Painting With Light
I did a lot of film processing last night but didn’t get a chance to do any scanning of my rugby sevens films so here’s another filler.
This one was taken last week at the Karori Cemetery with a ND8 filter (3 Stops) and a torch… I was playing around trying to make it look more like daylight than at night…
The ND8 filter has quite a nasty?nice? magenta cast so I had to convert it to Black and White.
NIkon D70s, 18-70mm Lens, ISO 200, Cokin ND8 filter.
Rugby Sevens After Party
The Rugby Sevens wrapped up last night(apparently New Zealand won) with a street party on Courtneay Place.
The party was supposed to start around 7 so I got there around 730 while it was still light because I wanted to try out Rollei with my Nikon SB80DX Speedlite and once the light drops its pretty much impossible to focus (photos still need to be developed). Lets just say it was pretty dead until 10 when people started surging in from the stadium at the other end of town.
Things started to get good around 11 and I ended up bailing round 12…
Somewhere in the midst of it all one of my developed films went missing from the side pocket of my bag which is pretty gutting especially since I don’t know if it was stolen or if I was just a dumbass and let the pocket open… It was a roll of black and white Ilford Delta 3200 which is a pretty rare film to use and only one place in Wellington develops it so I will give them a call on Monday and see if it turns up… Fingers Crossed.
Anyway here goes a quick selection of shots from D70s… Enjoy
Nikon D70s, 18-70mm Lens, SB80DX Speedlite.
A Bit of Slow Flash Sync
The rugby Sevens are on in Wellington at the moment. Its one of those great times where people dress up get drunk and want there photo taken.
Up outside the stadium we were getting dark stares because we weren’t taking people’s photos and lots of “thank you” when we did… It was a bit weird
Nikon D70s, 18-70mm Lens, SB80DX with SC-17 Off Shoe Cord
Painting With Light
Its been a while since I have done any light painting so when Fergus and I were out shooting the other night I spotted this cool piece of art and decided to give it a bit of light treatment.
Unfortunately the Rollei lens wasn’t quite wide enough to catch the whole mural but I have some shots with a 19mm Lens on my F5 which should give quite a bit more angle.
Test shot on digital
Shot on Rollei
Colour Image: Nikon D70s, 19-35mm Lens, ISO 200. f16 @ 15 Seconds
Black and White Image: Rolleiflex 2.8 E, Ilford HP5+ 400 ISO Film, CanoScan 9000F Scanner. f16 @ 30 Seconds
Giraffe Sequence
Was talking to someone the other day about taking images of giraffes and he was complaining about not being able to get a close shot even though he was using a 300mm lens… So I was at the zoo the other day and after I shot a couple of shots on the Rollei (which I still have to develop) I threw a 50mm lens onto the D70s to see what I could get…
Lets just say I got a bit of a surprise when he came up and tried to eat my camera strap 🙂
I had to stop shooting because he came too close and was closer than the minimum focusing range of the lens…
Nikon D70s, 50mm f1.8, ISO 200, f3.2 at 1/1250 Seconds
Divebombed By Gulls On Somes Island
More shots from Somes/ Matiu Island. These are taken with my trusty Nikon D70s and with an 18-70mm Len.
Most of these birds have nests at the best vantage points on the island…Places I wanted to go to take some nice panoramic shots of the island from high up… needless to say I didn’t get to take the images I wanted but made do with taking shots of the gulls instead.
No gulls were hurt or nests disturbed during the capturing of these images.
Nikon D70s, 18-70mm Lens, ISO 200, f4.5 at 1/4000th of a second
2010 The Year that was…
Happy New Year to all!
Here is a quick breakdown of my first year (or not quite a year) of Blog action…
First Post on 03/03/2010
295 Posts since then
8140 Views
355 Comments
Top Post for 2010 : Wellington Zombie Walk followed closely by the other 2 posts about the Wellington Zombie Walk
Top Google search: Pigeon Houses
Top Referer: Facebook
My Favourite post: Hmmm kinda a hard one possibly Street Chess or Negative Space Portrait and the Zombie Posts
Most used Camera: Early year Nikon F5, Later in the year Rolleiflex
New Tattoos: None…
New Piercings: One
Bones Broken: None
Money made from Photography: (Not counting Assisting or working at a camera shop) Less than $1000 NZ
New Years Resolution: Shoot more and put together an exhibition
Let me know what you’ve liked, what you want to see more of and what you think sucked…
All in all a pretty good year…. Lookingf forward to 2011.
Peace out! 🙂
How It Was Done: Pink Bubble
Yet another “How it was done” post…This time for my entry in the Canon Photo5 competition under the brief “bubblegum portrait”
This was my entry… Just incase you missed it 🙂
Anyway the brief was…
Bubblegum/Portraiture
This brief has one rule:
Feature bubble gum in a portrait. How you or your subject use the bubble gum is up to you. If you need more gum, visit your friendly local convenience store.
Note: For this competition we’re defining a portrait as any shot where a person is the main subject.
Once again it seems simple enough….
I wanted to do something that was entirely pink but a real soft kinda pastel pink which would tie in with the colour of the bubble being blown.
After a couple of days thinking about it I kept coming back to the idea of someone blowing a bubble while being surrounded by bubbles… I know it seems like an obvious conclusion to make but I wanted it to be shot and lit super well which I hoped would make the concept stand out from any other entries which used a similar premise. Not that it worked out in the end after not making it to the finals and public voting…Not that I’m bitter or anything 🙂
So I scored a reasonable sized cardboard box from recycling at work went and bought close to 100 pink balloons and 1 pink (very pink) wig.
For once Amanda was pretty stoked to be in the photo since she liked bubblegum anyway.
Using my 2 500W Electra Studio Lights both pointed at the ceiling (one of the few ways I can use them to get a softer light since they only have full and half power) I put the box in the middle of the room with a pink piece of material over it (with 2 daughters there never seems to be a shortage of pink material around) and got Amanda to lie with the head and shoulders in it.
The light was metered at f11 at 125th of a second using ISO 200.
Amanda spent quite a bit of time on the makeup which needed to be pretty thick due to the close nature of the shot… I think she did a pretty darn good job of getting what I wanted from what I told her.
Not a particularly flattering image but you get the idea how much went into it
Game on!
I ended up only blowing up about 25 Balloons and after Amanda lay in the box they were arranged around her head to make it look like she was entirely surrounded by pink bubbles.
Anyway this is how the set looked…
Again I love how budget my studio is 🙂
So after a lot of false starts and misblown bubbles we started to hit our stride… To get the angle I wanted I needed to be directly above her which required me standing on a chair and at some stages of the shoot standing on 2 chairs, which when 1 moved I nearly did some serious damage to my groin… mental note to self: when standing on 2 chairs always make sure they are well anchored.
The angle ment that you can see me taking the photo quite clearly in Amanda’s eyes
Me on 1 Chair
Me on 2 chairs
Anyway here goes some more shots that didn’t make it but that I still liked… Enjoy… Oh and if you don’t hear from me again Amanda has killed me for putting up more photos 🙂 Dont call the police it’s just the risk I take 🙂 and the girls need at least 1 parent.
Note to Amanda: Dont breath in through your nose when blowing bubble 🙂
Nikon D70s, 50mm f1.8, 200 ISO.
Beach Football at Titahi Bay
Went out shooting last night with Fergus to Titahi Bay with the idea of doing some long exposure shots after the sun went down. While we were scouting various locations a game of football started up so we stopped and took some images while the sun went down.
It was lucky we did cause none of the long exposure stuff really came out… You win some and you lose some 🙂
Nikon D70s, 18-70mm Lens, ISO 200.
How It Was Done: Smokin Grater
Here goes another how it was done post, this time on my Photo5 entry I called “Smokin Grater”. The finalists are announced today sometime and then the other contestants vote on who they think should win. There are about 8000 entries so I’m not holding out too much hope of being a finalist… but you never know 🙂
For those of you who missed it here goes the image I submitted.
So the brief was as follows:
Incense/Black and White
This is a moody brief. Use smoke from the incense to create ambience and atmosphere in a black and white photo. It’s not just about shooting smoke, but capturing the essence of black and white photography in a dramatic way.
Once again this seems simple enough:
Thanks to my new scanner I can now show you my pre shoot thoughts 🙂
So the original idea was to sit a camera on a board with the lens above a hole and let the smoke rise up and around the lens. Taken from a slightly high angle where you couldn’t see the hole it would like the camera was smoking.. I also had plans to throw a stack of photos so it looked like they were exploding out of the back of the camera…
Anyway after a bit more thought I thought it would be more amusing to use a cheese grater and make it look like it was smoking due to over grating…
I really like the aesthetic of photographer Caleb Charland and wanted to try to emulate his clean images (turns out it’s really really hard to make images look as clean as his 🙂 )
So the idea was to use a long exposure to give a very hazy smoke presence…
I put a snoot on a speedlight and placed it under the table and had another speedlight bouncing off the ceiling.
After adding a pile of melted cheese (which ended up being melted by a fan heater after all else failed) I started playing around with the incense to see what kind of smoke effect I would get… About an hour later there was still no sign of smoke and I was starting to get a bit frustrated….Grrrr…
About now I throw my hands up in despair and walk away and go have a shower…
When I come back I decide to scrap what I have done and start again.
I decided to use a black background and a light globe on one of my speedlights and see what happens.
This was the first shot off the camera after setting things up… at this point things are looking up 🙂
So now its time to add some smoke and a snooted speedlight behind to highlight it with a silver bounce off to the left to reflect a bit of light back onto the grater.
This is how the setup looked at this point:
Again my studio is Soooo high-tech… 🙂
After quite a bit of playing around I found the best way to show smoke up is to backlight it… It was a lesson hard learned and if I had known this previous it would have saved me many an hour 🙂
A slight re-jigging of the composition and …
Image straight off the camera with no processing
Processed to Black and White using Adobe Lightroom with a bit of retouching in Photoshop to take out the hotspots from the incense inside the grater.
Nikon D70s, 50mm f1.8 Lens, ISO 200. SB24 Speedlight with Globe and SB80DX with Snoot. Black reflector as backdrop and Silver reflector as bounce.
Fundraising and Zombies
Took the day off work yesterday to do a fundraising photo shoot for my local Playcentre (its kinda a parent run pre school centre)
This was the flyer we did a pre-shoot for a couple of weeks back that was designed by one of the other dads.
Since my lights weren’t really up to the task of running all day we had to borrow some from local photographer Adrian Heke who lent us a set of Hensel 1000Ws… Cheers Adrian!
So basically we shot family portraits from 9am til about 4pm (we did have a bit of a break in the middle)…. So needless to say it was a pretty long day, not to mention the just under 2000 images I still have to edit and post produce 🙂
And then if I wasnt tired enough already I went and hung out with a whole bunch of Zombies on a Zombie walk for a couple of hours… the press guys who I am starting to get to know a bit better still find it amusing that I am shooting film and lets just say the Rollei isn’t built for speed but put my first roll of 3200 ISO film through it so will see how it comes out.
I think I currently have a backlog of 5 x 120 films and 1 x 35mm film to develop so hopefully I will get a chance to do them soon.
Just Uploaded 3 Photo5 Competition Entries
finally got round to uploading some of my Canon Photo5 Entries.
Single drop of water with a picture of a cityscape inside it hanging from the head of a pin.
Bubblegum Portrait
Incense Black and White
Still have to do:
Confetti Motion
Inspired by sound
Only about a week to go so will have to crank it up to get the last two done… Wish me luck
Darkhalide Photography 
Recent Comments