Up the Creek – 029/365, originally uploaded by JMaz Photo.

So I was pouring myself a last night and contemplating this great gift that Santa brought me. It seemed like a good idea to make a nice photo of it before it was completely gone, and before I knew it I was setting up the studio and lights.

This shot was taken with a bare speedlight at 1/128 handheld at camera left. The light off the is bit harsh and could probably be cleaned with a little post-processing, but that’s not going to happen today. If I was going to get into I would clean up the background a bit too. Instead we have this almost straight from the camera… all I added was a little vignette to create some drop-off at the edges.

OK, I really need to invest in this “studio” thing. I’ve got the kids’ train table with several pieces of cloth to drape over it. I also only have one strobe, and that is tethered with a 3′ cable I bought to go with my flip bracket. I’ve been doing fine with landscape photography, but I’ve been inspired to start doing cool stuff with the lights indoors. Right now I’m saving up pennies for a radio remote for the flash and surfing DIY Photography for backdrop ideas. It will be interesting to look back at the end of this p365 project to see how much I will have grown by the next new year!