Week 16 of 52 Theme: “Cookies”

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Hello my name is Howard and I’m a cookie-holic! That’s the first step right? Well here’s the thing, I don’t want to stop, that’s right I’m addicted to cookies and I don’t care what you say I’m going to just keep on eating them. So when this weeks theme was revealed I was excited not only because I was going to photograph one of my favorite foods, but because I was going to eat them afterwards.

The first shot I had envisioned was going to include my favorite Sesame Street character, that sugar induced quivering blue mass of fur known as Cookie Monster, but someone else in the group made a shot with him in it first so I decided to go macro and involve some friends from the front yard.

If Ants dreamed I think they would dream of something like this…
50mm f/1.8 with 12mm+36mm extension tubes @ f/11 1/250 sec.

This was a painful shoot for me, not because I was lying down next to hundreds of scurrying ants that crawled all over my arms, no it was because this was a cookie that my daughter and I had lovingly made just minutes before and then had purposely dropped on the ground all for the sake of a photograph, what is wrong with me?

Going for the chocolate!

This little crumb seemed to frustrate this guy as he kept dropping it (maybe he was just sneaking a few bites)

On the other hand this guy was all “Go Big Or Go Home!”

Like climbing Mt Everest
3 shot HDR @ 2EV handhled

Mine!!

Hey Carl, after we take apart this mountain of heavenly goodness how about we go get that dried up worm on the sidewalk?”

Ok so I might have gotten a little carried away with that last caption…

Although I had to sacrifice a cookie for these shots rest assured that the rest of the batch was dunked in milk and eaten in tribute to their fallen Brother.

Thanks as always for stopping by.

Happy Shooting!

Howard

Week 7 of 52 Theme: “Love” Sweetheart!

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Sweethearts! Any mention of these sugary treats is enough to send me reeling back through time to my elementary school days of shoebox Valentines Day boxes, silly cards, cheap candy, and the worry that the messages printed on the sweetheart might give a classmate of the female persuasion the wrong impression of your feelings for her. This was back in the days when you would handpick the candy and put it in the small envelope with the valentine. The one’s marked “You’re Cool” were in high demand as they were the safest ones to include, others were “UR #1″ and “Be True” all obscure enough to be harmless.

I must have eaten thousands of the sappy ones to prevent accidental inclusion… Of course at home after class I had to open and read each valentine I received and try to interpret what it might mean, unless of course the disclaimer was given at time of deposit in the box that “My mom put the candy in”  in which case all was fair game and eaten without worry.

When Valentines week rolled around this year and the theme was “Love” I couldn’t resist blasting back to my past and photographing these little messages of heartfelt devotion and love.

Taken using the 50mm f/1.8 and the 20mm extension tube

I’m not scared of this one anymore…

50mm f/1.8 and the 12mm extension tube.

And just in case you were wondering – yes I did eat them!

I hope you had a great Valentines and more importantly that there is love in your life everyday!

Happy Shooting!

Howard

 

Week 4 of 52 Theme: “In My Glass” Splash!!

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Splash!

I had a few different ideas for this weeks challenge, but I ultimately decided to work with some flash as I want to become more comfortable using flash in all types of situations and this was a great way to practice putting together a multi-light shot and analyzing each lights influence as it was added.

By far one of the most impressive and accomplished “Splash” Photographers out there is Alex Koloskov (Click on his “Liquids” tab!) inspired by his images I wanted to drop something and catch the splash and since the last three weeks of entries have all been monochrome I wanted to jazz this weeks image up a little and decided red was the way to go (plus we love to eat Strawberries and this gave us an excuse to buy some) While preparing for the shoot I had at first planned on dropping the strawberry into a fish tank (which I didn’t have) so I visited a number of stores looking for a small cheap fish tank or as an alternative a deep glass bowl and I stumbled upon these awesome Martini glasses at the Dollar Store – Score!  I thought the green would contrast well with the red of the fruit and hopefully match the leafy stem (which it did perfectly) and who could resist that funky squiggle?

The shot was set up in my “studio” aka: The Kitchen, but I used a small portable vinyl table instead of our wood table to make clean up easier (I was planning on using Sprite as well as water) – more on that later.

The first consideration was what type of background did I want? Alex Koloskov uses lots of color in his backgrounds and I think that it certainly makes the image more interesting. However since this was my first try at this I wanted to keep it simple so I decided to go high key white. I set up my 5 in 1 diffuser with the white panel up against the wall behind the table, but it had too many wrinkles and I didn’t want to have to use my flash at full power to blow it out, so I taped a white posterboard over it and placed at the base my YN-560 flash at 1/4 power and zoomed to 50mm I was able to white out the background nicely.

My camera settings for this were Manual at 1/60 sec, @ f/8 and iso 200 with a  50mm f/1.8 lens this set up allowed for a white background plus a little wiggle room for experimentation.

Next  up were the flashes to freeze the splash, counter intuitively it’s not the shutter speed that freezes the strawberry and water, but rather the speed of the flash which in these small speedlights at 1/4 power is around 1/2800sec which is plenty fast enough to stop a splash then you would vary the output (or your aperture) to ensure proper exposure. I wanted to soften the light and give it some wrap around the glass so I used two softboxes one on each side just slightly closer to camera than dead center so the light would angle back towards the background and avoid any lens flare issues. It took only 4 test shots to determine that I wanted to use these flashes at 1/4 power as well.

Next came the drop itself, I used a wireless remote in one hand as I dropped the strawberry with the other, and this was all just trial and error, I dropped about 10 times and I would get three shots of each drop using the “Continuous High” mode, there was always some spill over , but it was much less than I had anticipated and clean up was a quick wipe of the glass, the base, and a refill if needed and then re drop.

Not every shot is a keeper, but even some of the misses were good.

Timing’s everything…. and this one’s a little early!

For the last two drops I used Sprite in the glass instead of water to see if I could get more bubbles in the splash, I didn’t notice anything different except for the crazy amount of bubbles stuck to the strawberry afterwards, and how sticky it was to clean up.

It’s the bubbly! Sprite doesn’t add anything to the splash, but it sure sticks to the strawberry afterwards.

I had such a great time making this image and then we all enjoyed a sweet treat afterwards to wrap the shoot in style.

After submitting this to the LensProToGo.com 52 week challenge Flickr group I was surprised to see it hit flickr’s “explore” the next day and eventually also the weekly theme gallery wrap up. 

Thanks for stopping by, and I hope you’ll come back soon.

Happy Shooting!

Howard

 

Week 34 of 52 – Theme: “Vegetable” On the Vine!

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Who loves vegetables? I sure do! Now if you had asked me that question before I was 18 years old I would have made a face and given an emphatic “No!” ( Well, except for tomatoes and avocados, I’ve always loved those. I blame my Dad, he taught me to eat them with a sprinkle of salt..yum! and lets not get into the whole Tomato is a fruit discussion) But when I went on my LDS mission to Italy that all changed drastically, if you want to know how vegetables should be prepared and served that’s the place to go! (As if you need any excuse to go to Italy!) Now I can’t get enough, in fact if I go more than one day without a salad or raw veggie I start to feel all out of sorts, a far cry from my youth that’s for sure.

So I was super excited to see that Week 34′s theme was “Vegetable”. We have a small garden this year and the drought’s been pretty rough on it, but we have a few hardy plants and I decided to take a few shots of them in the early morning light after taking the kids to school on their first day back from summer break, so I grabbed the Gorillapod and prepared to get down low and dirty.

50mm f/1.8 + 12mm Extension tube 3 exp HDR @ 2EV

Our Pumpkin plant’s stem has this funny little curve to it that makes it sweep over the top of the Pumpkin and I really liked how medieval the spikes made it all look along with the great contrasting colors.

As I was setting up for the shot I noticed that a Bee was in one of the nearby blossoms doing “laps” on his side around the Stamen. Now I don’t know if Bees can get high off of pollen but this guy looked out of his little bug brain, he was really giving it a go, so much so that the best composed shots I got which showed him head-on or full body were all blurry from his speed (it was due to my low ISO, I was setting up for a  tripod shot and wasn’t expecting to need a 1/500 sec exposure…)

However I ended up with this one which shows him on his side as he took a short break from spinning around.

50mm f/1.8 @ f/5.6 1/160sec, iso 400 (should’ve gone to 1000!)

A little wider shot of the Pumpkin:

The early morning light gave a nice back light for this shot. 3 exp HDR @ 2 EV.  50mm f/1.8 + 12mm extension tube.

And finally here’s a shot of our Bell Pepper plant, we’re really excited about this one as we’ve had bad luck getting these to grow in our garden the last few years.

Green Pepper 3 exp HDR @ 2 EV with 50mm f/1.8 + 12 mm extension tube @ f/8, iso 100.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this macro peek at our garden, coming up next is a post I’m very excited about as I had a real fun time shooting and editing the pictures.

Happy Shooting!

Howard