ISO 400 | 40mm | f 8.0 | 1/250 sec

Time.  There’s an endless supply of it, yet we always complain of not having enough.  It’s freely distributed, yet it’s the most valuable thing we possess.  It generously offers us boundless, unlimited opportunity, yet it is strict, systematic, and unforgiving.  Though time is our greatest ally, it is also our worst enemy, and regardless of how often we wish time could stand still, persistently it marches on to the rhythm of the universe, faithfully adding seconds, hours, weeks, years, decades, and eons to the ever-increasing age of everything in existence.  Time is a constant, an unchangeable truth that we must learn to live with.

So with these facts set before us, why do we struggle with proper utilization of our time?  If time is so precious, why do we so often waste it?  Haven’t we figured out by now that time can’t be reversed, that fighting against such a constant progression is an exercise in futility?  Truly we lack an appreciation for the time allotted to each of us here on earth, precious time that was gifted us by our Creator to be used for His glory.

So how about you?  Are you sitting there wishing the hands of the clock would alter their course and add days and years onto your life?  Or are you taking advantage of what time you’ve been given to learn, create, build friendships, bless others, and make a difference in the world around you?  I know I’ve spent too much time wishing and not enough time doing, but I don’t want my past to affect my future.  There’s only so much time left, so let’s both make the most of it…

I’m not too keen about these last-minute posts, but hey I still got it done before the end of the week, that’s all that counts.

This idea didn’t pop into my head until Thursday this week, and I didn’t start building it until Friday, so I had a bit of a late start on this one.  Almost the entire scene (except for my self-portrait) was built in Blender.  The clock face, the arms, the lighting, and even the depth-of-field was created in Blender.  The cool thing about this is the ability to re-work the composition later.  If you’re not happy with the lighting, the camera angle, etc., make a few adjustments, render the new scene and you’re there!

Had to bust out my strobes for the self-portrait to match the lighting in the rendered scene.  Had my white-balance set to shadow to get the warm key lighting and used a CTB gel on my side-fill flash to bring a slight hint of blue into the shadow areas.  I actually used three strobes to get the look I was going for, a strobe and softbox high and to my physical right, a strobe and beauty dish in front of me to fill out more of the shadows, and then a bare strobe and CTB setup to my physical left to add some cooler tones to the shadows.

Posing was the trickiest part, I had to use a spare piece of plastic rain gutter pipe to act as my stand-in prop for the clock arm (I wanted the pose to look as authentic as possible).  I still had to use the puppet-warp tool in Photoshop to line things up perfectly, but I got relatively close in-camera.

That was essentially it, nothing really complicated, and really simple editing this time around.  The toughest thing was building the initial scene, but as my familiarity with Blender grows, it’s not proving to be quite as difficult.

That’s it for this week.  I’ll be back next week with more…