part is lighting it well enough to show three good sides and 'depth' in the object being photographed, as well as keeping the lighting from blowing out behind the object and ruining the black that's back there...

So though the rigging is simple, the execution is very tough.  Add a factor of interest, and you've got the beginnings of a recipe for disaster or utter failure at the very most.  An awesome shot at the very least...  Or something "meh" in between.

After some playing around with the concept of not wanting to shoot the mundane, I did a little creative blackening of the object below and attempted to do it some macabre justice.  I hope I succeeded...

©Carlos Paradinha Photography
Black on Black

I Just Want To Be In Your Panorama

The third quarter of school started with a flurry of assignments.  From Digital Illustration II, to Advanced Lighting, I had more image capturing assignments than ever before.  Somehow I got them all done, and even had some sunny moments to work with!  I was really surprised.

One of the assignments we got was the interesting task of creating a panorama from multiple images taken in sequence of something that would be considered "not your typical panorama."  A few of my classmates had some creative images, but the instructor thought them either boring, or not interesting enough.

I tried to get something less cliché than the usual panorama of a cityscape or a beach or a forest... So the following few images are panoramas I've created for class.  I'm only turning one of them in, and I've yet to make that decision.

"Black Balloon"

©Carlos Paradinha Photography.
Eight images put together to form the whole.  Clear Creek Nursery, Silverdale, WA.

"Playing In Traffic"

©Carlos Paradinha Photography.
Twelve images put together to form the whole.  Sodo, Seattle, WA.

"Battling The Troll"

©Carlos Paradinha Photography.
Nine images put together to form the whole.  Fremont Troll, Fremont, Seattle, WA.

New Digs

After a stint in Bremerton, we're now back in Seattle.  Why?

Because.

It was a matter of logistics and the availability of non-aquatic roads for both work and school.  The new place is temporary, for now, and so it would pan out, but a couple of years is still a couple of years and time has this really crazy tendency of going faster than it's expected.

There may be a change in career options in the not-too distant future.  This would throw a proverbial wrench in the current works as the new work thing wouldn't be so much in the way of photographic stints - nor would it be conducive to schooling.  But all of this is a feather blowing in the wind at the moment, and may all be for naught.

If that's the case, I'll be posting works for not only the upcoming quarter, but the quarter after that and the one after that for a few quarters after that.

So the new place will be able to 'host' gallery showings in the future - once we've set things up...  here are a couple of images of the way it looked before we moved in.  I'll look better once we have art on the walls and stuff...

The "gallery"

Center hallway area - the fireplace is
non-functional... sadly

Titus is the master of all he surveys