I had a bit of fun on the weekend and spent a little time using photoshop doing something different for a self portrait. Just a bit of fun for a Facebook profile photo.
It took me about 5 minutes to take the photo and about 25-45 in photoshop to modify the image.
After taking the image I modified the background, de-saturated the colours, saturated the green colours, added the cat-eye contact lenses and extended the canine teeth slightly...done! Not perfect, but good enough for what I wanted to try and accomplish.
Tonight is my GCC break day (Only 11,000 steps today compared to over 20,000 yesterday). I celebrated this with a glass of wine...and then I though why stop there.I could take a cool photo as I was pouring the glass (my second).
I did do a bit of playing around but I found that it worked best if the flash was able to burn out some of the details and illuminate the wine from behind.
Flash was positioned on the floor (glass on a chopping board on a chair) @ 1/4 power...the background is a white wall.
The wine is a Southern Sisters 2003 Cabernet Sauvignon Merlot...not a bad drop for an everyday wine.
Here is another GCC photo
I am currently participating in the GCC (Global Corporate Challenge). This is a team event where each participant has to do more than 10,000 steps per day using a pedometer (step counter) for the next 16 weeks. I will when convenient take my camera with me an try and do something creative.
This was day one where I walked to a meeting in North Sydney over the Sydney harbour bridge. When I got home I did some tilt shift effect to it so make it more toy like:
Some time ago I saw a photo of a kiwifruit and wanted to see if I could do something similar. It took a bit of experimenting, but eventually I got there. First a thin slice of kiwifruit (I chose to keep the skin on for effect), a couple of toothpicks to lift it off the surface and then one toothpick to hold it upright.
20 cm behind the flice I positioned a flash (SB600) firing at 1/64 power. Camera is set at 1/250th sec, f13, ISO 200 @42mm (on Nikon D50)....viola:
I borrowed some more toy cars from my nephews (A bit more willing this time). This time I wanted to do the shoot entirely using light painting. All the following photos are created using a single LED torch with CTO and blue flash gels in front of it. No photoshopping has been done to any of the photos.
They have all been shot at 15 seconds @ f22. The base is a glass chopping board (the writing on the board shines through in a couple of places).
Today I borrowed a couple of Toy cars from my nephew Ethan. I had to promise that I'd bring them back tomorrow.
I wanted to have a play with using a single bare flash right above the car as a softbox. Because the flash is hanging right above the car just outside view) it has been dialed all the way back to 1/128th power (shooting at f/32, iso 200 @ 1/250) or I'd use detail. On the side just outside view I put a piece of white paper to reflect a little light onto the side of the car. The reflective surface is a glass chopping board from the kitchen.
After a while I started also using a flash on the background using different gels. I found that orange and blue gels were the nicest. The Blue as a good contrast to the yello car. With the orange gel I could create a sunset type light by letting the light fall off quickly on the wall. The background if a white wall (except for the textured background which is a black backdrop).
None of the photos below have had any photoshopping done to them (otherwise I would have removed those scratches on the windshield).
Kim was kind enough to let me take some photos of her. I have been studying some flash photography videos and articles and wanted to have a play with multiple flashes around dusk. The trick is to balance the ambient light with the light filled from the flash...especially tricky as the light constantly changes during the last 30 minutes of the day.
So far I only have two wireless flash triggers to was was somewhat limited (ideally I would like to have three triggers).
It was really good to be able to do some experimenting. For these photos I used one flash 45 degrees to the back and another 45 degrees in front. On the back I am using a CTO gel. In the beginning I was using one on the front one as well, but when I got home to look at the photos I could see that it was too warm (Lesson learnt that I should use the warm gels on the back). On the photos here there is no gel on the front flash only on the back.
I would have liked to stay just a bit longer to play, but kim was getting a bit cold.
With a more time I would have been able to enhance some of the zoom effects as seen in this photo:
Definitely a trick I'll be using in the future...makes for some cool effects. At lot of the photos are actually quite nice, but the two above are my preferred ones.
I read this article about how to take water photos in an easy way. The photos is taken using a bare flash firing onto a white background at 1/8th power. The blue colour is because I (on purpose) changed the white balance of the camera to Tungsten.
I only had a shallow painting tray at my disposal. This paint residue in the bottom of the tray creates the pattern in the photo. I also couldn't get a nice formed drop pattern forming due to the drops hitting the bottom of the shallow tray unevenly.
Lessons for next time: Use a deeper tray. Make it black so that no other colours penetrate and make dure the water can reach the edge of the tray. Next time I try I will use one of the large scanpans we have...I think it will be better suited.
