today's big thing is the wedding of a couple of my friends. they asked me months ago if a could consider shooting it. ofcourse i could. the day came, and i'm feeling a bit weird, feverish. i did shoot the wedding, and i hope a got some shot in the bag, but man, was it a pain standing up... enough whining, the above shot is leonard avoiding the umbrella when i was trying it out some time ago. no excuses now; i'm really gonna try to learn the art of portraits. the previous shot, of leonard with a tattoo, was lit by holding the umbrella and flash with my left paw, while releasing the shutter with my right.

edit: people have asked me for details about the light setup depicted in the above shot. for the moment, i use my tripod as a ligthing stand. mounted on the tripod is swivel umbrella adapter (available in several flavors, such as this one by manfrotto). as it so happens, the table stand that comes with the sb800 fits neatly on the adapter. the umbrella i use is one of those cheapos you can find at any photo dealer's. the one problem i have so far, apart from learning how to work with this setup, is that the flash head and the center of the umbrella is far from perfectly aligned (you can see it in the shot; the upper half of the umbrella is hit by more light than the lower part). though it seems to work good enough...