One of my favorite tools to play with was the grid spot. Unfortunately, now that I am out of school, I no longer have the access to the kits there, and I can’t afford my own kit. Luckily, there are some great DIY photoblogs out there, and more than a few ways to build your own grid for your strobe.

I ended up following a post on DIYPhotography.net which utilized corrugated plastic for the grid.

I ended up making two versions, one that was 3cm in length, and another that was 6cm in length. Though the light that was coming out of the grid was definitely more controlled, for some reason I could not achieve the nice circle shape seen in a test using a grid made from black straws. Instead, when shot against a wall, there was a definite rectangular pattern with half-circles coming out of each side. Below are the photos from both the 3 inch and 6 inch versions.

Other DIY grid tutorials:

cardboard
black straws
honeycomb grid

The honeycomb grid is actually an air straightener from a company called saxonpc. They have since realized that there is a market in the photo world for their product and sell grid kits.

My photography has been getting noticeably stagnant (at least in my eyes) in the past couple of months and I know that I need to push myself to do more creative pieces, hopefully starting with the one below. Being out of journalism, and not being surrounded by a talented group of motivated visual artists, has definitely forced me to become much more self-motivated, and so far I have responded by going to the beach.

Hopefully I will have some photos to post once I get settled at the Green School, but until then, I will be checking out the newly re-launched Interactive Narratives and I suggest you do too!

Oh and, while you are at it, check out the video done by Shaminder Dulai that is displayed on the top of the photo below. It is one of the video pieces he is working on while a summer fellow at Poynter.

I am hoping to add game summaries for each game, audio interviews from the coach and key players on important games, videos as the Register produces them, and possibly a Vuvox express presentation that is linked to a rss feed of user submitted Drake basketball photos.

Any thoughts? Things I should add? Take out? It is pretty narrow within the confines of my blog template, but I chose to embed this here so that when I show my editors the presentation, it is clear that it can be embedded and integrated into our paper’s template easily.