Smoke Photography

I mentioned earlier that I might try to follow this smoke photography tutorial, and with the absence of anything better to do, and rain outside, I actually did just that.

Usually when I try to do anything with off-camera lighting it's enjoyable, but often incredibly frustrating. Trying to take self-portraits for example, can drive you slightly round the bend - trying to get the lights, exposure and focus right is difficult and a little bit annoying. It's the same with water drops. Focus and timing are a pain.

However, doing this smoke photography has been one of the easiest and most enjoyable and rewarding half-hours in quite some time. Everything actually worked straight away, and I got results that look somewhat like those in the tutorial. Although I didn't have any of the required equipment, I was easily able to find random stuff around the house to fill in. Anyway, here are a couple of my favourite shots. At the end I have posted a couple of pictures of the set-up. I would explain further how I did everything, but the tutorial above does a much better job than I could.





These two have been altered somewhat: I inverted the colours in the GIMP and messed around with the colour balance a bit. The rest are pretty much out of the camera with some curves adjustments made.









Here is the setup. I used a black t-shirt hung over a chair, a cardboard box snoot, a black page of a calendar as a reflector, and yes, that is a tin of sardines holding up the incense. The second photo is a wide-angle shot with the flash firing, to give an idea of what it does. Notice in particular how the snoot stops any light from reaching the black t-shirt in the background.





All in all, that was extremely satisfying. I highly recommend giving it a go, you probably won't have to buy any new equipment and you won't have to leave your house!

This week, I 'ave been mostly reading:

Here are some interesting articles out of the 400 I have read in the past week, according to Google Reader:

What does the rise of video mean to you?

A very long video by photographer Joe McNally speaking at Google.

The Business of Rock and Roll Photography

Black and White presets and Web Galleries for Lightroom.

Two articles about originality by Chase Jarvis.

Joe McNally talking about some of his favourite photographers, with some great links.

Tutorial on smoke photography - I might actually give this a go later on, stay tuned!

Tag Galaxy: A very cool way to browse pictures in Flickr etc. - you have to take a look at this.

Guy who took a polaroid every day for about 20 years.

'Behind the Lens' with Steve Winter, who explains the logistics of a National Geographic shoot.


I know it might be seem a bit arrogant that little-old-me, by just reposting links of other people's stuff, sometimes second or third hand, could become a valid disseminator of news, but personally I love finding stories from random sources, so hopefully there are others out there who might also enjoy this too. I think that the more cool stories spread, the better.

Enjoy ze weekend!

The Sigma 70-300 f4 - 5.6, or Why I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Crappy Zoom

One the few purchases was the Sigma 70-300mm f4 - 5.6 Macro. I was still a naive, wet-behind-the-ears photographer, and I thought that a 'zoom lens', even one worth less than €200, would enable me to take stunning photos of hummingbirds in flight, across continents. At night. In the fog. Sitting on the shoulders of a Parkinson's patient. Sadly, it wasn't to be, and as my 'arsenal' of lenses grew modestly, I realised just what a dud this particular one is. It's soft, unless at f8 or above, and nowhere near the end of the zoom. It's slow, the whole way through, to the point where anything taken at speed in less than midday sun will more than likely be blurry. The below represents just about the best I have managed with this lens from a wildlife point of view (the reason I bought it). It was taken at f8 - the only usable f-stop, in extremely bright sunlight, but even so I had to up my ISO to 400 to just barely freeze the action: the shutter speed was 1/320, the minimum needed to stop a bird in flight. It's also not very close: if I went in any closer than 220mm it would have been unusably soft. The fact that the photo is mildly underwhelming is testament to the poor quality of this lens for this type of photography.



So am I just whining, again? No, actually, I have a point, sort of. While this lens is essentially useless for wildlife or fast-moving photography, it does have other uses which I had didn't have in mind when I bought the lens, but have become hugely useful. A slow telephoto is perfect for capturing some slightly different landscape images. When you're sick of the same wide, sweeping shot, a lens like this is perfect for squashing together the perspective of a line of fields or the lines on a beach. It also allows you to isolate details in mountains, for example. For all my complaining about the lens, in fact, it has been on my camera for some of my favourite ever shots. Here are a couple:

This first is one of my all-time favourites. Notice the compressed lines on the beach:



Here's a wider shot taken at the same time. It's just a bit, meh...



Another shot that was boring as a wide-angle. The hedges are all compressed, creating interesting lines again.



Lastly, one of the Swiss Alps. This is that isolating detail business I was talking about...

Eyes to See You

Well, I thought it was a good title...

St. Nicholas' Church/School, Adare.

An interesting, foreboding evening sky. An old church with intriguing architectural details. It should be a photographer's dream come true (well, maybe not quite such hyperbole), but for whatever reason, it didn't quite come together. Architectural photography largely eludes me. With most other types of photography I can pre-visualise to a certain extent. I have a catelogue of ideas, gleamed from other photos I've taken, or photos I've seen and admired, which runs through my mind before pressing the shutter. These serve as a platform from which my limited creativity can launch. However, I can't seem to put this into action for photos of buildings.

Well, enough maudlin musings. St. Nicholas' Church is the one opposite the new entrance to the Golf Club on the way into Adare. It's a cool building, and I actually spent my first year of primary school there. I remember little of it, but the terror of climbing its steep stone steps to the tiny classrooms sticks in my mind.