Week 4

Blessed are the pure in heart
For they shall see God.
                       Matthew 5:8

I am less than a month into this project and already I find myself a week behind. There are so many things that compete for our time and attention that inevitably something gets left undone. I have taken hundreds of photographs in the last week unfortunately nothing of much use here. Middle school and high school basketball games mostly. Those photos can be seen at http://www.tricitiescaptured.com/.

I read an article recently by Bryan Peterson, one of my favorite photographers and Director of the Picture
Perfect School of Photography,  on how to make a photograph look like a ghost. Given the recent weather I thought maybe I could try this out myself since it can be done inside the studio. So I got my daughter Charli into the studio and gave it a try. Here are some of the results.

Nothing really of any commercial value but it was fun and the process could come in handy at some point. The idea is to take an extremely long exposure using nothing but available light, and have the subject change positions some time during the exposure.  We tried having Charli hold a candle but that didn't work so well.

Another project I have been working on is making my own backgrounds. The cost of a commercially produced background can run from $200 to nearly $1000. The process itself is fairly simple. Get some cotton muslin and some dye and have at it. The difficulty is in visualizing the final product and how to manipulate the ingredients to get the result you want. Here is my first crack at it.

I ended up with a very usable background and the cost was around $20. It only took about an hour's time. Now I need to spend some time working on studio lighting and posing techniques. I want to give Charli a big Thank You! for giving of her time to help me out with this. 

Stay tuned for the week 5 post which I hope to have up in the next day or so and get myself back on point and on schedule. Until then..........