Goya Blog – Page 75 – The life and times of a true knucklehead

Grandma Maeda

While she passed away back in November we finally put Grandma Maeda to rest. She made it to 102, which is incredible these days. Sadly it was probably the last time we will all get together.

I did not feel right taking photos at the funeral, as it just feels too morbid. Afterwards we put Grandma next to Grandpa in a very informal ceremony.

Afterwards we converged at Christy’s place for food & drinks.

I did my best to shoot portraits of everyone but my G1X2 doesn’t have a viewfinder and the glare on the LCD was really strong. That coupled with the usually flawless ETTL flash system was not giving consistent results. Nothing is ever easy. That is Diamond Head in the background BTW.

Splash Fotoz

Sandy wuz away for the weekend so I decided to give myself an assignment. Splash photography has always looked cool to me, but I’ve never tried it. I’ve recently bought a triggertrap remote so in theory it should be really easy… Ok it wouldn’t show video on my camera, doh! Gotta do it the old fashioned way. That meant synchronizing the drop & the manual shutter release. This was not as easy as it sounds. After what seemed like hundreds of attempts this is what I got (the last one is a composite). Did I mention it made quite a mess.

If you are interested these were shot with a 7DII using a 180mm macro lens. Manual focus, 2 speedlites.

Teddy Weddy

Last Saturday we had the honor of witnessing the wedding of Teddy & Christine. The ceremony was held at the Chapel of Our Lady in the Presdio. I figured this would be a good test for A6000.

Koa Portraits

During a Koa dogsitting adventure I decided to test my 2 new cameras. The photo on the left is from the Canon G7X and the photo on the right is from the Sony A6000.

Camera Nubbies

I been away in Miami for 3 weeks. It was quite difficult being away for that length of time.

I did have some new stuff waiting for me though…

Portraits at the Kinney’s

We were invited to a Birthday/house warming party at Trish & Chris’s, so I thought I would bring along my G7X and a continuous lighting set up. Here’s what I got…

Post Halloween Shoot 2014

Schedules did not permit us to see Noah this Halloween. I heard he was going to be a Fireman, so I made arrangements to meet at our local fire station for a short shoot and as usual they were very accommodating. Having shot Noah a few times I thought I knew what to expect, but as usual he’s full of surprises.

Livermore Wines

Paul & Brenda invited us to go wine tasting in Livermore. We have never been there so we jumped at the chance.

Murrietta’s Well was our first stop.

On to Wente. We had to get past Hank though (major dogmeat).

Lunch was at Uncle Yu’s.

And finally Tenuta Wines.

Oakland LDS 2014

Last time I was here was 2008. I brought a gigantic DSLR and tripod. This time I used a tiny G1X2 and a travel tripod.

I did try a HDR software that came with the Canon RAW package.

Light Stick

A couple of people have asked me about this so I thought I would do a quick posting. I love using strobes when shooting portraits and since alot of those are environmental shoots I have to be mobile. Therefore my traveling light rig is as follows: Shurline 4-9ft paint pole. Kacey paint pole adapter, Wescott Rapidbox and of course a Canon 600EX-RT.

Now I can mount any light modifier on top this pole that can extend to 9 ft. Most recently I experimented with a snoot. The results were hit & miss but I did like the effect.