Crystal Clear

I've been setting up this shot for three weeks, and decided to shoot it tonight. Day 174 is all about crystals!



I've been growing these from a kit for about three weeks now. They are horribly delicate so getting them into the lightbox was a challenge. Thank you to my wife and her delicate lady fingers!

These crystals are pretty much pure white, so I gelled up three lights for this, red to the left, blue to the right and green above, all diffused through the lightbox, all firing at 1/8th power. The camera was shooting at ISO 200, f/9, 1/200th shutter.

Not much else to add, not great photography but fun photography! Wheeeee!

Faking it...

So for day 170, I was trying a different technique, where you intentionally use the wrong white balance setting in post-processing.

First the shot, and then the explanation:



This is just a macro of a bamboo leaf with water drops, but the key is lighting and processing. The background is lit with two speedlites, with a red gel to camera left and a yellow gel to camera light. A third speedlite is on the camera with the Lumiquest SB3 softbox to light the leaf.

In post processing, you swap the white balance to 'fluorescent' which tones everything blue, and you get the tones you see here. The 'bluing' also makes the leaf and drops pop. I like it!

You could accomplish the same thing just by shooting with a standard white balance and toning the picture manually, but this gives you a sense of experimentation since you don't know exactly how it will turn out. When I started this 365, I *never* would have shot like this, I used to feel like you had to have everything figured out, and it had to look *right* somehow. Now, part of the fun is shooting something and seeing what happens later.

I don't think I have to tell you which style of shooting I'm preferring!

Slides and rides...

Another two-fer today, one shot just for fun, and one that I set out as a project for myself.

First, day 125, and a day that I just wanted to shoot something silly. Once again, my daughter's toys came to the rescue here, and along with a gelled flashlight I put together a little picture telling the story of Mickey's drug-fueled flight from the law and the tragedy of Pluto's untimely demise:



Even the mystery Mousketool couldn't save Mickey's bacon at the trial. If you don't get the joke, you don't have a 4 year old who is addicted to the Mickey Mouse Clubhouse show. I consider you the lucky ones.

For a slightly more serious shot, I took some pictures at the local school playground with my daughter. I wanted a chance to work on post-processing some natural light shots, so this was a great opportunity to do that.

Here's the day 126 shot:



This shot has a few simple effects applied to it, including blurred duplicate layer, soft light blending at about 40% opacity, and then a 30% black layer over that which is selectively deleted away to provide a more natural looking vignette than my previous attempt. Compared to the shot straight out of camera, it's a simple effect but very effective.

I plan to keep working on my post processing, as it is going to be key for me actually make an effort at the portrait business. Also, I am now hunting around for a used 70-200 f/2.8L IS because clearly I need to spend more money on this, right?

Thanks for reading!

I'm alive!

Sorry for the lack of posting the last two days, I've been shooting but it's been family stuff. A violation of the 'Project 365' rules maybe, but not the spirit :)

Today is day 115, and here is a shot that I came up with while doing dishes, of all things:



Basically, this is water streaming through a plastic colander. The 580EX II speedlite is on the left at about 1/4 power and green gelled, and the LP120 is on the right at 1/8th power blue gelled just to give a little contrast. I expected slightly more blue tone in the shot, but I liked it enough as is. Focus is pretty good, but I couldn't manage much more crispness at 1/200th shutter. In hindsight I should have used the long-shutter-manual-strobe technique with this shot, but I didn't think of it until I was in post-processing.

Swing on the spiral...

Tonight, I wanted to do another shot inspired by DPS. DPS is still a great go-to source for ideas, inspiration and questions. If you aren't already reading their articles, I really recommend it.

The shot is done by suspending a light source above a vertically oriented camera. It's set into motion and then you shoot the resulting pattern with blub mode. Sounds simple enough, right?

Here's my version of this shot:



I used a three-led light, with three gels on it. A blue and green each covering one of the outer bulbs, and then a soft white over all three bulbs. I hadn't planned on using the soft white one, but even at the max aperture on my lenses (f/22) everything blew out to near white with even a few seconds of exposure.

The focus might also be a bit rough, but I had the camera literally a few inches off the floor on my Gorillapod, so trying to establish a good focus was really tricky. I think this is actually in focus, but the lack of crispness can be attributed to both flaring from the strong light pointed right at the lens, and the use of the kit lens. I had to shoot this at around 24mm focal length, as the 50mm could not give me a large enough field of view to get a nice large swing pattern. Smaller patterns did not give the definition I wanted, so the kit lens was a must-use in this scenario.

All in all, a fun shot, but it took a lot longer to setup and execute than expected!

Bowl lightning?

Today was a good day to head back and look at an earlier concept and reshoot it. I've mentioned this once or twice before, but I consider this a good way to both apply new techniques I've learned, and to see how far I've come in this process. So for day 106, we are going to revisit day 9.

Light painting looks great, although it's not particularly unique. I decided to add an object, two colours of lights (using gels) and some better new techniques in low-light shooting.

Here is today's shot:



I had wanted the light to 'fill' the bowl more, but my light sources physically didn't fit in the bowl, so it ended up sort of floating around it. I had to clear out some flaring and shadows at the bottom of the shot as well, but I think this is head and shoulders above my earlier effort, and that's what I want to see.

Thanks for reading!

Hot Stuff!

Day 102, and I set aside an hour and a half to do tonight's shot. There is a marked difference in quality between my 'shots' and the ones that I really sit down, plan out, and execute. Tonight, I wanted to take a few of the techniques I've worked on over the last few weeks and make a shot that really popped.

I think I got it:



The dimensions are weird on this one as opposed to my standard 2:3 or 4:5 ratio shots, so it's pretty small here, click through to Flickr for a better look.

I've combined the black reflective box style with a gelled flash smoke shot, with a fiar bit of post processing for colour and masking out imperfections in the background. There is a red gel on the left side and a yellow on the right, aimed slightly higher to make a gradient of colour and mimic flames.

Honestly, I love this one. The hot sauce is excellent too. High fives all around!

Just smoke, no mirrors...

Hello my friends, and welcome to episode 98 of 'Stupid Dave Tricks!'

Tonight, your intrepid host set up a couple of flashes with red and blue gels, his lightbox (as a background), and started burning some incense. All of this for more smoke shots, but with a colourful twist!





These shots are basically all about the setup. The background is white, but illuminated with a blue-gelled flash to the subject left. This flash was set to very low power, 1/32nd. On the right, a red-gelled strobe illuminates the smoke at high power, 1/4th, and it is snooted to prevent too much light bleed on the background.

Fun shots, but like a lot of these setup shots, I took a *lot* of exposures to get a few that I liked. Focus issues are part of the problem, but the random nature of the smoke also means that you are going to do a little spray-and-pray and hope for good results. I like both shots and I have at least two more that I'd consider keepers, so overall it was a good night.

On the downside, if any cops come over and sniff the air, I am so getting busted.

Tortuga!

Had a chance to sit down and plan a shot tonight, which was a welcome change of pace, so hopefully day 69's offering is better than 68's.

When I hit a creative funk, I like to let my wife suggest an object, concept, or location to shoot, and then I try and work it into a shot that I like. It makes me work for it. Tonight, she suggested a stained glass wind chime in the shape of a turtle. Here is what I came up with:



I thought about back lighting this, and playing with my coloured gels again, so the plan came together as follows: The background is a length of black fleece, very lightly rippled, a sheet of acrylic held above it by a few of my daughter's building blocks, and both strobes on opposite sides with blue gels. Place the turtle on top and shoot.

A little work was required in post, the acrylic had a few scratches that I healed out and I had to clone out the cables connected to the top and bottom of the turtle that hold the hook and chimes respectively. I left a lot of the speckling on the acrylic as it gives some depth and texture that was missing when I worked on cloning it out.

I like the shot, it's not perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but I enjoy the challenge that things like this present.

Swing on the Spiral

For day 66, I am still working on some post production stuff from yesterday's shoot, so this post will be a bit brief.

I've been working on my light sources lately, and I've got my lightbox stuff down pretty well, so it was time to stretch my legs a bit and play with it. I picked up a creative colour gel set a while back so I threw them on the strobes to make a pretty simple object look a bit more interesting.

Here's the result:



The subject is a tightly coiled roll of velcro fabric, and there is a blue gel on the left strobe and a red one on the right strobe. This was shot at f/10 (ISO 100, 1/200th) but the DOF is still super tight since this was very close to the front element of the lens. In this case, I like that the spiral fades out to blur a bit at the edges, it seems to balance out the sharp plane of focus.

A fun little shot, I think.