Here’s a shot from a series I’m working on called “Geek Girls.” I realized that I know a slew of awesome, fun, devastatingly intelligent, and, yes, geeky women, and I wanted to photograph them doing the things they love.
My first subject is Cheryl, one of the coolest alpha geeks I know. She’s currently a user experience engineer at Microsoft, and she’s previously worked in the rarefied geek-world of console game design. She’s also a supremely talented actress, kicking ass in musical theater and taking names in the Seattle improv scene.
Oh, yeah. She also loves Pikachus. 
It’s not the equipment that makes the photo.
I know this is an old saw in photography circles, but new photographers are minted every day and it bears repeating. You don’t need the super-expensive, high-end equipment to make great photos. While it certainly makes things easier, it is by no means necessary. Even the low end of modern photo equipment is sufficient to create truly amazing photos.
If it’s such an old saw, why repeat it? Well, I was inspired by a comment I got on a photo in my Flickr pool:
The comment from Flickr user “VanLeslie” reads:
Everyone of these pictures in this series is beautiful. My 10 D doesn’t take pictures like this!
And my response:
I assure you that your 10D is perfectly capable of doing so. This was shot with a 30D, firing an ST-E2 to trigger a 430 EX flash which was hand held by my wife (if she wasn’t in the photo) or one of my other relatives. There’s nothing special about the 30D, other than its ability to fire a flash, that made this set.
And it’s true. While VanLeslie’s 10D is a bit older than my 30D (and my 30D is getting a little long in the tooth nowadays), there’s no reason that she couldn’t have shot this photo. The only “special” bit of equipment is the ST-E2 remote flash trigger, and that can be replaced by a cheap radio trigger for almost nothing.
Of course, it’s vitally important that you get your flash off of your camera somehow… But that has been extensively covered elsewhere.
Greetings, everyone! My name is Jason, and I am a photographer.
(Hi, Jason.)
Being a photographer and a geek, I’m something of a mad scientist. I’m always fooling around with different lights and modifiers. Naturally, I prefer to do my funky experiments on friends and family before I try them out on paying clients. This presents an issue. My wife, although stunningly beautiful, doesn’t like to be photographed unless she’s had time to do her hair and makeup. This does not mesh well with my ad-hoc fooling around. That leaves me with one and only one subject: Benjamin, my two-year old.
My boy doesn’t mind being photographed at all. In fact, he quite enjoys it, and especially enjoys seeing the results on the back of my camera and on the computer. Unfortunately, the one thing that he won’t do is sit still for two seconds in order for me to actually take the photo. Somehow, somewhere in the deep recesses of his brain, he knows exactly how long it takes for my lens to focus, because just as focus is achieved, he runs madly out of the viewfinder, either to look at the photo that I haven’t yet taken or to do whatever else it is that commands the gnat-like attention of a two year old.
Occasionally though, he’ll sit still for two seconds and you get something like this:
My son Benjamin looking over his left shoulder in a moody, hard-light portrait
