Lemon bubbles....wiling away a wet day in Brisbane

It's a wet old day here in Brisbane, so I decided to get out the macro lens and play with some liquid macro photography!

I was inspired by one of the macro tutorials in a Kelby Training online tutorial, to shoot a lemon with bubbles.

The set up was easy enough - light tent, with a black background. My 5D II + 90mm Tamron lenses was mounted on a tripod, and I placed a square vase on an upturned bowl (to raise the vase off the bottom of the light tent).

My speedlight, sitting behind the whole set up, was dialed down to 1/64 power and triggered remotely.  Then I just experimented with aperture for different effects.

I did a few test shots with the lemon clipped into place to check focus, then added a litre of soda water, which bubbled around the lemon.

Here are the final results (including the set up of the shoot) :)

ISO 800, f/4.5, 1/6 sec

ISO 800, f/8, 1/80 sec

 

365 Challenge #283 - water play!

Yet another day in Brisvegas, and after a bout of shopping and a nanna nap, it was still pizzing down outside and cabin fever set in. I turned to Flickr for photographic inspiration. I knew I wanted to incorporate water into today's 365 Challenge - hell, there's enough of it around in Queensland at the moment.

What I love about Flickr, is that a whole bunch of photographers show their shots, then often share how they did it. I'd shot pictures using oil, water and food colouring before, but I did a simple search on "oil water" to see what ideas other photographers had come up with using these ingredients.

I came across a Flickr user called daitoZen, who had posted some awesome shots in the style I was looking to achieve, and then found that he'd also included a couple of photos of the camera and lighting setup he used to create the shots. Cool! It was pretty straight forward and then my own imagination kicked in as I tried various apertures, shutter speeds, flash strengths etc.

In terms of the technical details for these pics, I shot them all with my Canon EOS 5D II and the Tamron 90mm macro lens, with a flash/studio light fired remotely.

For the top picture, the settings were: f/5.6, 1/50 sec, ISO-100.

For this image, which reminds me of the universe, the settings were: f/13, 1/20 sec, ISO-100.

And for this image, where I changed the blue water to clear tap water, added more oil and put pieces of red paper under the glass bowl I was shooting into, the settings were: f/10, 1/40 sec, ISO-100.

Next time you're stuck for ideas about what to shoot indoors when the weather's up the creek (or when you're ankle deep in the creek - which is what Teneriffe will be id it don't stop raining soon....check out Flickr and you'll invariably find inspiration there!

365 Challenge #254 - Light & Drops

Today's 365 is actually a series of pics. I was playing around with a CD, oil and water drops, the macro lens and my flash. As you do :). In the end, I used no flash for these pics - the flash seemed to be blowing out all the colour, despite having dialled the power right down.

I love the abstract shapes, colours and patterns that came out of this experiment - it reminds me of planets floating out there in the universe. But, I want to keep playing with this idea. Didn't quite crack the images I had in my mind, so it'll be back to the drawing board with all the gadgets another evening :)

365 Challenge #237 - Purple Rain

365 Challenge #237 - Purple Rain, originally uploaded by Melanie Surplice.

After practicing yesterday, I still wasn't getting the look I was aiming for with the dripping tap experiment. So I set up the shot again tonight and tried a different approach.

I shot this with my trusty Canon EOS 5D Mark II with the Tamron 90mm macro lens, on f/4.5 1/40, ISO-100, WB=flash. The speedlight flash was set to +2 exposure, and I used both a red and blue Honl gel over the flash to create the funky colours. The whole rig was on a tripod and fired with a cable release. This shot is definitely sharper with a tripod - that'll teach me to be lazy!

I used a white bread board as a backdrop, which seemed to carry the red and blue reflection.

I bumped up the clarityand contrast in Photoshop and voila. I still have a another shot in mind that I've yet to create, but I'll crack it...at some point.

365 Challenge #236 - Dripping tap

Droplet III, originally uploaded by Melanie Surplice.

Inspired by this week's focus on flash, I decided to experiment with the flash and macro lens to try to capture dripping water. I really should have used a tripod - this shot was taken handheld - but I kinda like the effect.