Project 52 by Peter

[Valerie]

Ricco, I am no expert by any means but I love the shot. Wow you could tell a story(or make up one) with this picture. Sometimes the picture is deceiving when you are the stranger trying to interpret it. That is the fun when viewing such an intense photo. Thanks for sharing. You did a great job. I hope you feel it was worth the effort.

Valerie

[Ricco]

So - after a week photographing smoke, the natural progression is to try water drops.

The entire series is on the below link - make sure you check out all of the colours....

http://s1156.photobucket.com/albums/...water%20drops/

Once I deleted all of the "missed" shots, I played with a lot of the lightroom presets to get some of the effects that you see.

For the sake of posting one photo on the thread - this is my favourite.



The below is the setup shot. I have a white sink and background and so this made a natural backdrop - the flash was aimed at the background, not the water.. For the coloured shots I put in a bit of coloured material behind the water (duh). Everything on full manual so as to keep control of the exposure. I played with a few different exposures through the series - you should be able to pick up where I added a bit more flash to some of the drops.



Enjoy!

[SpiderBob]

Nice work Peter, I've got to try that

[Ricco]

Bob - I can honestly say the hardest part was trying to time the photo with the droplet! For every photo you see, I probably deleted another 5. Once I got in a rhythm, I could probably get 4-5 in one burst but then would take me a few goes to get it again.

[gregj1763]

Hi Ricco,
Yes looks like we are trying out the same things at the moment but I only spotted your photo's last night.
The setup you have for the water droplets looks good, I hadn't thought of doing it over a sink. I was going to
suspend a plastic bag over a tray and pierce a small hole in the bag. Saw a tutorial like this on the web.
Thanks for the tip with the colour inversion, will give it a try. If you try matches, one thing I would do differently would be to have my black background further away from the match as when it lights up it illuminates the background.
Good luck, look forward to your photo's.
Greg

[Goldcoastgolfer]

I'd be happy with that result Peter. Love the reflection of the droplet hitting the water in particular.

[Ricco]

Wow - how time flies! I've been itching to get back and do some posting but time has completely conspired against me. Between holidays and work having to catch up on what I missed when on holidays I've been out of action. Anyway, 3 quick posts in succession for me to catch up on.

This shot was a little bit of a disappointment - I had this image of a tissue falling gracefully with some soft light but I really didn't achieve what I set out to do. In the end I caught the falling with a multi-strobe on the flash. This was probably the best out of a number of shots.

Anyway, it is what it is - probably not the greatest photo I'll post on this thread but an interesting learning exercise none the less. I chose this because I sort of liked the shape that the tissue made when it fell. It reminds me of those birds you often see on peoples walls.

[Ricco]

I need two shots to explain this one. Again, the final shot probably wasn't the greatest photo in the world but was a good learning.

On our holiday we had a nice room overlooking Sydney harbour - I tried to capture a picture of my daughter in the window with the opera house in the background - much harder than it sounds.

Here is the ambient light. You can see that when exposed for the background, my daughter is quite dark.


And here is my effort trying to accomplish my aim. I didn't quite achieve it but came close - you can still see a little reflection in the window from inside the room.

[FrankMi]

Hi Peter! This is a great composition for combining two images, one of the scene focused on the Opera House, and the second of your daughter in the window. Then just replace what you see through the window with the Opera House image to get both in focus in the same composition.

This approach not only allows you to get the correct exposure for both parts of the image but it also addresses the reflection in the window. If you want the reflection it is easy enough to lightly brush it back into the resulting merged image. Taking the two shots to be matched up like this is much easier if you are using a tripod.

[Ricco]

First the photo....


Then the story....

When I was a kid, my grandfather always used to make wine every year - well actually it ended up being closer to vinegar but my grandad still loved it and drunk it often. It was a week long process where we cut the grapes from vines, stomped the grapes (in a shed in 40 degree heat with old sweaty Italian men) and then made the wine. As with a lot of things, being young, at the time I didn't quite appreciate what was happening. Since then my grandparents have passed, everyone moved towns, the old shed got demolished and so the yearly tradition went into history.

However, recently some members of the family had the great idea to revive the tradition. So on the weekend we all gathered at my cousins house to make wine again. We bought a (large) case of grapes, bought a machine, vat, press and barrels and got going. Although the grape stomping was a little on the ceremonial side, we still dropped a few into an old kiddies pool for old times sake. It was the first time my kids have ever experienced the joy of squishing grapes between your toes and getting covered and stained with grapes.

I had hoped to share a couple of others from the day here but either Tinypic or my internet connection is playing games with me tonight - I will have to try again tomorrow.

[Ricco]

One more......

[Ricco]

And one last one before giving up for the night!

[Goldcoastgolfer]

Wow - you have been busy! Let's see - Week 11. It almost looks like the tissue has been cloned a few times - it makes for an interesting effect. I think I would have liked to have seen some negative space on either sides of the tissue as well - don't know why though.

The window pictures with the opera house in the background look good - the pose in the first and the lighting in the second. The only thing I can think of that might help with the reflection would be a polarising filter. One thing I do find about windows though is that the they look better when the vertical lines are aligned with the frame of the photo. It looks like they could use a slight clockwise rotation and some lens correction as well.

And the wine photos - love the first one. I'm thinking you could bring up the exposure a little but composition wise it appeals to me.

[Ricco]

Am running out of excuses!

Another couple of busy weeks and so limited photo taking opportunities (and very few posts as well) . I'm having another of my post a couple in a row nights......

The first one is one I quite like. It is my daughter engrossed in my ipad. Always amazes me how well the kids pick up technology. I remember when I was a kid we had the Commodore 64 and Amstrad and used to think any more that about 12 colours on the screen were awesome graphics!

In terms of the photo - all the light was from the screen of the ipad. Minimal light in the room. The camera was on manual and handheld. I tried to maximise my aperture while trying to minimise ISO and maximise shutter speed. Thank goodness for IS!

[Ricco]

Sorry - just one more to share of the same topic. I think I like the 1st as you can see my daughters legs and posture but this one had a bit more negative space and was a slightly different image.

[Ricco]

As with all kids, the best "toys" are things that aren't toys at all. My 2 spent a large part of the easter weekend playing, painting, decorating and creating cubby houses out of packing boxes. Naturally combined with a flash and off camera cord, this created a great opportunity for a photo.

[Goldcoastgolfer]

Sorry - just one more to share of the same topic. I think I like the 1st as you can see my daughters legs and posture but this one had a bit more negative space and was a slightly different image.

I really like the effect the light creates with the negative space. I think the second photo works better because you can see more of your daughter's face whereas in the first her face is partially covered by her hand.

[Goldcoastgolfer]

As with all kids, the best "toys" are things that aren't toys at all. My 2 spent a large part of the easter weekend playing, painting, decorating and creating cubby houses out of packing boxes. Naturally combined with a flash and off camera cord, this created a great opportunity for a photo.

That looks great Peter - as if he's opened up a doorway to some magical place. I might be inclined to darken the cardboard box door just to hide some of the distractions that you can see there but that's just me.

[FrankMi]

Great expressions on the kids faces in both Week 14 and 15, Peter! Nice.

[Ricco]

Appreciate the positive comments guys.

This week I had a bit of experimentation going on. I think I know where I went wrong and will probably have to try this again at a later date (possibly with different flowers). I need two photos and a link to explain what I was trying to do.

First - I have been pretty intrigued in the past with some of Harold Davis' transparency shots. As an example, have a flick through this link ( http://photo.net/learn/digital-photo...unds-with-lab/ ). I was trying to recreate a similar effect.

The end result is this.


To give you an idea where this came from - this is the shot out of the camera.


To take the shot I backlit the subject at pretty much every flash exposure I had from 1/128 - 1/1. The best one was the one above which retained some detail in the centre of the flower.

The end result certainly wasn't perfect, but was a good learning experience. I think what really worked against me was the thickness of the flower. Because it was pretty dense, the middle didn't get a lot of the backlight going through. If you look at Davis' flowers, they appear pretty thin and probably suit themselves to backlighting much better. The petals around the edge certainly captured the feeling that I wanted.

Another tack that I should have probably tried in this case was to light the flower from the front as well as the back. I think this would given me a lot more contrast to play with through the flower. As it is, I was pretty much stuck with a middle grey.

Anyway - am glad to be able to post something of interest. While the final shot isn't perfect, it is pleasing and has some level of potential. Hopefully by the end of the year I will revisit this style with a little more success.