I think Donald is on the right track here. Try turning off the autofocus.

Nice shot, Donald :)

Larry, thanks, i bought 1- 1 million and 1-two million spotlight by garrity corp. they say they are good for 25 minutes, but that always seems optomistic. so far i have been able to shoot whatever i want in one evening shoot using the two units. they say not to use them constantly on, but i use them in bursts from 20 seconds to a minute or so at a clip. it really is dependant on your subject distance, how much juice you will need. the barns were at roughly 60-90 feet away,and i usually shoot around f11. i would get two- 2 millions if i did it again. they are not twice as bright,but somewhat brighter.

When i first got them,i tried to make all kinds of diffusion to make the beam wider/softer, and i accomplished it,but it either was nice soft light, for closer stuff, or it knocked the thing back too far. they are actually perfect for when you get outside and do buildings or whatever. i usually hit my subject and move fairly quickly all over it,to give a softer ovrall effect,because if you pause in one region too long it has more of a spotlit effect, which can be cool also. If you want to use them for interiors, i found using a can of rustoleum- frosted glass spray paint on plexiglass, gave me a good balance of power and softer light.

Here is a link to their site. i have the S700,and S900G. I paid 28.95 for the 2mill,and 19.95 for the 1mill. I think with a little practice you could actually light interiors with these. i bought a two headed leash clip,so i can hook them to my pants beltloop to walk hands free.

http://www.garritylites.com/page79.html

Donald if you want a powerful diffused light a white surface such as an illustration board ora shiny surface such as a foil board facing the subject at an angle toward the light source which would be facing away from the subject would give you a fairly well diffused light.

Or you can use your flash units in the same way and do multiple pops with multiple exposures and you can achieve even more control as you can vary the output of the flash or portable strobe. O f course if you had several strobes and or flash units you can achieve even greater control.

And if you had access to the property they could be placed at varying positions within in the frame of reference.

I just photographed the New Museum here in New York and wanted t iluminate the Bowery Street sign on the lamppost in the foreground and use a simply hand held flash to do so for both daylight and dusk shots.. It worked treat!

But I am pleased that you are making progress in developing your techniques in this area.
Now to get you to photograph more substantial compositions rahter than matter of fact.

My current work really shows what I mean but I cannot post until after publication but I can send you an example.

wzphoto (at) verizon (dot) com

Sorry (dot) net! <br /> <br />Here is an older example truly focuses on the subject and context. <br /> <br /> <a href="http://www.pixentral.com/show.php?picture=12qCOVj4bjRsU8fDU1Mhy CWLIpff0" /></a> <img alt="Picture hosted by Pixentral" src="http://www.pixentral.com/hosted/12qCOVj4bjRsU8fDU1MhyCWLIpff0_th umb.jpg" border="0" />

I really don't understand what you are trying to say, Wade. It seems you are criticizing a possible critique and anticipating the result.

Don't let Wade or anyone else get into your head about such things, particularly without supporting comments. I get only vague generalities about his POV.

If I were standing at exactly that place in your shot,Donald, I would carefully decrease the focal length and supply a bit more breathing room to that shot. But as you indicate, there may not be that extra space.

Another trick (but more difficult here, due to the hand held lights) is to carefully move back and forth along the shooting axis and change the F/L to keep the basic composition.

But I think you already have a fine eye, one that has grown in your work and will continue to grow.

Happy New Year.

Good for you, Donald.

If it is to be dismantled, I would strongly urge you to widen out and deal with the environment on which it presently resides, and back off a bit on the primo shot. Really document it, warts and all!

I would love to hear some explanation of how he thinks i could do better. at that location,you have a small pond which reflects the image, and if you back up to include the whole pond,you end up going downhill till you have no reflection,which is the main shot with this place. i can understand the concept of placing the subject in its surroundings,but i think the structures are quite interesting and detailed and choose to focus my efforts on capturing them. if i go wider,i get a set of trailers, a highway,a warehouse etc. i know if i get snow,there are a few angles that will be wider,yet cleaner,but i just dont feel like making grass in winter take up half my shot as is the current look.

I am open to any different ideas that are offered, and we all see things differently.of the two shots wade posted,i really like the cityscape alot, but the interior does nothing for me. i am not crazy about the wall on the left,and the room just does not have an inviting feel to it for me. it reminds me the owners were just getting their furniture out for the season,and were not finished yet. i think it needs a foreground element,and as i look at it,i wonder why the chair would be so far from the fireplace,and be on the corner like that?but there again,thats my impression only.

I can see were you are coming from, but for me photography is an expression of how i feel about a place. i never said i was recording the place as a exact record,but i merely want to try to give the place the dignity that it deserves. the original builders obviously had not only building skills,but artistic skills to lay it out the way they did. Reality is meaningless to me, and i offer images as i want them to end up. You see it a hollywoodizing something and i see it as removing all the crap that man has ruined it with. maybe you enjoy the esthetics of telephone poles,wires and truck trailers, but they are just things that i feel detract from this lovely structure. I do have a streak of perfectionism in my personality, and its extremely hard to go against your own inclinations, for me anyway, so i guess we just approach things differently, and thats a good thing i guess.

>How do you account for differences in photographic materials? Which is the best? Why? How about 3D? Motion? 360 degree coverage?

Al of these offer a different ability to express a subject and has time has proven that they have not replaced one another except for 360 i=which is not a part of the category.

3D has technology development in front of it and motion does not offer the viewer a way of studying the the subject in the same way as still photography does but does offer a very good alternative. It also might need some more development which it is getting.

Documentation is not the focus here but Donald's response is a very good one and shows that he does understands. In case you are interested Lawrence that is a far cry from the response i might have gotten a or two ago.

As I was really encouraging Donald to go further because i think that will open up the possibilities for him and Ken is is interested in discussing the issue as well.

Donald you are correct there is nothing about your desire to express things in a certain way, that's what makes you what you are but the inhibition to develop it further is something you might like to think about of course I speak from my own point of view.

I think the fact that you showed here a lot os smarts in the way you lit the subject and took control of it to be also a big step forward and not allow yourself to be tied to a technique you were using to control what you do.

>So Ken, does the camera work ok now?

Lawrence you remind me of a incident in my drawing class and the teacher was Charles Cajori and after a year of interacting with a few of the students who had a hard time relating to what he had to tell them he was engaged in a conversation about a drawing with perhaps the student who had the most difficult time understanding and I heard the response from the this student something like this"yes I see what you mean, I see how the negative space between the shapes have an impact on the composition and relative spatial qualities and that every time one adds to the composition this these shapes and lines have a relative effect on the rest of the composition and this now makes the spatial relationship different as well and then perhaps one has to now look at the negative space and rethink how the shapes are relating to each other. And Cajori say that's cool you really do understand now! And the student responds and says so you think I should move the vase over an 1/8 of an inch?

And Cajori throws his hands up in the air in defat!

And he looks at me and says its the last class of the year. And smiles.

Some people never get it.

But Donald does get it. It is not something Donald has to do anything with unless he decides this is something it has meaning to him at the time.

But it is good that he sees the possibilities, remember Lawrence at one time selling his images was a bit foreign to him as well even though he wanted to do so!

And I think Ken will benefit from discussing compositional approaches as well. I know I always do I love the technique of using those lights I think that was either your idea or Ramón's. I usually use a flash but I will consider the lights Donald is using.

I think Linda would find them interesting as well.

I understand using spotlights might be a bit out there for people who light things for a living, but i find them great for places were electric is not available,plus my light source is not even in the photo. when i think of trying to use portable flash to do this, there is no match to the spots power, unless the flash is up close to the subject. getting f11 at 60 ft with a portable flash is impossible,plus the spill onto everything else would be hard to stop.

>I understand using spotlights might be a bit out there for people who light things for a living, but i find them great for places were electric is not available,plus my light source is not even in the photo. when i think of trying to use portable flash to do this, there is no match to the spots power, unless the flash is up close to the subject. getting f11 at 60 ft with a portable flash is impossible,plus the spill onto everything else would be hard to stop.

I like Donald's idea.

Ken I am going to take offense to anything and everything anyone has written here regardless of its content and or intentwell not really!

Lawrence might be laughing now but just you waitI'll be Bach!

Which reminds me I want to buy an album, btw I have tickets to hear my favorite soprano
Angela Gheorghiu at the Met in La Boheme at the Met.

The last time I went to the Opera to hear the same soprano in La Traviata a beautiful young lady tried to pick me up but her father intervened mostly because she was four years old.
She tought I was handsome and wasn't at all afraid to tell me so.

The kid was a doll! I suspect she will be an opera star.

But one can learn from her you have to explore the possibilities in order to find out what works and what doesn't and just because it doesn't work now it might work at some other time and I think Donald will see that in the future if he finds he can take advantage of it.
Ken can as well I might add that ken has shown photographs of his previous pet if I am not mistaken and he like Hopper photographs pets very well.

I used to be a graphic and industrial designer as well. Study graphic design in high school mostly painting at Cooper Union with some design and film making never studied formally photography. Though I ran the darkroom as the a student teacher assistant. The dark room was run by the Film Instructor and he is now legendary, very nice guy named Harry Hurwitz. He also promoted the idea of the bigger picture.