Dustin Diaz Photography

293/365. Hero of Darkness — join the evening

I brought my camera to work this morning in hopes to catch some nice downtownish shots. It was too foggy. So I waited until after work and let what the D3 does best.

Regarding this shot, believe it or not, only took about 5 takes.

However the best part is that you're usually not allowed to do commercial photography in this area, yet I was able to get the security guard to take my setup shot!

Kay. Let's do this...

setup, camera, strobist info: see here

291/365. I will destroy you — and really, who's going to argue with that? ( << view large! )

There was a few things that made tonight feel right, and this photo was part of it. It's beginning to get dark out earlier, and I've had too long of a rest from the city (with a camera). Erin and I didn't travel far, but it we got the job done.

Alright now. let's do this lighting thing....

setup, camera, strobist info: see here

and for the sake of submitting this to strobist pool:
2 lights. one SB @ 1/16 camera left. one SB @ 1/128 camera right ;)

220/365. Skate or look stupid — or do both at the same time

It was only a month ago that I took a skater shot (even included a strobist video). This time I had to do one that was a little less serious. Slightly different setup to suit the framing, but all flashes still at full power to combat the severe brightness. Maybe one in a few years I'll actually invest in one of those "big flashes" I keep hearing about.

Regarding post-production: some minor color adjustments, tone mapping, and spot removal (there's a spot on my 14-24 that just won't go away no matter how many times I wipe it down).

setup, camera, strobist info: I recommend just watching the previously linked video.

187/365. To hell with responsibility — forget reality

Today's shot wasn't exactly fun. It involved climing up to Noe Valley, combating wind, saving falling softboxes, and jumping off a brick wall several times over.

By the time I got home, at the least, my beautiful wife had dinner ready :)

Anyhow, this particular shot was meant to have an old school film + HDR look. It is of course, best viewed large, and looks.... not so great at this 500px size.

I continued on with the video series for the info, although, it's a bit lacking in detail because I couldn't find a proper place to mount the lightstand without it falling over, so I stuck it in some bushes. If anything, it's worth checking out for a good laugh at how lame things were put together.

One final thing to note, this was an HDR taken with a single raw file by simply duplicating the file with different exposures (for anyone that wondered how to get action HDR shots with one image).

setup, camera, strobist info: see here

{edit note}: this is very different from my usual work. by no means am i an HDR expert, or even an enthusiast. But this is what 365's are for. I am bound to churn out some weird crap in hopes to learn a few things along the way.

186/365. Skate or Die — become a skater

Today was quite a bit different than usual. I managed to mount 3 x SB-900's to a single umbrella shaft. It worked. Since it's the weekend, I had a bit of time on my hands to go out during the day, however, the problem is that you need a lot of power to combat... the day.

On a separate note, this photo is straight out of the camera....

Yeah...

Wha? You don't believe me?

Haha, ok, so it's slightly photoshopped ;) However, I've been inspired to do this for a long time but never had the time to put this much effort into post-production.

Furthermore, on the flashes themselves, they went into thermal shutdown because I was blasting them at full power... several.times.in.a.row.

K. if you liked this shot, it's definitely worth checking out the strobist info video taken with my new iPhone 3Gs

setup, camera, strobist info: see the video