When I remember that perhaps I should do something other than work - and I mean that more mentally than anything else - I've really slid into this one-dimensional work-think-and-do only mindset - UNHEALTHY AND BORING - I occasionally diversify by reading a blog that Jens showed me called Strobist - which is an off - camera flash specialist lighting blog. I like it particularly because it's full of stuff that you can do and make yourself. Recently I saw a feature on it for a think called a bouncewall - which looks like this:
It's a smart little thing really - because it allows you to use your existing flash, still mounted on your camera, but produce an off-camera, diffuse light source - which looks much better than a flash shot. You might be able to do this in a room by bouncing your flash off the roof, or off a wall - but outside you can'd do that - so you either need to walk around with your camera in one hand, and a flash in the other, arms stretched out - or you need one of these. So Ithought it would be pretty simple to build one - the only vague complexity was findijng a plastic ball mount for the board - and attaching the two - this allows the board to rotate infinitely in terms of positions. We have a long weekend this weekend - Saturday to Tuesday inclusive - so I made this my weekend mission (along with Trauma Unit 101 of course). I got the ball out of a pvc ball valve, which I cut open in order to liberate, and made the rest out of pvc pipes (less groovy than the original's quite graceful S - but perfectly effective). The result looks like this (somewhat awkward getting it to take a pic of itself):
Which might look a bit homeade joe - but it produces some pretty cool light and pictures as you'll see from the photies that follow.
It's a smart little thing really - because it allows you to use your existing flash, still mounted on your camera, but produce an off-camera, diffuse light source - which looks much better than a flash shot. You might be able to do this in a room by bouncing your flash off the roof, or off a wall - but outside you can'd do that - so you either need to walk around with your camera in one hand, and a flash in the other, arms stretched out - or you need one of these. So Ithought it would be pretty simple to build one - the only vague complexity was findijng a plastic ball mount for the board - and attaching the two - this allows the board to rotate infinitely in terms of positions. We have a long weekend this weekend - Saturday to Tuesday inclusive - so I made this my weekend mission (along with Trauma Unit 101 of course). I got the ball out of a pvc ball valve, which I cut open in order to liberate, and made the rest out of pvc pipes (less groovy than the original's quite graceful S - but perfectly effective). The result looks like this (somewhat awkward getting it to take a pic of itself):
Which might look a bit homeade joe - but it produces some pretty cool light and pictures as you'll see from the photies that follow.
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