3 Strobist Shots of Balboa Park

[dkbarto]

All shot using strobes for fill as needed to make the lighting come out right.

Please C&C as needed to make me feel bad about my technique, ability, and general worthiness as a human being. :-P

Thanks.

Aboretum Night



Reflecting Pool



Timken Museum Poster

[GoTakuF1]

Re: 3 Strobist Shots of Balboa Park

Great job on all three! All are unique and great in their own right. My favorite is Reflecting Pool, great mix of ambient and flash, great exposure!

[BeyondTheImage]

Re: 3 Strobist Shots of Balboa Park

First one my favorite and the only one I have any feedback on....crop out the blue sign/tag.

[Marshall Starks]

Re: 3 Strobist Shots of Balboa Park

Thanks for the invite!

[inSANe DIEGO]

Re: 3 Strobist Shots of Balboa Park

You need to get some gels! Also, try using a long shutter, dress in black, and run around popping the flash on choice items. Hmmm, that would entail using a shutter time of longer than two seconds. Wouldn't it? hint hint...

[Nick Ruiz]

Re: 3 Strobist Shots of Balboa Park

DK, great shots on them all, Its nice to see the park from a different perspective cause they're never really the same.

As for commenting on your general worthiness as a human being check out drphil.com Im sure he has a ton to say :-)

[Jessy]

Re: 3 Strobist Shots of Balboa Park

#1 is the winner for me -the sign. The other two just don't hit me. And you are a great guy.

[dkbarto]

Re: 3 Strobist Shots of Balboa Park

Wow, thanks for the feedback!

Minimum exposure time was between 15 and 30 seconds. So I could have put on black and run around with a strobe in each hand. I went for f/10 and up to ensure good DOF for all photos, and ISO 100 to reduce grain.

As for invites - I'll post up next month when I go. I try to be at the park the 2nd Wednesday of each month, from about 7 to 9 as the wife has a garden club meeting at that time.

About those gels -- What should I be looking for?

[aspire]

Re: 3 Strobist Shots of Balboa Park

very nice pictures david. i like reflecting pool best.

[inSANe DIEGO]

Re: 3 Strobist Shots of Balboa Park

Gels- Visit MSI on Activity Road. They have a ton of sample packs. I prefer the Lee samples.

[aspire]

Re: 3 Strobist Shots of Balboa Park

whats MSI? do you have the address?

[dkbarto]

Re: 3 Strobist Shots of Balboa Park

I like Reflecting Pool the most. Best subject, best clear focus on the main subject/secondaries. Wish the ambient exposure was a stop or two brighter for better detail. Killing a bit of light on the plants in the water might help keep focus on the building.

The problem with night photography is that a stop or two brighter will either kill the lights (way too bright) or induce more noise than is acceptable to me. Remember that I'm working on the strobe process and this was to add a little light for the plants up front to ensure that they were not just completely black in the photo. In my test shot for this the plants are not seen at all or only a little in silhouette so I added some light to bring them into the photo.

Perhaps I should have added more light further down the pool rather than right up front, however I didn't have enough remote triggers (more on order now) to do that.

I'll be back next month to work on these again, and will be posting up an invite a couple of days ahead when I know that I'm going for certain.

[dkbarto]

Re: 3 Strobist Shots of Balboa Park

I have done HDR for these types of shots and HDR at night is hard for 2 reasons
1 - if there is any breeze the shots do not line up well.
2 - the difference between the darkest shot and the brightest shot usually confuses the heck out of any HDR processing software. You usually wind up shooting for too bright situations and spending a lot of time fixing it later.

I'll be back (again and again) to try something else next month.