Splish Splash, redux

I've been meaning to do this for a while. Then I did it. Then I was meaning to blog about it for a while. Which I'm doing now. Anyway, what I'm ranting about is my wish to try getting photos of high-speed splashes of water and milk. I've done this before, but I wanted to try again using the same lighting scheme as I did for my pictures of smoke. Although I don't have the setup shots here, I did take some, but you'll have to use your imagination for the moment. It's a very basic setup: a snooted Vivitar 285HV diagonally behind the water pointing towards it, and then opposite that, on the other side of the water, a piece of white card to reflect back some of the light. This gives a very 'low key' image, as the picture is outlined by light, but is mostly black. You'll see what I mean in a sec, if you don't already...

The actual taking of the photographs themselves is essentially a numbers game. I took about one thousand shots in total, as there is basically no way to tell whether a shot will be good or not until you look at the camera screen, and if you did that after every shot you'd go completely insane and throw the camera out the nearest window. So I put the camera on fine Jpeg and just let it fire away as I was making drops of various sizes. I'll outline quickly the process to get to this end result::

First you need to have a container for the water into which the drops will fall. A glass does the job just fine here. It's also a good idea to have another container (a shallow bowl, say) under the glass to catch all the water - saves cleaning up afterwards which is always good!

The next thing you need is to set up your camera. It needs to be on a tripod because you will be prefocusing and then switching to manual, and the camera cannot move while this is happening or else everything will be blurry. So set up your camera and tripod fairly low, so that the camera is pretty much in line with the top of your glass. I use a Nikon D50, which works pretty well, although I could have done with something with a faster frames-per-second. You definitely need a DSLR for this, as you will need to manually focus. I also used a macro lens, the Sigma 105 f2.8, but you don't necessarily need a dedicated macro lens - one with a decent close focusing distance will do.

Next you need to focus, and this can be pretty tedious. I used a pencil, which I stuck in the water, as close to the middle of the glass as I could. Half-press down your shutter, focusing your lens, then take a picture. Check the screen to make sure it's perfectly in focus. Here's my picture of a pencil:



You now need to switch to manual focus, and make sure you don't move the camera or the lens for the rest of the shoot. Although this doesn't mean everything will be in focus, as you won't get all the drops directly in the middle, it will make you have the best chance of getting a high proportion in focus. Which is the best you can hope for really.

Now on to taking the photos themselves. There are a huge amount of variables here, and getting any one of them wrong will probably spoil your photo. Hence the need to take so many. I'll go through any I can think of now.

Shutter speed: Pretty much irrelevant. My photos are lit entirely by flash. If I took a picture with the same settings and turned off the flash, there is nothing but darkness. So your shutter speed just needs to be fast enough to cut out all available light. When your photos are lit entirely by flash, they will be frozen perfectly, as the flash duration is at most about 1/4000, and I think at 1/16th power it's about 1/16000th of a second. So doing this is incredibly more efficient than trying to use shutter speed and ambient light to freeze the action. My shutter speed for most of these photos was somewhere between 1/15 and 1/60, chosen pretty much arbitrarily. If you use a very slow shutter speed, so that ambient light gets in, you might start to see a 'dragged' image - a clear image lit by the flash followed by a blurry one lit by the ambient. It might look cool, I haven't tried it yet!

Aperture: Pretty small. You want to give yourself the best chance to get in-focus pictures, so an aperture of at least f16 will allow you to be slightly off and still be in focus. It also helps to cut out all ambient light, which, as explained above, is what we want to do. A side-effect of this small aperture is that you get cool starburst type effects in your photos, like this one:



Grooveh huh?

Flash: External flash is fairly necessary here, although I suppose you could use on-camera flash to freeze the action if you wanted, but you'll probably end up with quite flat images. I use radio triggers to fire mine, from ebay. You'll probably want the flash on a low power, 1/16th or less, so that your recycle times will be high and your batteries won't die - again, so we can take as many photos as possible in a short space of time. The manual for my Vivitar 285HV says that after about 20 pops in quick sucession the flash needs a break for a couple of minutes, so keep that in mind before you abuse your flash. Don't blame me if it explodes!

The drops: Now comes the fun part. I tried various methods to get the best drops, and probably the best one was out of a small jug with a thin spout. I tried a dropper, but it's no good as you need a constant stream of drops rather than the ability to control a small number of drops. If you could set up some system that constantly and slowly drops liquid with no human intervention you would be laughing. Fill up your jug just a small bit and aim it, or whatever implement you've decided to use, at the centre of the glass of water and tilt it just enough so that drops come out. Try not to get impatient and tilt it loads, it's best to wait and hope the drops come! Once you have a steady stream, start shooting, and vary the height and distance from the centre to ensure that some of them are in focus. There's no point trying to anticipate the drops falling, just shoot as many as you can and hope for the best. After about twenty shots, check the back of your screen to see if any of them look good. Remember to zoom in to check for focus because if it's a tiny bit out it'll look crappy when you view it on your computer screen. Armed with the information you have now, alter your camera/drop maker settings until you get it just right.

When you're finished with water, try other stuff. Milk works really well, probably better, and it's amazing how different the drops look to the water ones. I also tried dropping objects in, but I didn't manage to catch any on camera. I might try it again though.

If anyone actually made it though that lot, here are some pictures I took from my latest drop-related adventure. I hope this is of use to someone.

Last of the Sunsets - honest

Well, I think I have milked two evenings in Spanish Point for just about all they were worth now. I had been disappointed that I hadn't taken any landscapes in a long time, as they were the reason I got interested in photography in the first place. Now I think that I need to take a break from them...

Little Water People

These are side-effects from a little experiment I tried, which I'll probably blog about tomorrow.







You had better be swooning in anticipation!

1..
2..
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Swoon!

Swoon, I say!

Strobist stuff

I just want to share a few things I have picked up from the wonderful Strobist blog. Mainly in the hope that they'll sink in to my head a bit better if I explain them to a third party - even if it is just the ether of the internets.

Strobist is a website dedicated to teaching people how to use off-camera lighting to make better pictures. I won't attempt to explain it fully, the website does it much better than I ever could - which is understandable, considering everything I've learned comes from there... Seriously, if you have any interest in off-camera lighting, go there and start reading. Even if you don't have an interest, you probably will after reading a couple of posts.

Anyway, one cool technique that I have been messing about with is using off-camera flash outdoors in broad daylight to supplement the sun. Why do this? Well, there are several reasons: to get rid of harsh shadows being the main one. I, however, wanted to use off-camera lighting in the bright light to make my photos 'pop' a little more, and also give some more interesting textures and shadow to my main subject. These first two pictures, while not exactly prize-winning material, have a pleasing '3d' type effect as a result of lighting them with an off-camera flash which has a home-made softbox attached, and at the same time underexposing the background to allow the main subject to stand out. Hopefully seeing the pictures will explain things a bit better:



Using off-camera lighting outdoors also allows me to keep detail in the sky and on my subject at the same time. Without it in this next picture, the sky would probably have been pure white, if I wanted the flowers to be properly exposed:





Lastly, meet my new model, Buddha. Unlike my usual models (friends and family), Buddha doesn't complain if I ask him to to be constantly photographed for twenty minutes. In fact, he spent the entire photo-shoot in a state of transcendental happiness, which did wonders for my self-esteem. Using off-camera light here also allowed Buddha to pop out from the background - I know it's a bit of a dull photo, but it's a cool technique.



Anyway, I know I haven't explained the how at all, but hopefully I've made a bit of a case for why. To summarise: Off-camera lighting is cool, go read Strobist.

Newsflash

We have entered into a strategic partnership going forward with LimerickBlogger.org, in an attempt to create a synergy with our overlapping demographics.

Well, OK, I asked them to put a link to my blog on their blog...

I've been reading The Limerick Blogger for quite a long time now, and it has the dubious honour of being my most-read subscription in Google Reader - according to the statistics I've read 108 posts over the last 30 days, which is 95% of everything that was posted on the site... It's a great mix of news and features, and there are some excellent photographers posting there too. I highly recommend it! The Limerick Blogger can be found here.

Have some pictures - click on the one below for a slideshow of a few more.

Backlog of photos, actually being able to go places, weather that isn't rain... Ah, it looks like Summer is finally here! And for the first time, I can drive. Just about...

Driving is funny. I have a feeling that me, and probably most others, are not actually naturally equipped with the skills necessary to operate such an incredibly complicated and dangerous machine. I really don't think that our designers, whoever they were, quite expected us to invent and run such things on a casual, day to day basis. Maybe the occasional superhero, but not everyday people like me. I often knock things, or drop trays. I can barely tie my shoelaces if I get up too early in the morning. I can't play snooker, and while I like car racing in computer games, I spend an irregular amount of time upside-down in a ditch. Hand-eye coordination is something that other people have.

Yet, here I am, hurtling down a road which was probably designed for a horse and cart and an old farmer with a bit of wheat in his mouth strolling alongside it. A road with barely enough room for two cars to pass. And what is giving me this super-human ability? It can only be fear. I spend most of the time with my hands clenched to the steering-wheel, knowing that the slightest movement at the wrong time could end in my propulsion out the windscreen at a speed that the Human Bullet would be envious of. So I don't swerve. And I continue.

So is that it? Are we all driving around in what amounts to (literally) a white-knuckle ride for a couple of hours a day, perhaps just to go to the shop and pick up a litre of milk? Maybe it has receded into the subconscious, but nothing really changes. The slightest mistake can result in catastrophe, whether we've been driving for months or years. Maybe I'll stick to bumper cars and computer games. But I was never really good at them either....

Anyway, after that, I feel I shouldn't talk much about my photos. I drove (myself!) to Kilkenny yesterday. The weather was lovely. I feel I know my camera now. Not the buttons and dials, I've known them for some time. Rather the end result: what will come out dull, what looks great now but will amount to little more than a speck lost in a sea of complication in the final photo. How depth-of-field will enhance or ruin my photos. So that's good, I suppose. Here's to a Summer of Photos.

Click on the picture below for a slideshow of some more, there's only about 10 or so...

Quick note about this picture. When I uploaded it to the computer last night I had a quick play around with the settings in Lightroom. When I took a look at it again today, I thought "geez, what was I thinking? Nobody will believe that was real, it's completely over saturated" So I clicked 'reset'. And nothing changed, it really was this ridiculous.

Purple Flower

Salad

Some salad. I've never tried food photography before.

Taking pictures of bugs is difficult. I think I'm getting used to the camera settings, and having off-camera flash makes it much easier (I'm not sure I'd manage at all without it) Even so, using manual flash settings, manual exposure and manual focus is quite a challenge for me!

The main problem though is composition - having only a second or so to take a picture means I pretty much take whatever I get. Anyway, here are a couple of pictures from earlier today. It's great what you can find in your back garden!

Must. Start. Blogging. Again

DISCLAIMER: The following post is long and probably boring. So don't be angry at me if you read it all and hate it.



Well, it has been the longest ever interval between posts in the short and troubled history of my blog. It's been so long, in fact, that I haven't the foggiest idea what a blog actually is anymore. I just have a strange compulsion to enter words into this here text-box and click on the 'publish post' button...

I need to ease myself into this slowly, like a patient recuperating after being unable to walk for some time. Nothing dramatic happened - I just got lazy and busy in equal measure, and found myself with less and less to say and no inclination to say it.

I think when I began, I had a purpose: to write something about my experiences with photography and a strange new place which I would remember over time. Then, returning home from Geneva, I moved in a new direction. I was a learner, and filled with the enthuiasm that one has when faced with a new and exciting field of knowledge, waiting to be explored. I learned new things about photography, which had a huge impact on my experiences of taking photos, on a daily basis. I wanted to share this with the world.

While I still have, of course, an enormous and infinite amount to learn, and still come across new stuff on a regular basis, the initial period of acquiring knowledge has slowed to a steady trickle - the dam burst, the flood washed over, and the regular river is all that flows now. This gave me less impetus to post. My enthusiasm for posting has subsided greatly. As I am now more-or-less comfortable with techniques, when I post a photo it is now, from my point of view, open to raw criticism. I can't dismiss criticism by excusing my faults by way of a lack of knowledge.* Now, my photos, for me this is, should be judged by how they are composed rather than if they are in focus. The quality of the lighting rather than the correct shutter speed and aperture. This is ever so slightly terrifying, but, there is more. I have a morbid fear of becoming self-absorbed. I have swore that this would not become a "what I did today..." type of blog. I could justify posting beforehand as it helped me to learn. Now that I have that bit more confidence, I find it more difficult to write, afraid of appearing arrogant. This blog is not now so much of a learning process for me, rather I wish to publish it for the outside world for the very first time. And that is were the real fear is.

Several photography-related things have happened to me since Christmas. There has been new gear: Two manual flashes and some radio triggers, with which I have been practising off-camera flash, mainly through the Strobist website. This has opened up a new and fascinating area for me, which I will hopefully write about here as I learn more. The publisher of the Strobist blog, David Hobby, has an infectious writing style. Read a couple of his posts and I almost guarauntee that you will, no matter how you felt before, agree that the coolest and most important thing that you can possibly do is to start using off-camera flash. I also bought a second hand Sigma 105mm f2.8 Macro. This is a lens that is so sharp and contrasty that is makes anything look good. It's astonishing, really. It has also opened me up to a new world, that which we do not see without really looking. The second thing that happened was getting short-listed in the amateur section of the World Photography Awards for this photo:



I didn't win anything, but my photo was one of 50 out of 25,000 entries. I was stunned, and although it was probably a one-off, I think I can ride on the encouragement it gave me for at least a couple of years.

Well, I said I would ease myself into this, and I have failed miserably. Before I finish, I'm just going to make a note of a couple of 'resolutions' which I will try and follow with regards to this blog:

1) I will try and post more than once a week.

2) If I don't have anything to say, or time to say it, I will still post photos if I have taken any.

3) Fear of embarrassment/appearing arrogant/self-absorbed will not put me off.

That'll do.

Here are some photos of the last couple of months, in no particular order:

Nothing on the top but a bucket and a mop...

After spending a couple of glorious days in Kerry - soaking up the only sun of the entire frickin' summer, I'm increasingly convinced that I have reached a potentially dangerous plateau with my photography. The last year has been largely exhilarating; learning new techniques, in the camera and afterwards in post-processing, as well as rules and tips about exposure and composition. And it worked. I'm not an amazing photograper - I probably never will be - but I'm almost immeasurably better than I was this time last year. Looking back at old photos is (sometimes painful!) proof of this.

However, the whiny emo at the back of my mind is finally telling me that my best stuff may be behind me; I reached my level and this is where it stays, ridiculous though this may be for somebody who has only taken photography seriously for less than a year. I've spoken previously about how my will to learn new techniques drives me forward and motivates me to take photos, and even though I view this as to some extent negative, an even worse scenario is one where I don't feel I can learn anything at all.

Perhaps I've just reached a stage where I am a technically competent photographer. Perhaps it is time to learn other, more important skills; how to think creatively and how to 'see' a photo before putting your eye to the viewfinder. I'm also extremely interested in the other side of the lens - controlling lighting and in some cases subjects. Skills I certainly don't possess at the moment. While I realise I have much to learn, I have a feeling I'll never get that concrete satisfaction you get from seeing an obvious, indisputable improvement in your work.

Gear is another issue; Somehow I feel that acquiring new stuff could be the key to moving off this plateau and back to an upwards slope in my photography, despite the irrational argument here. I have an almost painful lust for an ultra wide-angle lens (the Sigma 10-20mm), and although I try not to, I often think that it will be the answer to all my problems. Which it won't be. As it could be a long, long time before I can afford even that inexpensive piece of kit, I'll have to make do with what I have and not let it make me complacent and lazy.

After that musing, I should probably post some photos (the first time I post something without photos I will probably delete this blog - I'm bad enough as it is) As I mentioned above, I was in Kerry for a few days last week; one of the most glorious places on earth in good weather: one of the most miserable in bad. Luckily we had the former. Despite the weather, I came away with fewer 'keepers' than I was hoping for. It's difficult to make time for photography when you go away with one other person, but that's a subject for another day... Without further ado, some photos. Click on the image below to go to a slideshow of my favourite images.

Moment of Clarity

I was going to write a post with a couple of pictures - nothing special, but mainly as a celebration of how I had overcome a (fairly) lengthy period of photographer's block. But, I just had a slight epiphany while out smoking a cigarette so I felt I should commit it to virtual paper while it's still fresh in my mind.

I was thinking, as one does, about the reasons why I enjoy photography, and came to a somewhat depressing realisation, which may or may not be entirely true but certainly made me think. I've noticed a certain pattern in the way I take photos and my motiviation behind them. I spend a lot of time looking at photos I admire, and trying to emulate the ideas and techniques behind them. This I have no problem with - I think it's something everyone does and it is probably the best way to learn the craft.

My epiphany revolves around the way I do this, however. As I try to emulate these pictures, I will often try it out as a 'proof of concept'; I will attempt to take a certain type of picture, and even when I don't entirely succeed I am happy if I think that I have got the basic technique right and with a little more effort, or perhaps the right conditions, I could take a picture 'just as good' as the one which I am copying.

I think this probably started with those long-exposure water shots. I always wondered how they were done before I bought a digital SLR and was using a completely automatic point and shoot camera, and it was one of the first techniques I tried to copy when I bought my Nikon D50. I had some success, then read up on filters and bought a cokin filter set with an ND filter. Even though I haven't taken any photo of flowing water that I am particularly happy with, I am satisifed that I have the technique mastered, and unfortunately this has subconsciously made me think that this is ok - it's as if just believing that I could take a picture as good as one I have seen somewhere that impressed me is all I need to do. The picture itself has never materialised and up until now this didn't really bother me.

If the above situation was a one-off, then perhaps I wouldn't be worrying so much and writing a blog post whining about it, but the more I think about it the more examples I can think of. The following picture is a particularly good example:

As you can probably see, this picture is nothing special. However, it's perfectly indicative of my problem. I was always interested in taking photos of star lines, having looked at and admired many photos of the night sky with amazing circles of stars taken over a period of a couple of hours. So I researched what I needed - a tripod, a full battery, a wide-ish angle lens, a light-pollution free sky. I tried a couple of times with little success; I didn't realise just how bright the sky around cities is, or how much of a drain on batteries long exposures are. Finally, I was somewhere dark enough to take a picture, and I tried it out. I left the shutter for about half and hour or so, and got this. It wasn't very good, but I thought that if I had just left the shutter open longer, and perhaps composed the picture a little bit better, then I could have taken a picture just as good as those I admired. Again, unfortunately, the picture never materialised. This was enough.

Again, my infra-red pictures followed this pattern. I looked at photos. I read up on filters, which lenses didn't produce hotspots, and how to post-process the pictures. Eventually, after many failed attempts, I finally produced some pictures like these, which I blogged about in my last post:

I'm repeating myself now, but again, I wasn't happy with the picture as a whole - I don't think it has anything special. But, yes you guessed it - I was happy enough to leave it at that.

It's the same for others. Those ubiqutous long-exposure, sunset-and-rocks photos, the photos of a huge sun reflecting on the water, the list goes on. It's hard to believe that I've only just realised what I have been doing all this time, and worryingly, if this trend continues, I'll run out of techniques to try and stop having fun (I can't deny that I enjoy what I do - no matter what the problems are with it) That would be a disaster.

So I'm drawing a line in the sand. I'm going to take an infra-red picture that is as strong compositionally as it is technically. I'll do the same for good ol' sunset-water-and-rocks, and I'll take a well-composed picture of proper circular star lines. This post will remind me why I'm doing it, and I won't rest until I've posted at least one good example of everything I've tried. I've 'mastered' the proof of concept, now it's time for the real thing.

Spanish Point

Spanish Point is becoming a bit of a regular photography subject for me, but it's got more to do with the ease of getting there than the landscape itself. This time I was there for the hilariously titled "Willie Week", a week-long festival of traditional Irish music and hard drinking. It's OK, but it definitely doesn't get my heart racing. Here's a couple that I took earlier in the week:

And that was that. I'm starting to realise that there is something really obviously lacking in my photos, and that is people. I have a massive problem taking pictures of people; they always seem to come out wrong, no matter how hard I try. Taking landscapes is easy - I can experiment with different settings and take a lot of pictures of the same scene, especially with digital.

As I become more picky about the quality of light and time of day I take these pictures, that time is shrinking but it's still aeons compared to just one or two chances you get with a portrait. For some reason I find it incredibly hard. Just having one or two goes to take a pictures isn't enough for me yet, and I've got a bad feeling it's going to be a long time before it is. I've read at least as much, if not more about portrait photography as I have about landscape in an attempt to rectify my problem, and while I can (I think) see my landscape stuff going on at least a slow upward curve, the same is not true for the former.

This didn't really bother me up until now. I didn't want to photograph people; our beauty is nothing compared to nature's, for me at least. But I'm starting to realise that pictures need something - something to draw people to, with which they can relate to, and that in many cases is other people; so many of the famous photographs that my limited knowledge is aware of contain people's faces, expressions of joy, sorrow and anger are universal and will nine times out of ten affect us as a viewer so much more than a beautiful but vacant landscape scene.

Maybe someday it'll come, or maybe someday it won't. Perhaps I'll always photograph nature and stay away from people. And I might be happy - and get over this current disappointment. There's something a bit galling about looking back on years of photography in the future and not having one nice picture of people I know!

Salthill Airshow 2007

It's been a while since this has happened but it was definitely one of my favourite photography outings of the year, with probably the best haul of decent photos in one day I've ever had. - I probably wouldn't have enjoyed if it wasn't for the opportunity to take photos, not for moral reasons or anything like that, it's just that the spectacle seemed surprisingly mundane despite the best efforts of the obviously talented performers. Even though I've always been delighted by such things as planes and other boy-in-man's-body sort of stuff, I found myself strangely bored and unmoved by the display. Still though, taking photos was hugely enjoyable; another re-affirmation of the reasons why I photograph and why I'm continually interested and enjoy it. (Well that sentence was a bit of a meal, wasn't it?)
I was worried about the performance of my humble camera - I've tried to take pictures of fast-moving subjects in the air before this (mainly birds), and to say that the results were underwhelming would be a massive understatement - I've never got a decent picture of a bird in flight, a type of photo I mistakingly thought I would be churning out on a regular basis when I first bought by DSLR. However, I experimented a bit with the settings on the camera and using a combination of 'closest subject' focus, and continual rather than servo focus mode I managed to catch the planes flying by more often than not.

And that was probably the most technical sentence I'll ever write, long-winded and badly structured as it was.

The event itself could have been a photography nightmare; constantly changing light, thunderous downpours and drab, cloudy skies could have ruined both my photos and more importantly, my camera. Luckily there were periods of sun in between the waves of rain, and having dramatic clouds rather than a clear blue sky actually helped matters rather than hinder. As I wrote above, I was immensely happy with my crop of photos, and here they are: