Dustin Diaz Photography

162/365. This place is a prison ~ Postal Service

A few things... (deep breath)...

I was featured in an interview for Strobist.com. Thank you David Hobby — I am infitnitly honored.

This shot was taken after one of those longer kindof work days. This photo mostly explains it.

Now to talk about a few geeky things (this is where normal folks stop reading).

I thought a lot about the similarities between new age web design (I'm not calling it web 2.0) and location photography. It nearly mirrors a quote Doug Bowman mentioned on Twitter — "the challenge of designing around user-customization is the new 'designing around dynamic content'".

In the world of location & strobist photography, our dynamic content is each and every location. But as time goes on, we shoot similar locations, and they can become somewhat predictable. However the customizations that happen on-spot, is wind. It's always hard to tell what weather is going to do — but we use precaution...

Here are some precautions I take.

1) setup lights first (attach gels, pocketwizards) "without" umbrellas, softboxes, octaboxes, etc.

2) Secure stands with weight

3) Setup camera, adjust exposure appropriately.

4) attach light modifiers (umbrellas etc) — then raise lightstands to appropriate height.

5) shoot quickly, then immediately tear down.

all this stuff said, setup junkys read on...

setup, camera, strobist info: see here

140/365. Girl phoned me the other day and said "Come on over, there's nobody home." I went over. Nobody was home ~ Rodney Dangerfield

So I have rented another Nikon D3, this time from Borrow Lenses. Damn are they so much cheaper! And they deliver for free :) This shot was taken up near Guererro in a nice little neighborhood of houses. I was fond of the "no wind" factor, and of course, this fence. I tricked out my radio remote by placing my iPhone in front of it.... making it look like a phone that can call the moon.

Other than that, I've been getting quite a few questions on "how do you do this every day?" — I thought about this, and the answer is simple.

If you're passionate about something enough, you will do it. Consider a cross-country runner (athlete) who trains daily. For anyone to be decently competitive, they must train at least two (or more) hours a day. Including warmup, an eight mile run, cooldown, stretching, and lifting weights.

These same principles apply to what I'm doing now, except I'm not running, I'm going out, setting up lights, taking a photo, tearing down, post-processing, documenting (via strobist info), and describing this right now.

Which brings us to the final point, you strobistas can read on...

setup, camera, and strobist info: see here

130/365. Photography... is a very serious business

After making a trip downtown knowing Erin bought new lipstick and glasses, and I bought a new hat and glasses... this idea bloomed shortly after.

This is in fact one of my first "photoshopped" photos of my 365 in the sense that it was two different exposures, and I combined them into one. Hence the EXIF info got blown.

Anyhow, there's not much else to the story except that I nailed Erin's shot on the first try. We took another just to be safe. Also note that this is the first time I've used the stubby not wide open at ƒ/2.0... which leaves me to the rest of the techy details for the true photo nerds. y'all can read on.

camera, setup, strobist info: see here