Blueberry Muffins...

During my latest adventure, which included a layover in Palm Springs,  I had the opportunity to take a couple of hours and work on some food photography.  On the morning coffee run a nice little place called Koffi was recommended for my morning coffee fix.  On top of a really nice coffee (I just LOVE coffee) I picked up a sundry of pastries and other fine eats with the sole purpose of photographing them!

Okay, the plan kind of included eating them but everything look so wonderful that a brief delay so the items could model in front of the camera was required first!

The Salton Sea...

I made my way to The Salton Sea today.  I have been working on a web site for my buddy Mike Cassidy and a portion of his portfolio include some really incredible night photographs taken in the Salton Sea area.  He had mentioned a month or so ago that we should travel out there and it just so happened that this weekend we were able to make the trip happen.

It was a pretty long drive out there and it is truly out in the middle of nowhere.  Other than his images that I have seen before I didn't really know what to expect about the area.  It was really a very surreal environment with a lot of photographic appeal.  The textures and harsh environment are everywhere and it really was an amazing place.

We spent a couple of hours scouting and then prepped for some photographs once the sun started going down.  Mike said that the lighting wasn't the best he's seen it but I thought it was a really great experience and I am happy with the handful of images that I captured during the trip.  I utilized my Nikon D300 and the Nikon 12-24 F 4.0 AF-S DX for the shots captured here.  

Pasta, Avocado and Grape Tomatoes...

I did a food photography shoot today, the subject?  Pasta with fresh avocado, grape tomatoes lightly covered with extra virgin olive oil!  The red grape tomatoes made a wonderful contrast to the image and the avocado rounded things out very nicely!

The lighting setup was very simple with one Alien Bee AB800 on a c-stand with a Photoflex 22" Multi-Disk Circular Reflector on a light stand with a reflector arm for some fill.  I used a combination of lens starting with the Nikon 50 1.4 AF-D and finishing out with the legacy Nikon 105 2.8 AF-D Macro lens.

I've been having a lot of fun lately shooting various food and really trying to dial-in my lighting and equipment configuration to make the shots really pop!

Simple Viewer Pro

I have been working on my web site a lot, updating various aspects of the backend software and even implemented this blog.  One thing I just recently upgraded was the flash photo gallery.  I was using Airtight Interactive's Simple Viewer as the prototype for the web site.  I was looking for a good, fast and high quality viewer that provided the controls I was looking for and the look-and-feel that would fit well with my site.

So in that vein I have been searching for various gallery options for weeks now and the one I kept coming back to was Simple View.  So today I decided to bite the bullet I purchase the Pro version as my gallery of choice.    It is fairly straight forward to setup and the included gallery builder application was wonderful for fine tuning the look and feel.

If you are looking for a good flash gallery viewer then I would recommend you seriously consider Airtight Interactive's Simpler Viewer and their companion professional version!

Lighting equipment...

Recently I have been working with new lighting equipment and playing with some equipment that my buddy Mike Cassidy sent over my way.  So today the weather had cleared up and the wind had died down so I setup the 48" x 48" frame with 150 diffusion paper to tame the harsh mid-day sun.  Now this is similar to the various Photoflex and Lastolite equipment that I have with one major difference.  It doesn't have to be put together.  You literally just attach the frame to a c-stand (you have to have a c-stand), make sure you sand bag it and you are good to go.  It was pretty darn neat and very versatile and will definitely be something that I will use in the future.

Welcome!

Welcome to the www.duaneellison.com blog!  This blog will be dedicated to my photography and the various shoots and experiments that I will be working on!  I really hope you enjoy the information contained within.