Week 26 (June 24th - July 1st) | Picture 40

Did you know that Costco sells fireworks? Just what everyone needs - explosives in bulk quantity. I couldn't resist, and for $8 I bought some sparklers. 240 sparklers to be exact. I have no idea what I'm going to do with them all . . .

Taking a picture of a sparkler isn't anything too difficult or dramatic, which is good because I need to get back on track with taking my pictures earlier in the week. That gives me the rest of the week to come up with ideas for the following week, then a couple days to actually find the time to do it. This Friday night business has got me all messed up and rushed.

So here it is. Just a sparkler and a 50mm lens.



Camera: Nikon D700
Lens: 50mm f/1.4
Aperture: f/8.0
Shutter Speed: 1/20
ISO: 1600
Flash: none
Exposure: manual

I probably should have saved this project for next week, but no harm in celebrating early! I hope everyone has a wonderful 4th of July!

Week 25 (June 18th - June 24th) | Picture 39

There is no way I could follow up last week with anything that I was so excited about, and if you look at the timestamp on this post you'll notice that I almost missed this week entirely. (It was a busy, tiring week.)

I started out pretty unhappy with my project tonight, but it was either this or nothing, so when I was in LR I decided to crop it to something I was happy with. And I'm kinda liking the result:



Camera: Nikon D700
Lens: 105mm f/2.8 macro
Aperture: f/8.0
Shutter Speed: 1/250
ISO: 200
Flash: SB-800 off camera, manual, 1/64th power
Exposure: manual

The part of the image I didn't like was the glass at the bottom (so this is a pretty substantial crop). The wine was splattering and just looking messy.

No setup image this week, but the speedlight was sitting directly next to the wine glass pointed back at the white background. I could get away with such low flash power because the speedlight, subject, and background were all so close together. Pretty simple.

And now, I'm going to enjoy this sloppily poured glass of red wine and head to bed. :)

Week 24 (June 11th - June 17th) | Picture 38

I've been uninspired for several weeks now, so it was time for a good picture. The type of picture that makes all the money that I put into this expensive hobby worth every bit of it, and then some. There are weeks that I want to skip out. But when I took that stupid lens cap picture the first week of January, I knew this would be a challenge. I am so glad I am sticking with it.

And weeks like this, kick ass.

I think I've mentioned this before, I do a lot of searching around on Flickr for inspiration. If I duplicate someone else's idea, I will always give credit. I'm trying to learn techniques and test my own ability and understanding of concepts, and sometimes that involves trying to recreate something to see if I can do it. I always try to put my own twist on it, and sometimes that works out better than others.

Before I show you my inspiration image, I will tell you that it is not unique. The one I am going to link here is the one I found. But then I googled and found many many more that looks just like this. So, I'm not really sure who deserves credit, but this is the one that inspired me.

But I wanted to change it up. The raining sugar is from long camera exposure, and while I could do that - I'm really wanting to test my OCF capabilities. And as we all know, flash freezes motion. I couldn't light the strawberry from the front, it would hit my black background. I tried lighting from the side, and it was dull - there wasn't any real pop to the strawberry or the sugar. And then I decided to backlight it. Uh.may.zing!!!! The sugar lit up like crystals. The front of the strawberry was a little too dark, so I popped a white piece of foam core in front for a reflector and did a little happy dance.

I LOVE THIS PICTURE!!!



Camera: Nikon D700
Lens: 105mm f/2.8 macro
Aperture: f/5.6
Shutter Speed: 1/250
ISO: 200
Flash: SB-800 off camera, manual, 1/16th power
Exposure: manual

Everything about it makes me happy. (Or maybe it's just the sugar high I'm on from eating one too many berries and sugar.) Setup, per my usual, is very easy to accomplish with what you have at home. Spoon was secured to some file boxes. Sugar was caught by some tupperware (elevated on other pieces of tupperware). Background is black poster board taped to my desk door. Flash resting on the top of my desk aiming down at the strawberry. White foam core up front for a reflector. (Setup image here if you can't picture it.)

This can be the most therapeutic hobby in the world. This picture is what I needed this week. :)

Week 23 (June 4th - June 10th) | Pictures 36 & 37

I wanted to experiment a little bit this week with shutter speed and flash. When using flash, shutter speed does not affect exposure on the object being lit by the flash. (Did your brain just explode? Mine did when I really started learning about lighting.) Take everything you ever learned about your exposure triangle and throw it out the window. Aperture, ISO, and flash power control exposure provided by the flash. Shutter speed controls only one thing: ambient light - that is, the light falling on all objects not directly lit by the flash.

Super awesome Amy has a wonderful blog tutorial about this phenomenon and why "dragging the shutter" when using your speedlight is a wonderful way to have a properly lit subject and background (in the absence of strong ambient light). I promise if this concept is new to you, then her blog post is infinitely more valuable than this one.

Obviously the fundamental concepts will also apply when you are using your flash to light something other than your subject. And this questions arose several days ago on a forum where someone was trying to light their background and get more exposure on their subject with only one speedlight.

Neither of these pictures are mind-blowing OCF. In fact, I've done the same setup before with similar results on my margarita glass experiment. But I do think they are good examples of how the same flash principles apply regardless of their application.

Image 1:


Camera: Nikon D700
Lens: 105mm f/2.8 macro
Aperture: f/4.0
Shutter Speed: 1/250
ISO: 200
Flash: SB-800 off camera, manual, 1/128th power
Exposure: manual

Image 2:


Camera: Nikon D700
Lens: 105mm f/2.8 macro
Aperture: f/4.0
Shutter Speed: 1/25
ISO: 200
Flash: SB-800 off camera, manual, 1/128th power
Exposure: manual

You can see clearly that the part of the white background being lit by the flash is identical in both images - despite a shutter speed difference of over 3 stops of light. It is only the areas not affected by the flash (the subject and the further areas of the background) that change when you adjust shutter speed.

Can you tell I'm struggling with creative ideas? I need to find some new lighting projects (or get another light)!

Week 22 (May 28th - June 3rd) | Picture 35

Some weeks I have cool projects to try. Other weeks (like this one), I just take a picture of whatever I happen to have available. Today, I got a crazy craving for Georgetown Cupcakes. But I live in the burbs - way out in the burbs. Driving into DC and standing in line in the heat just wasn't going to happen. So I found a recipe they shared online and thought I'd give it a try.

Um. Awesome. Amazing. Dangerous. Unfortunately there are now 20 in my house that need to be consumed and my husband does not like sweets!?!?!?!

And since tomorrow is the end of the week and I have no fun photography projects to try, I figured I should document my baking success. (It doesn't happen very often for me.)



Camera: Nikon D700
Lens: 105mm f/2.8 macro
Aperture: f/3.2
Shutter Speed: 1/200
ISO: 1400
Flash: none
Exposure: manual