How to Photograph a Crane... Badly....

 So I practiced up and folded 50 nice cranes.

I proudly set them all in a safe place and started thinking of the photography part of the project more seriously, now that I has something to photograph. I slept on my thoughts.

The next day I woke up thinking "This will be so easy!" I went about setting up my lights and a background and affixing my macro extension tube to my camera.

Satisfied with my set up I began shooting photos.

Ummmmm..... something isn't quite right.....

That is a horrible, horrible photo.... the background is grey, not black, the crane has blinding hot spots..... I messed around a bit more only encountering some sort of weird movement problems. It is at this point I realize several things:

                            1. I do not know how to use my DSLR very well.

                            2. I HATE shooting photos of "stuff" in studio conditions.

                            3. I HATE using a tripod.

I am not sure how I forgot numbers 2 and 3. I really, really hated that series of classes in school.....

Number 1, I knew already and hoped this project would help me out with learning how to use my camera in a more efficient way.

So I did the only thing a girl could do what she was frustrated: I called my Dad (he is a photographer too.) Together, and by together I mean over the phone, we tried to figure it out. We couldn't. By this time I was super frustrated and ready to trash the whole idea.

I instead turned to the internet, of course, there are millions and millions of people there! They can help me. So I posted my problems on UglyHedgehog and gave up for the night.

The day I read the answers to my post. I adjusted things accordingly and came up with this:

Ugh.... really.... not what I had envisioned at all.....

I went back to the forum and pleaded for more help, which was gladly given. I took into consideration what they said. Then I scrapped everything I was doing and tried something new. 

This time I was much more successful. The photos aren't perfect yet but I do have 1000 chances to get it right....... I am going to post them in groups of 40. The cranes are traditionally strung in 25 chains of 40 cranes.

Here they are!