I admit it’s been a while since I wrote here. Sorry about that. I’ll try to make up for it now.

Yesterday I was 30.

It felt pretty similar to 29 and 363 days. Except that instead of working my girlfriend got me a wireless remote for my Lucinda and rented a studio for a self portraiting session. Now I don’t think I told you about Lucinda just yet. She’s the new Canon 50D I got with a Sigma 24-70 f/2.8 lens. Now I still love Lucille (Canon 350D if you recall, on sale now!) but this camera is in a different league. Okay, I got carried away. Back to the studio:

Let me describe the setup we had at the studio (since I didn’t think of photographing it with my cell phone or something): the camera was connected to the external studio flashes (an umbrella, a spots, beauty dish and a softbox, each time we used something different). The camera was  also connected to the wireless remote and my laptop. So every photo we took showed up on it and we could enjoy it immediately. Here’s a sample where I didn’t quite manage to hide the remote in my hand, so you might be able to spot it in the photo:

And then I started playing some more with the lights:

Settings? The photo above and the one below were shot with a softbox firing behind me, in addition to the umbrella flash in front.

This has been a great deal of fun. Sorry. More than that: this has been the most original birthday gift ever, and I enjoyed it so much. After three tiring hours in the studio we were famished, and had to go for a big birthday lunch. Unfortunately, it was not before Efrat managed to go all Mike Tyson on me. I barely got away…