Nick, that shot is amazing. It's so clean and has the black background... it took me back to the old B&W Oakley promotion photos. Only this is the 2008 version. But, instead of the whole image B&W, it's everything but the glasses themselves.

Thanks Russell! The Retina Burn frames are just unbelievable. As soon as I got them, I had to take them out cycling. I dressed in all black cycling kit, from head to toe. It was a cold day, so that meant black jersey, black arm warmers, black tights, black shoe covers, and black helmet. Then the Retina Burn. I was like this little streak of neon zipping along :-)

Here's a question for you photo-wizards:

Every time I take a picture of my glasses you can see the camera reflected in the lenses. How can I avoid this without resorting to weird angles or photoshop? Is there something I have to do with the lighting or what?

Thx

It's all about camera postitioning and angles. I use a lot of white paper when I lay a pair out for "documenting". I got this bit over here folded up over this bit over there...it's a lot of fun actually.

If it's not too much trouble, would the Dr. mind sharing his technique with us? Coz you know we wanna be we wanna be like Rick..

Next time I do a "shoot" I'll be sure to post pics of the operation. You'll all be in awe. (It's not that difficult actually) Just see where the reflection is originating and block it with a piece of white paper.

Playing around with a new look.
EDIT -- Played around a little more. I think this really nails the essence of G30:

Yes ! Nice pic of the G30, the blue is a little bit too deep, but very beautiful

Two things to share today. First is a little photoshopping of the picture I posted just above. I was playing around, and thought wouldn't it be cool if my G30 crosshairs actually had some blood red lenses? I do this kind of playing around a lot, but usually don't save or share it. This time, I thought I'd throw the image up here, just for fun.


Second, I wanted to demonstrate a quick shot setup for those of you who are interested. I recently got some slick new crosshairs:


Here is the setup shot:

Two flashes, one left, one right, firing into sheets of plain printer paper. The light as reflected in the glasses wasn't uniform, because of the relatively short flash-to-paper distance, combined with the relatively large flash-to-flash distance. But I liked the non-uniform reflections, so I didn't change anything. Diffusing the light further would have resulted in more uniform lens reflections.

Things are more interesting when they're not uniform I feel.

Thanks Nick for showing how to set up for a shot like that. I'm definitely going to try something similar. Unfortunately I don't have 2 flash lights so a simple spotlight will have to do.

Unfortunately I don't have 2 flash lights

Funny that you say "flash lights," because regular Home Depot flash lights or flood lights are a perfectly viable substitute for flashes if you don't have them. You might need to find room on the darker side so that the flood lights can overpower the ambient, but otherwise, everything would be the same. The only downside to using flood lights is that you can't adjust their intensity. But you can cheat the intensity somewhat by adjusting the F-stop on your camera.

What about more pieces of paper between the lights, or dark construction paper.

Yeah, you could cheat the light by adding more/darker paper, but that method has three disadvantages:

1) Setup time (much easier just to dial in a different f-stop)

2) Tougher to fine-tune (your camera can probably move in 1/3 stop increments, but adding additional paper, or darker paper could possibly introduce larger jumps)

3) Adding additional paper, or different paper, could change the *quality* of the light. This can be a good or bad thing, depending on what you want, but the fact is that you're now dealing with two variables (quality and quantity of light) instead of just one.

There's plenty to think about with regard to lighting, but ultimately, it's all about experimentation. Just get out there and shoot something!

here is a play on one of Nick's shots on Flikr...

Anyone Got The Time?

That's a really sweet shot. Cool trick!

Very nice, Josh! I like the O-Water ya got in there.

Nick,

Where did you get the yellow CH? was it from H_M or T_O, or what?

Probably was someone who bought it from them in the heyday, and ended up back on ebay.

Here's another shot with my latest lens reflection technique. This one was one of those Bob Ross "happy accidents." See if you can figure out how it was done:



EDIT:
This is just a standard Ice Iridium lens, straight out of the camera with no color or contrast adjustments.

Nick you and Bob Ross rock, man he was a hip dude back in the day...the polyester king w/the paint brush!

OLuvr, you can compare me to the Bob man any day :-) "Juuuuuust like that, niiiiiiiice and easy. Maybe over here there's a happy little tree. It's up to you."

I loved watching that dude paint his excrutiatingly cheesy pictures. "and a happy little bush lives right over here"...memories!

I want some of whatever he was on...he was one happy dude...what year yall think that show was on? Ricks hair looks like Bobs come to think of it...lol

According to Wiki: The Joy of Painting ran from 1983 to 1995. Always a highlight of the day when you stayed home sick from school.

In many episodes of Joy of Painting, Ross noted that one of his favorite parts of painting was cleaning the brush, specifically the act of drying off a brush, which he had dipped in cleaner, by rapping it against the easel frame. He would often smile and even laugh out loud regularly during this practice as he, in his words, "Beat the devil out of it".

He rocked.