Power Of Light

It's been a while since I updated this blog. I've been lazy with it, but I have been very hardworking with shooting bit. I shot about 13thousand frames so far this year. It will be difficult, but I will try to reach my resolution.....20thousand frames in 2010.

The more I mess with off-camera flash thing, the more I realize how difficult it is to deal with all those equipment out on the field, where there is practically seconds of availability. I cannot even imagine how more difficult photojournalism or being a war photographer can be.

Taking this pretty and serene view needed luck.

 I had an old,  really old, Vivitar Series I 70-210mm f/3.5 manual focus, manual everything, non-VR lens on a D700, pushed to ISO 1600 to catch the ambient light, but yet to maintain relatively faster shutter speed.  So focusing a few kilos without a tripod in a jeep is tough. It becomes impossible, when you add the hand-held flash unit to it. So I needed either a clamp or a human to assist me position and keep fixed the SB900 with a flash-beamer attached to it for longer range (which ended up unnecessary and bad quality light.) For some I used a Justin-clamp to attach the flash to the roof bar of the jeep and for some urgent moments, I asked my friends to hold the flash. Exposure was 1/60, no aperture was recorded in the Exif, as  it was manual. But I would guess at least f/8.

Hope to update this more often....not that anybody reads it, but for my own sake :)

Trial and Error

Last weekend I tried a couple of techniques to manipulate the image while taking the picture.

The first one is called 'rear-curtain sync.' What you do here is to pop the flash at the end of the exposure time, rather then in the beginning of it. This way, you capture the movement with the ambient light, but finish the exposure with a flash, which freezes the motion.

It isn't perfect for a few reasons:

1)  In every good photographer's opinion, a picture should tell a story. This doesn't.
2) The background did not fully catch the motion. I should have dragged the shutter further.

Well, deal with it. It's only a try.

I am more satisfied with the result of the second one. I saw this fisherman in a cold afternoon, but the sun was still up and harsh. Here's the first picture I took with sun light only. It is rather a dull and flat image.

Then, however, I pushed the white balance to 'fluorescent' to make the background cooler. Then gelled an SB600 with CTO to give a warm sunset feel and pointed it from camera left to the subject. The flash was only gelled. No modifiers used and it was in full power, zoomed up to 85mm. 

Here's the result:

Liquid Macro Mess

I've been not posting anything in the blog recently, but I was shooting at the same rate as before....As previously announced, my goal is to take 20,000 frames this year. So far? 4571. Here's one of them:

Last couple of days, I started to work on my liquid macro skills...again. This time around I'm much wiser, but being wiser only makes me see more mistakes in my work.

My setup had an important ingredient this time...milk, which brings some smoothness to fluidity. But on the other hand, it messes up with exposure, because it takes away the contrast, so one ends up with a flat, non-appealing final result. I still think milk is a good idea, but certainly with another lighting and photographing technique...yet to be learned. Before I tell you how I photographed these, let me throw in another one:

Ok, as said, mixture of water and milk in a large salad bowl with dark blue inside. Actually inside color of the bowl is irrelevant for this example, because we are picking up the reflections of the milk-mixed liquid. Half crescent of the outside frame is covered with a colorful collage of a cardboard...making a wall of 20cm on one side of the bowl. This is where we bounce off the light to give some color to the surface of the liquid. Am I losing you to the kingdom of boredom? Ok, here's another one then:

Then you put the same mixture of water/milk into a plastic bag, hang it about 50cm above the bowl and quickly punch a tiny whole with a needle...tiny is the operative word here. In my first trial, it was like garden hose with no control. Here's a celestial looking one:

In another session, I tried water in a tray with mirror surface and tried to capture some bubbles. No flash is used in this one....it's called 'Bubble Cake"...Bon appétit....