Passed PPA certification Exam !

I got the mail I had been eagerly waiting for since last two weeks.

I took the PPA certification test on Jan 6th at Orlando. Barbara London's book and Sandy Puc's forums were valuable resources for the test preparation.

I am so glad I took the test. Now, I am ready for the image submission.

A model at Jax Tamil association Pongal celebration

Canon 60D, 70-200 2.8 IS @ 200

ISO 1600, f 2.8 1/200

Life after a light meter

.. is splendid.

When I got the lights I thought of ordering the light meter also, but then it did not seem like a good 300$ spending that time. Also the lighting gods of the day, declaring that if you can read histogram, you probably don't need a light meter, discouraged me from getting one. I had some success using multiple flashes without one in the past few months but it always took many many attempts to determine the intensity on the lights and their relative distance to the subject. Today I got one, Sekonic L-358 from Desktop Darkroom Inc, in Jax.

It is a nice simple meter, even without having to read the manual completely I was able to start playing with it. I tried to shoot myself, as no one is around, against a white background paper, with three lights. 2 lights for BG @ f 11 and one for subject @ f8. Shooting at f8 gave me over exposure for BG. I have to figure out whether I am doing something wrong or the meter needs to be calibrated at + 1. This is the shot with f 11.

I wish I had bought this sooner, having light meter available is making life easy. Probably once you learn lighting and play enough with multiple lights a meter may not be required. I wish Sekonic made the remote flash trigger compatible with Elinchrom skyport.

భరతనాట్యం ఫ్యూజన్

నిన్న రాత్రి జాక్సన్ విల్ లో కలైవాణి డాన్స్ అండ్ మ్యూజిక్ అకాడమి, అట్లాంట వారి నృత్య ప్రదర్శన జరిగింది. భరతనాట్యం, కథక్, బ్యాలే కలయిక (fusion)తో కూర్చిన నృత్యాలు ప్రేక్షకులని అలరించాయి. ఒక ఫోటో -

Canon 40D, 70-200 2.8 IS @ 200

ISO 1600 2.8 @ 1/200