Fire & Water

[Loose Canon]

A concept I’m thinking about playing with for the next few days.

I guess I’ll either burn the place down tossing lit candles around or flood the place with water. Maybe they’ll cancel each other out, I’ll realize it is a huge PITA trying to keep wet candles lit, call it a day and go have a cocktail!

F/11, 1/200 sec., ISO 2000, two gelled lights fired. I’m going to give myself a very harsh critique on this one. If I can get the time I’m going to write up said and post it here. Please feel free to do the same should the urge dictate.

[Shadowman]

Looks pretty good so far, well worth exploring further, safely of course!

[Loose Canon]

Thanks John!

I'm on it!

[IzzieK]

Did you just dropped that little tinnie weenie candle on top of a wet table? Well! I've been strangely staring at it trying to confuse myself as to the why and wherefore of the splash...and of course the upward going bubbles...interesting to say the least, but very hard to take a shot of without fear of hearing the firetrucks passing by and you hoping it will not stop at your place...and hopefully that bucket has sand in it instead of water??? (now I am rambling...)

Nice shot by the way...

[Loose Canon]

Thanks Izzie.

I dropped the candle into a pool of water rather than a wet table. The "bubbles" are drops of water.

My step son is a fireman. They are on standby and I have them on speed dial!

[bnnrcn]

This is a great shot Terry, congratulations

[Benjy]

Well thought out Terry,a belter...

[Mike Buckley]

I like it as a weird composition because it's, well, weird. I would never have known there is water in it if it weren't for the title to your thread.

You really do need to unhook the fire extinguisher's hose to make it immediately ready.

[Rebel]

Great idea and good shot

[Loose Canon]

You really do need to unhook the fire extinguisher's hose to make it immediately ready.

I doubt it will help sine the extinguisher isn't charged up anyway! (had to use it last fire I sat)

Hey thanks guys. I appreciate the comments.

Here are a couple of my thoughts on the matter.


Self Critique-

Well Terry, another fine mess you’ve gotten yourself into! I would think you would have finally learned your lesson.

The concept is cool. But the execution must be horrifying. How you thought you might by any stretch pull this off is beyond me. But since you seem to have a strange desire to self-destruct please allow me to make a few suggestions.

It’s a pretty decent shot, but your lighting is off. You said you used two lights but their positioning is off. Your frame left light is too far forward. Not horribly so but a slight repositioning might be better because I know you too well and I know you don’t like that hot area. Might work if you reduced the radiation on it (dropped the power level) or maybe feathered it a bit because you still need a little light getting around toward the front of the candle. Maybe a gold reflector directly in front might help and be in line with your gelling. Since you were firing your lights at lowest possible power to get the shortest t.1 duration may I suggest that you get it together and drop your ISO a tad and re-visit your exposure as pertains to your lights? I mean really? Do you need 13, 500 sec. duration?

And since I mentioned that, maybe you really do because the splash isn’t really as in focus as you would like. What happened there anyway? You should have had a DoF of around 0.8’ (and change)shooting @ F/11 and at approx. 5’. Your flash duration was more than adequate to stop splash. Probably just blew your focus again? If I have told you once I have told you a million times to get your dang glasses checked. But do you listen??? For crying out loud go to Live View, manually focus at high magnification, and take your lens off AF. Since you always do this I couldn’t say where you screwed up this time!

On the up side I like the reflection you got off the surface of the water. How many times did you have to do this to get this particular shot? Must’ve been a lot to get the timing happening. I know this is kind of a random “try-and-try-again” thing no matter how much you pay attention to the timing. And how did you manage to shoot with a black pool?

How did you know you could light this scene and still get the candle flame at this shutter speed? I checked and if you shot in a dark studio with no flash @ F/11 you would have had to have a shutter of somewhere around 1/10th or something. For someone who is lucky to get their shoes on the right feet every morning you sometimes surprise me!

[Barnwell]

Well, apart from the first line above, the next 8 are well written so I will second all that above not knowing of course what it all means.

[Mike Buckley]

For someone who is lucky to get their shoes on the right feet every morning

You have more than one right foot? How many?

Without going into the considerable detail that you went into, my primary objection has to do with the blown highlights. If they're not actually blown, and my guess knowing your attention to detail is that they aren't, they're lacking detail that would be provided by a greater range of tonality.

You might be overly obsessed about the other details, not that there is actually a difference between being overly obsessed and being obsessed. On the other hand, anything worth doing is worth doing to excess, so keep up the great work!

[Loose Canon]

Agreed Mike!

Evil Terry (who critiqued this shot) mentioned this to his Evil Twin, the other Evil Terry (there is no "Good" Terry), as regards that hot spot that neither of them really liked so much!

ET-2 (critiquer) mentioned that ET-1 (shooter) might have done better with the lighting. No doubt about that and that was a biggie. A lot of the issues the ET's mentioned could have been mitigated with more effective lighting. No excuse for that in the studio because you have total control.

There were some other important and valid issues mentioned. Both ET-1 through 2, being obsessively obsessed with their obsession can’t let those go. The shot was the best of the session (which sucks) so what to do?

Well, either trash it or use it as an example, critique it, discuss the solutions, and re-fire! Its an okay shot but not a portfolio dweller as is.

But, and this is the cool “but”, next time out it might be a portfolio dweller because of this creative/critical process. And that’s why we are all here for each other!

By the way? I can supply all lighting bts shots and “how was it attempted” answers on request for further discussion should anyone desire.

I have three right feet! You should see me cutting the rug on the dance floor!

[IzzieK]

Jake the Peg by Rolf Harris... he's got three legs.

https://www.google.com/webhp?sourcei...e%20peg%20song

Anyway, yes please...it will be nice to know how you shoot this one. You are one famous one for water shots and effects so you might as well let us know your method here too, like others...

Thanks...

[IzzieK]

Jake the Peg by Rolf Harris... he's got three legs.

https://www.google.com/webhp?sourcei...e%20peg%20song

Anyway, yes please...it will be nice to know how you shoot this one. You are one famous one for water shots and effects so you might as well let us know your method here too, like others...

Thanks...

[Loose Canon]

Okay Izzie, looks like I lied! I didn’t take any bts shots on this one. As I recall I wasn’t as happy with it as I would have liked and at the point I got this shot I was ready to re-set the stage for another try. Instead of doing that I took the shot into post and set the stage later for a different approach entirely.

But I can supply a diagram in lieu so let’s break it down:



A couple of clarifications regarding the diagram. I did not use a sweeping background as pictured. My background went straight to the floor and stopped there.

The thingie in the middle is my splash pool. I used a fire pit I have, which is essentially a large bowl on legs. I lined it with a black trash bag I cut apart and filled it with water.

It took all of two seconds to realize what a huge PITA this was going to be to get a shot of a lit candle dropping into the water, which was what I thought I could do. So I went to plan B! The candle floats so I floated it, lit it, and shot it several times with the intention of compositing the flame only to an unlit candle.

Then it was just a matter of dropping the candle into the pool and shooting it doing so.

Now this is critical and you can’t get the shot (in a studio anyway) without observing this caveat.

You absolutely must use speedlights or studio strobes that provide a short enough flash duration to freeze the splash. The shutter alone won’t do it at your camera’s sync speed.

You will need, at a minimum, a t.1 flash duration of 1/8000 sec. for studio strobes or set your speedlights to 1/16 – 1/8 max. power manually. Few studio strobes are capable of this duration. All of your lights must be set to at least this setting or the shot will fail. In other words if you have three lights and two set short enough, but one isn’t, the slow light will cause the splash to have motion blur.

You could, however, shoot this in bright sunlight such that you can get a fast enough shutter speed to freeze the splash. I like the studio because I have complete control of my lighting.

Be patient because unless you get lucky or are way better at this than me it will take a lot of tries to get the shot you are after! Pay close attention to how you drop the candle and from how high. Experiment to get the results you are after.

Shoot wide for cropping. You never know what shape or how large of splash you will produce or how much of it you may want to keep in post.

I shoot with a wireless trigger for my camera so I can do all of this myself and tethered to a laptop so I can immediately check to see if I am getting what I want.

Note: The camera left light produced the hot spot on the candle I wasn't happy with. It should have been re-positioned.

Post production for my shots of this nature is very involved. I get down and dirty at the pixel level for a lot of the retouching. This is very important for me to try to get the “look” I am after. It is also another topic!

Finally, have fun making a mess!

[purplehaze]

I love reading about your process as much as I love seeing the results, Terry. And the self-critique is hoot for being so familiar. It doesn't matter what level one is shooting at; the struggles are ultimately the same.

[IzzieK]

Thank you, Terry for the detailed explanation...one thing I noticed in my mistakes is your bolded caveat...you seemed to have read my mind about how fast I should have my shutter speed at. With the snow around and the wind sometimes going like a squall was also one of the culprit I must be careful of. My deck is much wider than my little studio upstairs and hubby "owns" the garage so no go there as no one is allowed to touch his "precious" car. I also have the firepit that you were talking about. Depending the wind condition during the week, I might be able to take a shot of water dropping different kind of things on the firepit...like I had been doing a few months back without success (yet.) At the time I was using a large vase which is actually a smallist fish tank I got at PetSmart to drop cherries and strawberries -- with lots of towels of course -- on a round table in the kitchenette and making so much mess that I have to crate the dogs up so I can work in peace. I had not been satisfied with the speed I was shooting at (yet). Now that you have explained your method here, I give it a try...or maybe it is my PP that sucks...who knows? I like water experiments...the fun itself is doing it, while the PP is so much a hair pulling experience. ha!

Thanks again, Terry for the tips...

[Loose Canon]

Thank you, Terry for the detailed explanation...one thing I noticed in my mistakes is your bolded caveat...you seemed to have read my mind about how fast I should have my shutter speed at.

Izzie I may be misunderstanding but unless you can get an insanely fast shutter speed (which means not using a speedlight) with ambient light or bright enough continuous light, your shutter speed will not stop the action. The flash, and more to the point, the flash duration will stop the action for you. Remember, the t.1 time I am referring to is a measurement of the flash duration, not a measurement of shutter speed.

When using a flash, set your camera to its max sync speed and leave it there. Mine is 1/200th for example. This speed will not stop the action, the flash will.

Take a shot of your scene without firing your flash. This is important. You should get a black frame. If you don’t get a black frame you have way too much ambient light intruding. If you are getting ambient light in your scene it will cause your shots to blur.

If you get a black frame then you know when you fire your speedlight then the speedlight will be the only thing lighting the scene. That’s what you want.

The lower the power you set your speedlight, the shorter the flash duration will be. This short duration will stop the motion. So the low power setting (1/16-1/8 power on a speedlight) is a must. If that is not enough light you will have to crank up your ISO until it looks good. You could also open your aperture but you have to be careful you have enough depth of field or again you’ll get blurring.