Hi Josh

Great idea and a brilliant way to stretch oneself, however I think it will be very difficult to continue it religiously - rather you than me.

Nice take on the first photo also... shows a bit of creativity and imaginative thinking - well done. My only criticism is that there is perhaps too much dark space above and below the image.

Finally as far as displaying the images I would be inclined to stick to one or two threads for simplicity's sake, it will be easy enough to find as it will jump to the top of the forum each time you add something new. 365 threads could crowd the forums a bit. I have a better reason for keeping it as one long continuous thread and that's because people will be able to see your progress far more easily - especially if you actually post the photo, instead of, or as well as the link.

Yey! Day two already, hardly any days left ;-)

Had a friend arrive from Australia today, no small trip as I am in the UK. After a terrible day at work the creative juices weren't flowing so I thought I'd rope these two into a nice portrait to remember the day. I learnt an important lesson - don't try and get non-models to model for you, certainly not those whose natural reaction is to stand still and stare bnlankly at the lens as soon as a camera appears! Finally after a lot of trying I managed to get something with some life. And yes, it's in a car park.

Here's the shot:

a900 | 70-200mm SSM G | 180mm 1/60 sec @ f2.8 | Nikon sb-28 high right of frame approx 6-7 feet 28mm @ 1/32

and the setup:

A big thanks to Becca and Simon for staring at me for 5 minutes - you guys rocked! :-)

Enjoy - I am going to bed...

Josh

and hello to Becca and Simon... you guys did great.

Carl

only 363 left Josh

you got this

I thought if I was going to invite you into my world each day I had better introduce myself. What better way than a quick selfie?

Nice to meet you! You'll be seeing a bit more of me in the future...

Strobist info: a900 | Minolta 50mm f1.7 | 50mm 1/250 sec @ f8 | Sony HVL-f58am low camera right approx 5 feet aimed at waist through stofen difuser 24mm @ 1/16

As always, here's the setup, note the wall that juts out, this prevented light spilling onto the background, you might have to gobo the light if you haven't gat a setup like this in you house:

I haven't quite got the routine down yet so this took a while to get from camera to Post, more practice needed...feel free to try out this yourself, that's what sharing all the info is for!

Josh

'Are you looking at me?'

Back to natural light today, underexposed the shot in camera, manual mode, manual white balance etc. My friend was under a skylight and I knew if I underexposed the shot and brought up the exposure on just him later I could get good seperation from the background and make him stand out. The light looked to me like that from a softbox from overhead, beautifully soft and gorgeous colour bringing out the spanish skin tones.

I shot at ISO 200 and pushed the exposure on him by 2.8 stops using a local adjustment brush in Lightroom. I am amazed at how much the a900 sensor captures in RAW without showing it in the JPEG preview, the noise levels have stayed amazingly low. All alpha cameras have outstanding noise characteristics at low ISO - perhaps this is something you can try, maybe underexposing and then using a local adjustment later can get you the shot and keep noise low throughout the image, rather than bumping the ISO up and getting to much chroma/luminance that you don't want.

Here you go:

And the starting shot:

a900 | Minolta 50mm f1.7 | 50mm 1/40 sec @ f4 | WB 4950 (adjusted to 5529 in LR)

A pretty good recovery by LR and an impressive level of detail held by the a900.

Josh

Thought I'd given up? No no no - but I didn't have internet access until now, other than my mobile phone. No more excuses - here is the image:

a900 | 24-70mm CZ f2.8 | 26mm 1/200 Sec @ f2.8 | ISO 200

Taken on a walk nearby to my house - funny the things you run into!

No setup info to give, just one times camera and a bunch of metadata settings above, I guess there is no substitute to getting out with the camera and finding interesting things to shoot!

Josh

Thought I better put up day 6 too, seeing as by my time - that is yesterday! Got to keep to the rules and all. I had the pleasure of photographing a Summer Ball for one of the departments at work. It was my second paid outing as a photographer (the first came on day 4 when I did some portraits for some discerning customers so I can't share unfortunately) and it was a little nerve-racking as I was on my own and the event had about 150 people in attendance.

Well, here is one of my favourites of the night:

a900 | Sigma 28mm f1.7 | 28mm 1/60 sec @ f2 | ISO 1600

I have seen a lot of photographers use a flash in their left hand and camera in the right stalking the tables at weddings and events. I almost always see them using an TTL cable but I wanted to steer away from this as it's really annoying to have it attached all the time, getting tangled up and hard to put down quickly if needed. Instead I went for a mobile Strobist approach, setting up my camera with a radio trigger and triggering my flash (in my hand) using that, keeping me wire free. Thankfully, the lighting at the event was fairly stable and I simply set up my camera in manual mode to give me a baseline exposure about 1 stop below the ambient. Then I gelled a Nikon sb-28 with a 1/2 CTO gel and set it to 1/32 power and zoomed to 105mm. I then used the flash in my left hand as a very flexible, wire free, totally controlable light source.

Despite the ceiling being made of wood and at least 25 foot high the power of the flash was enough to give a beautiful soft light without having to use any light modifier. Could the light be softer? Yes. Would I have got the shot if I wasn't able to be as flexible and quick reacting as my setup allowed me? No - and that's what matters. The key to the technique was to hold the flash up as high as I could with my left arm, that way, all the light went upwards and came back bounced, bigger and softer - giving the result above. If I had left it the same height as my camera some harsh direct light from the flash would have hit the subject and ruined the image.

Please do add your comments or questions, hopefully some of these little bits of info may be of use to some people - some might like or hate the images - let me know your thoughts, I need the encouragement or feedback, be it positive or negative!

Thanks for viewing!

Josh

PS. See you in a few hours for Day 7

Lots of travelling again today, just time to upload this, technically this was shot in the early hours of today, but from the same party - shame I was up til 5am sorting and getting the images online for the clients!

Well, I love this image so it deserves to see the light of day:

a900 | Sigma 28mm f1.7 | 28mm 1/60 sec @ f2 | ISO 1600

Flash technique same as above. Back to normal updates tomorrow!

Josh

Early to rise, early to bed! :)

I think its great you have got this far, I know the pressure might be setting in now....but you can do it Josh. :)

Carl

...nevermind. I got sent away with work, just a short stretch this time but you don't get the chance to argue in my business so that put pay to the Project 365. Don't think I'll start again until I'm in other employment! :-(

It was fun to do and something I'll do again in the future.

Josh

To even attempt something like this is pretty brave. Good job doing it as long as you have. Perhaps I may try this at some point, or others will be encouraged by your efforts to do the same.

However, I think I do need to rib you a bit (afterall it wouldn't be any fun if I didn't)...my total pictures posted since you started, are higher than your count.

I'm just sayin (tongue in cheek, and a big grin).

Carl

Those club pics are cool, being new to Sony and having a lot of Nikon equipment, I did not know I could fire Nikon flashes with my Sony. Is there a forum dedicated to different strobe uses here?

hey, nice work so far. Its hard to stick to. I'm currently doing the same thing in a photoblog form. I started on my birthday, may 23rd and still going. I probably picked the worst time to do it though...my car died on me and I'm unemployed (lots of time, but no money to travel). So I've found I have to do a lot of shooting in the backyard and studio. You can check out mine through my website if you want. Keep it up.

Cale

Hi crazyleavell, we don't currently have a separate forum for flash photography talk, although it's a fairly popular area of photography on the site. We're constantly looking at ways of improving the site, and if enough people want one, we'll consider it.

Josh, congrats on getting as far as you did. The last two images you posted are real gems!

I second the flash forum. I think it would be well used considering a ton of people on here are either have flashes and use them, or they want to learn about them.

And great job with this Josh, I only got two days in when I tried it.

-Jesse

Then I might have somewhere to put the sorts of things in this post into - without having to do a project 365! And Carl I think you wiped the floor with me in these last few weeks in terms of contributions, but I have a valid excuse...I'll just have to start catching you up!

Josh