Howdy, campers.

This is the first post in a series that I'm going to tag "Keep Yourself Honest" or KYH for brevity (it's in the same family as GYOA - "Get Off Your Arse," made popular by Zack Arias and others).

The point of these posts is to give myself some targets to meet, in public. That means that I'll not be able to come back to the post later to see whether I met my targets, but because I've made it public it also means that I'm less likely to welch on trying to meet those targets in the first place (one of my big flaws being that I find it too easy to listen to the lizard brain).

So, to the point at hand.

I'm planning a photo shoot in some woodlands near where I live. I've already put a casting call up for a model and a makeup artist on Model Mayhem (to which I've had several responses, rather surprisingly), and hopefully by the end of the week I'll be in a position to choose which model I want to work with (though I've inadvertently managed to offend one of said models by misphrasing "there are several people interested" in such a way as to make it sound like "I want someone better than you," which is especially galling when you consider that this particular model has a really interesting portfolio).

Anyway, in keeping with the spirit of KYH, I'm going lay out what I intend to accomplish here:

1. Try out some lighting techniques

Specifically, lighting a background for texture.

I've been itching to try out some of the stuff that Drew Gardner demonstrates in his Location Lighting DVD, and this woodland shoot is the ideal way to do that for that.

2. Practice shooting with a model

I know I've shot with models before, but not many. And let's face it, Katie Green is a gift to a photographer, otherwise she wouldn't have been doing the sessions at which I had the pleasure of shooting her. Whilst I'm expecting whatever model I work with to be professional, having them be someone with whom I've never worked before will put me slightly outside my comfort zone, which is always a good place to be.

3. Produce three different looks from the same location

Basically, I want to produce the following looks in the woodland location where we'll be shooting:

• Natural light only, daylight, quite a warm, woody, spring-like feeling, without adding any flash. I'd like to do some fairly close-up portraits and mid-range shots in this look.
• Natural light + flash, using the flash to add texture to the image and give it a slightly more artsy-feel whilst still using the natural light as the main light. This is what Bert would refer to as "flambient light". I'd like to do some wider-angle shots with this look.
• Minimal natural light + flash, using the flash as main, with the natural light as minimal fill, also using flash to selectively add to the background (which is pretty much what you'll see in the image that goes with this post). I'd like to do a range of wide angle to close-up shots with this look.

So there we are, ladies and gents. I've thrown down the gauntlet (to myself). I've no date for the shoot yet, that's obviously dependant on availability for both me and the model and the (currently hypothetical) MUA.

I've got a post that I need to write, but it feels like a post that would write itself if I were halfway through my second large whisky at the time, so I need to either employ the whisky or work out how to get into a similarly verbose frame of mind before I write it.

In the meantime, however (and I've already asked this on Twitter, but I'm asking again here for those who don't read my verbose, sweary, rambling tweets), a request:

I've decided that I need to get my head back into the music word a bit. So, recommend me some bands, or solo artists or orchestras flamingos trained to play iphone-app-instruments using only their knees (touchscreen's a bitch if you've a beak). Whatever you want. Any genre, doesn't matter, I'll at least give it a look. Bonus points for links to websites or Myspace pages.

You can leave a comment here or get me on twitter (@codedragon) or identica (@gmb) or email them to me at blog AT grahambinns DOT com.

Ta.

(And yes, this is getting syndicated to Planet Ubuntu UK, because that might expand the pool of people who listen to audio bits).

Feeling a little world-weary tonight. An afternoon spent battling with Launchpad's ec2 test facility and a gym workout that didn't go as well as planned (I really need a trainer - or at least a workout buddy - to make me do things some times, and I don't have either) have left me drained and a touch on the grumpy side.

You have been warned.

And again, I'm going through one of those phases where I'm not picking up and working with a camera much. Oh, I'm shooting bits and pieces here and there for the Countdown project, which I'm going to have to turn into videos some time in the new year because right now I just don't have the time, but I'm not shooting anything serious. It's all just frivolous shooting. Well, not frivolous but... I guess 'unimportant' would be the right word. It's keeping the muscle memory going - here's the ISO control, there's the shutter release, there's the bracket function, that sort of thing - but it's not challenging me creatively and it's making a part of my inner brain itch like nobody's business.

I've got some grand ideas written down, and I keep fleshing them out - more on that as and when I get round to actually carrying them out. That I've imposed a photoshoot moratorium on myself until the new year - because trust me, organising a wedding and holding down a programming job are quite enough to be getting on with - doesn't help matters, but at least I know that when the new year rolls around I'll be able to start sending out casting calls, talking to potential subjects and organising teams to be able to put these things together.

A part of me worries that the ideas are a little too grand - one of them calls for no less than eight different fashion styles in the same series, and the change in style extends to the location, too - but if I don't aim high now I'll never do it later.

On the slightly less complex side of things I'm working on a project that's not even embryonic yet - I'm still waiting for it to be a Zygote (okay, let's discard that metaphor before it goes any further, shall we?) - but, should it work out will be extremely simple, at least technically, though I suspect there will be a lot of work to do with regard to getting subjects and other parties involved.

All of which, of course, tells you bugger all about anything. Maybe in a couple of weeks I'll be able to tell you more.