Project 365 - Day 38 - Planetary Experiment

So I tried something tonight.  Not entirely what I wanted to do, but it is an interesting shot.

My idea was to try and get a shot that looked like a planet, complete with stars behind it.  I took a Lindt truffle and stuck a wooden skewer in it.  Then, I made it sit horizontally facing the camera.  I put a piece of dark grey construction paper in behind and poked holes through the paper.

Using my pocketwizards, I put a flash about 6 feet behind the background.  This allowed light to come through the paper, and also spill out over top of the truffle-planet.

It was a pretty good first shot.  I think that in future, a real black background is needed and possibly a different colour truffle.  The dimple in the truffle kind of makes it look like the death star, so maybe I'll model that instead next time.

It was definitely a good learning experience, trying different things and seeing what the results give you, then adjusting.

Here's the shot:

And, of course, the setup shot:

The paper towel behind the background paper was to diffuse the light from the flash - which is over on the other counter facing the setup.  No extra light hits the lens, but the flash did bounce off the wall behind the camera and light the truffle slightly.

Project 365 - Day 37 - Shooting at night

The one thing about this time of year is I get to work when it's still dark and I leave when it's getting dark.  So there is really only a small amount of time available for shooting if you don't want to shoot at night.  Fortunately, I have no issue shooting at night.

This evening, I went back down to Bronte Harbour.  (Click here for the shot that day).  I have a feeling I will be back to this particular spot a lot over the coming months - it's a very nice area.

My first idea was to get a shot of the lighthouse with the lights along the walkway.  Got this shot, and it was in my back pocket as a usable shot.

Then I happened upon this really cool tree ( I love shooting trees) that had a red ribbon on it.  So, up goes the tripod and on goes the camera.

The shot is at ISO400, 8s at f/7.1  I set up the shot, and it turned out really flat.  The tree was underexposed, but there was no depth to the scene.  So I took out my speedlight and set it to 1/8 power.  Then I put the timer on the camera, and when the shutter opened, I ran around the tree popping the flash as I went.  This gave depth to the tree and also created the look like it is slightly frosted.

Take a look at the sky.  No touchup on the blue on the sky.  This was out of camera.

Here's the shot:

Project 365 - Day 36 - The secret ingredient

So I toyed with the idea of not telling you what today's subject is, and I still may not do that.  It's really up in the air right now.  What you can know is this is another macro shot.  I really enjoy macro photography - as you may or may not have noticed.

This shot is again using my 60mm lens with all three Kenko extension tubes.  The Kenko tubes allow my 60mm to auto-focus, but for something like this you really have to focus manually.

This shot is 30s at f45.  I lit it using an LED flashlight off to one side.  It turned out better than I had hoped, as the cold LED light adds to the total effect.

Here's the shot...

 

No crop on this today, basically straight out of the camera.  I did clone out some dust from the subject in one or two spots, but for the most part this was as I shot it.

I will post the setup shot later ... :-)

 

Project 365 - Day 35 - Starry Starry Night

On the way home from the Oakville Photography Club I noticed that the stars were out.  We do get some stars in Oakville, contrary to popular belief.  In my area, the light noise is not as prevalent as some, so you can make out some of the stars from time to time.

So I broke out my camera and set it up with a 30 second shutter.  The result is pretty good, not exactly what I envisioned.  The sky is blue, because of the light noise. 

This is definately a shot I will attempt again on a clear, possibly much warmer night ...

Here's the shot:

The shutter was a bit long as some of the stars are actually showing slight trails.

Project 365 - Day 34 - Superbowl Chili

So it's Superbowl Sunday, and the Ravens won.  It was a great second half - well the second part of the second half anyway.  After the power outage, the 'Niners really started to pick up the pace.

But aside from that, it was a chance for me to make my annual Superbowl Chili.  If you saw my blog yesterday, you saw the peppers that would eventually be part of today's Chili.  So this is what the pile of peppers became - once you add all the other veggies and the beans and the meat.

Romano beans, Red Kidney beans, black beans, tomatoes, yellow peppers, orange peppers, green peppers, red peppers, roasted red peppers, hot peppers, mushrooms, ground beef and hot Italian sausage.  It was good.  Made enough to freeze and also enough for lunches for a week!  So if you work with me, stay out of my office this week... :-)

Project 365 - Day 33 - Superbowl Weekend

It's that time of year again.  No, not Groundhog day, but Superbowl Saturday.  I know, the game is not until tomorrow, but the preparation starts today.

Today, we start making the chili that will cook for ~ 24 hours before being served.  It's tradition.  I have made some minor changes over the years, but for the most part it is unchanged from the original recipe.

This year is no exception.  When we went to Metro to get the ingredients today, I found that the yellow, orange and red peppers were the same price as the green peppers.  Usually they are double the price, but now today.  So I got two of each colour for the chili.   ( I make a big batch and freeze almost half of it to enjoy later).

As I was cutting up the peppers, I noticed how well the colours worked together.  So I tossed all the cut up pieces into a bowl, arranged some of the pieces so the best ones were out front, and of course I grabbed my camera.

Here's today's shot.  No speedlight today, I actually lit it with a camp lantern behind the bowl.  Brodie was close by as he always is when I am cutting up peppers, and I didn't want to start flashing him.  He did, however, hear the shutter and freak out just the same.  At least I tried.

Here's today's shot.

I lowered the luminance on the yellow a bit to turn down those peppers.  But the rest of it is unchanged.  The red peppers were exceptional in colour, sometimes they are a little orange. 

60mm macro lens 0.6s at f8.

Project 365 - Day 32 - Memories of Small Product Photography

Sometimes I like to look back on assignments that I did for my various photography classes and think about how I could have done them differently - better even.  In class you have a 3 hour window to get your shot right, and you are working with a group as well so it's difficult.  In my case, the group I was working with worked really well together and we usually all got our shot.  Some of us would go home and re-shoot, but for the most part we used our time properly.

Today's shot brings me back to the first assignment for Small Product Photography with Bob Hundert at Sheridan College in Oakville.  If you are interested in learning more about photography, I recommend the Sheridan program - there are a lot of good instructors there and as it is night school everyone is pretty serious about it.  You learn so much from shooting with other people.

Ok, back on track.  The first assignment was to "shoot a diet coke can".  The idea is that the diet coke can is silver, and silver is a mirror, so you were to set up your lights in such a way that you didn't see any of the gear or photographers in the reflection on the can.  Simple right?  Not.  You can see my final shot here.

When all was said and done, Bob got 28 pictures of a diet coke can.  28 of the SAME picture. 

So how could we have done this differently? Well, first of all get rid of the silver can.  Yeah, I know, the whole point was to make you shoot the silver can so that you would learn about reflections.  But that was a rule, and we all know that in Photography rules are made to be broken!  :-)

Bring in the Coke Zero can.  And instead of a white backdrop, make the background black.  Use one off camera light source and a speedlight with a orange gel over it to balance the colour of the light (or more specifically the temperature of the light).  Bingo, you get this shot.

Now, I will give you that this is not the shot that Bob was looking for.  I will also say that I probably would have received an F, or an incomplete on this particular shot.  But it sure is a heck of a lot better looking than the original shot of the diet coke can!  :-)