Let me say up front that I know the photos on this post are ridiculous. I think the type is ridiculous even when done seriously (e.g. in a "fashion" catalog), but all the more so when done by someone my age. I'm just trying to learn to cut loose a little while also learning about off-camera flash; I'd appreciate if your laughs are with me instead of at me.

この記事はとんでもない写真ばかりですが、友に笑ってくれば嬉しい。この記事のテーマは撮影スタジオのスピードライト(光のストロボ)の試しレポートです。撮影者も撮影対象は私です。「撮影者」の方は本気で、「撮影対象」の方は冗談ポクで遊びです。

As I noted last month in "Trying a Little Formal Portraiture" and a couple of weeks ago in "Impromptu Portraiture Practice", I'm interested in improving my ability to take portraits. [...]

As I mentioned the other day, I'm interested in upping my people-photography skills, and after watching some Peter Hurley videos I realize that the barrier I face is not technical skill with the camera, but people skills with people.

Knowing what to do is quite different than actually being able to do it, but that's where practice comes in.

So I was out with some friends at a roof-top beer garden the other day and struck up a conversation with the guy at the next table, Bill, a private chef from Boston in town to learn Japanese cooking. We had [...]

I have some confidence behind the camera, but none in front of it, and that's pretty hypocritical of me if I want others to be comfortable in front of my lens, so I've decided to do something about it.

In particular, the various videos by master headshot photographer Peter Hurley, such as this two-hour seminar (kindly sponsored by B&H Photo) have got me interested in doing more portraiture.

I'm pretty confident shooting things like flowers and mossy temples and pseudo-candid family stuff and the occasional passing planet or kick-ass lady archer, but real formalish portraits are a different, alien world. [...]

Last week I did what I suppose is my first purposeful portraiture photo shoot. I've done plenty of impromptu portraits (such as these or these), and I've found the use of the word "impromptu" frees me from the worry of having to be good: it's impromptu, so hey, if I come away with something nice that nice, but it's not expected.

This time was different, meeting with the express intent to capture some father/son photos. But the subject matter, a friend Tetsuo and his younger child, Issei (一星), made it difficult to get a bad picture. A general rule that [...]

You may have noticed that the images were a bit smaller in my previous post about Fumie's pointe shoes, compared to the sizes I normally use (such as in the post before that, full of, uncharacteristically, shots of me).

For years, I've followed a basic pattern on my blog for landscape-orientation photos -- those wider than tall -- giving them a basic width of 690 pixels, but yesterday's were a bit smaller at 600 pixels wide. For portrait-oriented images -- those taller than wide -- I have traditionally gone with 700 pixels tall, but yesterday limited it to 500 pixels [...]