May, 2009

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Limey

Saturday, May 30th, 2009
An Explosion of Citrus

An Explosion of Citrus

Limeys – a slang term historically used for the British. I used a lime in this latest experiment with High Speed Flash Photography, and it got me thinking about limeys.

Now my first thought was of the gin & tonic, served with a slice of lime. The gin & tonic was introduced by the British army in India, and makes for a refreshing drink on a hot summer day (which we still haven’t seen here in Milwaukee, by the way).

Actually though, the original limeys were British sailors, so called because of the lime juice they maintained in their diet to prevent scurvy. The limes came from the Carribean, and provided the Vitamin C that was lacking on ships that were out to sea for long periods of time.

Anyway, the picture shows a lime shot by a pellet gun at close range, captured using a short duration flash (1/30,000 second). The pellet has gone through the lime, and you can see the juice coming out at the entry point on the right, with more of a spray of juice at the exit point. Click on the picture to enlarge it.

My next target, sometime in the next few days, will be ripe, red tomatoes, which I’m hoping will provide a more explosive effect.

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Foxgloves & Bonsais

Friday, May 29th, 2009
Foxglove Flower

Foxglove Flower

I actually took these pictures a couple of weeks ago, drawing upon the ever-changing abundance of fresh flowers maintained by my mother.

This is a foxglove flower, formally known as ‘Digitalis’, which means finger-like, and refers to the ease with which one can insert a finger into the flower.

This picture was taken outside, using natural light, with my Tamron 28-300 mm telephoto, maxed out at 300 mm. The exposure was 1/80 second at f/11 (ISO 200). Even though that’s a fairly fast shutter speed, a tripod is critical for a shot like this, for two reasons. First, to avoid camera shake, you need a shutter speed at least as fast as 1 over the focal length – in this case, 1/300 second is the minimum to avoid camera shake.

Foxglove Flowers

Foxglove Flowers

The second reason is that with the long focal length and close focusing distance, depth of field becomes an issue. Slight movement of the camera after focusing will cause the close up view of the flower to be out of focus, which is prevented when using a tripod.

This second shot was taken indoors, near a large patio door with natural light. It necessitated a much slower shutter speed – this was taken for 1/13 second at f/18 (ISO 200), also at 300 mm.

The final picture in this group is a small bonsai tree. Bonsais can offer many interesting photo opportunities, due to their small size and the twisting of the tree trunk.

Bonsai tree

Bonsai tree

For this picture, I positioned the bonsai tree outside, against a backdrop of green foliage. The intent was to capture the twists and turns of the bonsai’s trunk and give the feel of a much larger tree via a close up.

The bonsai, however, was not cooperating. It was in a dormant state, with no foliage of its own. As such, the bark still provides a lot of interest, but to me it doesn’t fulfill its potential. This photo was shot for 1/80 second at f/11 (ISO 200) using a focal length of 119 mm.

If you’ve got a bonsai tree at home, try taking some photos using natural light. The uniqueness of the bonsai’s growth provides some great opportunities.

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Family Kite Festival

Tuesday, May 26th, 2009
Family Kite Festival

Family Kite Festival

While the first day of the Family Kite Festival in Milwaukee was not a great day due to rain and low winds, the second day was great. It was sunny and bright, with strong winds.

The winds were strong enough, in fact, to keep the wings on the Burke Bries Soleil at the Milwaukee Art Museum closed for the day. So a problem for one venue worked to the advantage of another.

There were many different kinds of kites at the festival, like this star-shaped kite floating above Veteran’s Park, with the Milwaukee skyline in the background.

And lots of people took advantage of the great weather (although a spring jacket was definitely in order), bringing the whole family to either fly a kite, or watch the kites that were being flown.

Flying a Kite

Flying a Kite

This person choose to fly his kite while relaxing on his back. The winds were strong enough and steady enough that there was no need to run around in order to keep your kite aloft.

There was also a demonstration area set aside, with professional (who knew?) kite flyers demonstrating their skills with various types of kites.

The sky, however, was a bit dull, as there were no clouds to add visual impact to the pictures of the kites flying high. This makes taking an interesting photo a challenge – trying to capture the feel of the wind whipping the kite higher and higher.

To see more kite photos, click here.

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A Spring Bouquet

Saturday, May 23rd, 2009
Roses

Roses

I swear I’m going to get out this weekend and get some outdoor pictures, but with a bouquet of flowers in the house, I had to take advantage of the diversity and color contained in a collection of nature’s flowers.

In this shot, I separated the red roses from the bunch, and shot them against a black backdrop. There’s a little too much light coming from below the roses, but it does set them off quite dramatically.

Separating the flowers can provide a much more dramatic picture than just taking a photo of a flower surrounded by other flowers.

Sunflower

Sunflower

This second shot demonstrates this well, and I think I like this shot the best.

The sunflower is isolated, and in this case, I took a closeup of the flower with my Tamron 28-300 mm VC lens (shot at 300 mm). To keep as much in focus as possible, I used a small aperture (f/22) with a long exposure (2 seconds at ISO 200).

By keeping the flower in the corner, it gives a radiating feel to the picture, with the eye drawn to the center of the sunflower and then radiating out from there.

While these two pictures are my favorites, they are only 2 out of about 50 photos that I shot. My normal workflow is to go through a photo shoot, delete any obviously flawed photos (out of focus, etc.), and then pick a small percentage of the rest to continue to work on – correcting exposure, saturation, possibly cropping, etc.

In this situation, out of the 50 I shot, I found about 20 that I felt would benefit from post-processing, and of those only 2 that make the grade to public viewing. In trying something new, however, I thought I’d make some of the ‘outtakes’ available for those that want to see some additional photos. So if you’re one of those, click here to view the rest on my outtake page.

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The Quest Continues…

Thursday, May 21st, 2009

…for the perfect water balloon explosion.  And while not perfect, I think today I’ve come about as close as I can with the basic equipment and setup I have at my disposal.

Balloon & Pellet

Balloon & Pellet

Now that I’ve got the basic timing down, I was able to capture the picture at the left, with the pellet (fired from a pellet gun at about 400 feet/second) in the picture and about to hit the water-filled balloon.

Because the difference between a hanging balloon, a balloon that has deflated with the water still hanging, and a complete watery mess are milliseconds apart, my timing consists of moving the sound detector by a matter of inches.

Pellet Inside Balloon

Pellet Inside Balloon

In this next picture, the pellet has literally just entered the balloon on the right, but the balloon has not deflated yet.

Again, the difference between these two pictures is so short that it’s hard to imagine. So all that’s left is to capture the instance after the actual point of impact when the balloon has collapsed, but the water still retains its shape as gravity starts to pull it down.

I couldn’t decide which picture I thought represented that best, so here’s a series of water balloons punctured by shots fired from a pellet gun.

And finally, the setup.  Last week, I had a comment on one of my water balloon pictures, asking that I show the setup I use in taking these pictures. So here it is.

Water Balloon Setup

Water Balloon Setup

Not the most elegant of setups, essentially you can see the camera (Canon 20D) on a tripod to the left, with the Vivitar 283 flash just to the right and below it.

I have the balloon hanging from a shoe lace that’s dropped from a ceiling brace, with a matte black backdrop behind the balloon. I’m using a roasting pan to capture the water as it falls from the balloon, with an inverted funnel to (hopefully) lessen the impact of the water falling.

On the table is a plastic tablecloth, with my sound detector device (described here) on the front left corner. For the actual shot, I move the sound detector to get the delay I want. On the far edge of the table is the homemade backstop for the pellets (essentially a cardboard box stuffed with 2 pieces of 1/4″ plywood, magazines, and newspapers).

And finally, on the front edge of the table are the pellet gun (described here) and safety glasses.

When I take the picture, I set the camera on a 1 second shutter speed, manually focused, with as large an aperture as possible. I turn off the lights, using a small flashlight to provide a limited amount of light. I then take aim on the balloon, use a shutter release to trip the camera shutter, and fire the pellet gun.

If it all works to plan, the sound of the gun triggers the flash just as the pellet reaches the balloon. And since the flash has a duration of 1/30,000 second, the camera sensor just captures that instant in time when the flash exposes the scene.

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