Yay #2

More chickens!

Mike loves chickens and has had chickens and roosters for as long as I’ve known him. Last year, he added a few more speckled hens to his flock and he was planning on doing the same this Spring. But this spring was crazy and it snowed in May and when we finally made it to the farm supply store, ready to buy,
all their chicks were gone!

I was at the farm supply store last week picking up some feed for Daisy, and as I was leaving, a sign by the door caught my eye: “Free chickens to good home,”
it said. I scribbled the accompanying phone number on my feed bag, called it when I got home, and was happy to learn the chickens were still in need of a good home. Ours! Mike was thrilled with my chicken sleuthing. We drove out the next night, and, with the former owner, plucked the hens and their rooster off their roost, tucked them gently into a few cardboard boxes, drove back to Mike’s house and introduced them to his coop.

They are so sweet and happy! There are seven white leghorn hens and one ridiculous rooster, each a year and a half old. The pecking order between the roosters was established the first morning and the hens began laying that very day ~ oblong proof that they feel comfortable in their new home and are not stressed by the move. They are free to roam and spend the day eating grass and bugs and goofing off en masse and then return to the coop at night. Happy chickens, happy us. Hurrah!

Yay #1

New typewriter ribbon!

My typewriters, from left to right:
Underwood Champion, late 1930’s, garage sale score
Royal Parade, 1960’s, thrift store score
L.C. Smith, early 1920’s or earlier
Mike brought this one home for me one day.
He found it in an old abandoned junk pile in out the hills.
He’s the best.

share what you see

string on a windowsill. nyc, 2000.

Since my attentions are required elsewhere for the next few days and posting will be minimal if at all, I thought I’d open space up for you to share your windowlight portraits! Would love to see what you see. And by portrait, I mean human, animal, vegetable, running shoe, whatever. Windowlight is beautiful light, even when just shooting string on a windowsill (oh, what a meditation that was…)

Leave a link to your photo(s) in the comment section if you are so inclined!

Photo Tutorial: Window Light

I have Farmily posts half-written and a self-imposed deadline of Monday for something completely unrelated, but, as all writers know, deadline = procrastination!! And so I thought I’d do a little tutorial on my grasshopper photograph, because truly, it is one of THE most rudimentary set-ups there could possibly be.

Total time between conjuring the thought “I’m going to take a grasshopper pic” (and seeing this final in my mind’s eye) and uploading the photo to my computer was about 90 seconds. No joke. And Photoshop was used only to resize the image for posting on the internet ~ the image has not been tweaked or adjusted.

Window light is gorgeous light; the shadows it creates have a very soft edge, and the light wraps around objects in a most beautiful manner. It also has an extremely high rate of fall-off. When your subject is close to the window, it is illuminated by the light coming in the window and the camera picks up on this light. But as you travel away from the window, the light becomes exponentially less powerful. It becomes dimmer. To such an extent, in such a short amount of space, that the camera can no longer ‘see’ it.

Here’s a diagram. If you can’t decipher it, that probably means you’re sane. I held the grasshopper by his hind legs with his face directed towards my kitchen window, which is a fairly small window. I determined the exposure for the grasshopper and knew that everything behind the grasshopper would be unexposed. Black. Thanks to fall-off.

We can see that window light illuminates things that lie further away from the window because our eyes can pick up on a vast range of light (exposures) at the same time. Film (or digital chip) is different ~ while it can record all manner of light, it can only record a certain range of exposure at one time. Therefore, at a certain distance away from the window, the light does not register to the camera at all when you are exposing for the subject closest to the window. While it depends on the intensity of the sun and the size of the window, this distance is generally measured in inches. Now, if I had used flash in the picture above (barf!yuck!) you would have seen various jars, stacks of papers, and a pineapple.

Regarding exposure in this situation: your camera settings might calculate this for you IF you use spot metering. Another trick is to hold your palm out, facing the camera, in the place you would like to meter (where your subject is). Make sure your hand fills your viewfinder and meter your hand (pressing halfway down on the shutter will accomplish this on most digital cameras). Note the exposure and set your camera as such using the Manual setting. And, digital cameras allow you to check your exposure after one shot and adjust accordingly, so play around.

As for equipment, I used a 100mm Macro lense for this shot on my Canon 30D body. I have three lenses: 28-70L zoom, 70-200L zoom, and 100Macro fixed. My camera body, a Canon 30D, is BOTTOM of the line ~ I believe it’s considered an amateur model and I know it’s not even being made anymore. But I’m not going to spend $5K on a camera body ~ an expensive camera does not guarantee anyone great photographs and great photographs can be made with a very basic camera. I DO believe in high quality lenses. (That’s why I only have three lenses, acquired over the course of many years!) The quality of glass does affect the end result ~ your photos will only be as good as your glass. So, my motto has always been cheap body, splurge on the lense.

Hope this helps and demystifies the process of this photo! It’s SO basic. Anyone can apply this technique ~ this light is particularly beautiful on faces.