Day 312 - Adding a Bit of Colour

After a couple of days of being quite unwell and skipping the shot of the day, I decided to try something really quick and easy - a subject isolated on a white background.  I had tried this a few days ago, and because I had been lazy, I had completely omitted the background flash.  i wanted to try this again this evening because I didn't really have anything else thought out.

I used two flashes on either side of the subject - the flash to the left of camera was bounced off the ceiling at a 60 deg angle, powered down to 1/4 and zoomed out to the widest at 24 mm to enable the light to wrap around the subject.

The one to the right was pointed directly at the background and I pushed down the head as much as it would go, so the cereal outside the bowl would get some of the bounced light as well.

I didn't really play around too much with different compositions, as I'm still pretty low on energy, but I did want to keep going on with the 365, so I can just get this over with.

I think the image was a tad overexposed at the sides of the bowl where I've lost a little bit of detail.  Oh well!

Day 293 - Oil Droplets

I took these shots the day before yesterday but had too much on my plate to post.  I tried this from my "to-do" list, and I am NOT satisfied by the way they turned out.  I was hoping for a sharper focus, but I had very little time to spend on perfecting this.  Therefore, this idea remains on my to-do list to retry in the future.

The first shot turned out OK, but the second one almost got there, but missed! :(





Once I've perfected this, I will post a how-to.  I plan to do this again soon, so stay tuned.

Day 228 - Relearning the Alphabet: The Letter "G"

"G" for Glowing

I was going to do "H", but I know that, that's an idea I have already got on my to-do list.  That's saved for a day when I totally run out of ideas.  Thus, today was the day of the "G".

The image was shot with the 90 mm lens, f/4.0, 1.3s, ISO 100, AWB, Manual Mode.  Click on the picture to enlarge the image - you will see the glow in the bulbs.

Day 211 - Something Different

Ok, I won't bore you to tears with the smoke stuff today.  If I allow myself to be honest, I didn't get a chance to do any photography.  I actually had an appointment for a therapy session and spent much longer than I had planned.  Public transport is not always the most reliable, so obviously everything got delayed.

I took this opportunity to post a couple of old shots I had wanted to post a while ago, but never got around to it.  I was trying bokeh of my christmas tree and this is was what I got.

It's really very simple to get these types of light shots - you just have to turn the focussing ring on the lens till the lights are all out of focus and the shape/size you want your bokeh to be.  I took some pains to turn them into perfect circles.  These shots were made with the 90 mm lens I have.  

And if you're worried about the kind of therapy I'm undergoing (I can always pretend you're worried, of course), it's nothing serious - it's called retail therapy! :=p  I spent more than an hour looking for purses and silver cake decorations and returned with an armload of stuff that I semi-need, or don't need; including some jelly beans and fruit pearls!  Of course I didn't get what I went to get!  Go, figure!

Day 204 - Week of Lights - Slacking Off!

I was that close to not doing my shot of the day!  But then I roused myself out of my tired and benumbed state and took precisely four shots.  I definitely like the red version over the blue or yellow ones.

Any guess what this might be? ;-) 

Day 202 - Week of Lights - T for Tired!

Thanks to those who visited my blog recently and started following my ramblings.  I hope to keep this interesting and informative with all my quirky experiments with different things.  Please feel free to comment and give me feedback, so I can keep improving.

I have decided on the theme of the week and I think I'll try to keep this theme (of themes) going on for as long as I can do it.   As you've already gauged from the title, the theme is Lights for this week - yes the iPod app I used on the marble yesterday.  

And yes, I truly am tired.  Went shopping after work and was stuck in traffic for over an hour.  

I used Tic Tac (and in case you're wondering, I ate them all once I finished with my shoot) and put them on the white foam core board I have.  

What started off as this (grayish because of the fluorescent lighting despite the CWB):

Turned into this:

And then, this:

... with the lights out.

If you look carefully, the blue image has quite a bit of vignetting (dark edges), but the bottom one doesn't have as much.  That's because, the light from the iPod (I was holding it steady just above the tic-tacs) in the blue image falls off pretty close to the subject.  

However, noticing the dark edges, I tried to eliminate that by moving the light around to the corners as much as possible, without throwing the "T" into too much shade.  And by moving, I mean literally moving the light all over the subject while the shutter was open, like I'm painting the subject with the light. 

Upon reviewing, I found that the pink one still had quite a bit of dark edge in the top left corner, whereas the bottom right corner was pretty well lit.  

I guess I will have to work on this again soon.  The small source of light is the reason this is happening.  I might try keeping the overhead light on the next time around, and see what results it yields.

Day 201 - Week of Lights - Floating Marble

Electric coloured floating marbles!  If you're interested in finding out how I got the marbles to float, check out my Tutorials page.  Also, do check back my tutorials from time to time as I add more photography adventures to it.

Have fun floating! 

Day 195 - Macro week - Pinned!

It was pretty interesting trying to get the push pins to stay put and not rock and roll around the board (no pun intended because the board was balanced precariously on the edge of the table and a slight movement from me made it unstable!).

I took these shots in extremely low light - the only light filtering through was the fluorescent from my kitchen.  I adjusted the white balance and tone in post.

I hadn't realized how much dust the pins had had on the surface, till I looked at them much later on the LCD.  Oh, the joys of negligence!  I had to clean up my act and retouch them to remove the dust of course.  I could have spent a tenth or less of the time if I had just remembered to give them a polish first!  Lesson learned!

90 mm, f/32, 30s, ISO 100, Aperture Priority

90 mm, f/32, 30s, ISO 100, Aperture Priority

I tried a few other exposures and apertures, but I didn't quite like the results.  The only difference between these two shots is the composition, and nothing else.

Day 141 - Sheaves of leaves

Ok, so I'm cheating.  I didn't have time after my project submission to go out shooting this evening and I had these photos from yesterday that I wanted to try my hand at Photoshopping.

So, I learned a new thing today - selective colouring.  Pretty simple, but takes a lot of patience.  I picked a random shot to try it, but on second thoughts, I could have used a better image.  Nevertheless, the results were encouraging.

The rest of the frames are just regular stuff.. nothing to write home about, because I'm not looking forward to seeing these leaves lying on the forest floor. Why, oh why, can't summer last forever?  :(

 

I tried a little B&W with this not because I didn't like the colours, but I wanted to check out the tonality and I have to admit I like what I saw. 

Day 65 - Handmade for a friend

Didn't have a lot of time to post yesterday, but I did take a quick snapshot of the little tray and spice bottles I decorated for a friend.

This is a traditional Indian design I thought would work really well for gifting Indian spices.  This was my first time working with beads, but I'm glad it turned out half-decent.  When you have no other option, then your own creations will somehow have to do.  The tray and other supplies were procured from a craft shop and I had to paint the tray and do the rest of the stuff from scratch.

Not a great photo, but after hours of back-breaking work on this, I had no energy for photos.