Friday, March 25, 2005

On Assignment: Lancaster, Ohio -Day Two


"Ohio Jukin' " by Wes Aldridge

This is a test shot that I was working on at a place called Weldon's Ice Cream Shop about 20 minutes north of Lancaster in a town called Millersport. I walk into this olde tyme ice cream parlor and I saw it sitting there in all its glory... an antique Wurlitzer jukebox. I knew this had to be in my shot.

I used this small Ohio State statue to get the light settings right while the delicious dish of ice cream sundae sat in the freezer, keeping chill. I didn't want it to melt while I fine tuned and adjusted to what I thought was the perfect shot. I dressed the foreground with Dum-Dum lollipops and shot a strobe from about two feet away to light the dish and candy with. I let the Wurlitzer in the background drop out of focus and only lit it with ambient light from the neons and the room's light.

I shot at ISO 100 with a shutter speed of 1/10th of a second to let in enough ambient light and shot with an aperture of f/14 to get the proper mix of strobe light for the foreground. My final shot had the beautiful sundae in it instead of the Ohio statue. I was pretty proud of this one and I thought the owner of the ice cream shop was going to have a heart attack. I think he liked it pretty well, too.

Now, it is time to bed. Need to shoot a couple more shots at sunrise then head out of town on my seven hour drive back to NashVegas... then 2.5 more hours on to Tunnel Hill, Ga., to see the Easter Bunny.