Backlog

So I think that I should maybe give a bit of background to this blog, it is quite hard to pin down when it was first dreamt up but there are certain key events (in no particular order) that I remember had and impact:

• 1 - Hannah Barnes lent me her DSLR for a week (how generous?!)
• 2 - My brother purchased a DSLR on a little trip he took to New York
• 3 - I found a website called DeviantArt and the contents of some of the photography therein astounded me!
• 4 - I recently had an 18th birthday on which I was fortunate enough to get the money to buy a DSLR of my own :D Canon EOS 450D
• 5 - Hannah Barnes (having received some pictures that I took which she appreciated enough to get prints for) suggested that I start a blog for my photography.

Obviously this blog is here so you can see I took up the advice, thinking that this would be a good way for me to keep record of when and what I take photos of and it being an easy way to share my pictures with people who actually want to see them and maybe even share ideas for photographic oppertunities/techniques!

So, here are some of the first pictures that I took a few weeks ago now by dropping dye into a vase full of water. The top line is slightly more yellow lookin' because I used an extra tungsten lamp to try and get better light shots. The bottom line are out of sequence (obviously) and some of the better pictures of the 122 that I have kicking about on my hard drive which is about 1/3 of the pictures that I actually took in this shoot!

In heinsight of only 2 weeks of taking pictures I think I could improve a fair amount on this concept and I intend to do so when I have a fair bit of free time on my hands.

ok, so what follows is a fairly comprehensive description of how one should go about taking pictures like these but better. I wrote it having learnt from various mistakes I made while taking the above photos. unless your actually planning on tking these photos i would advise you stop reading now ... its VERY long:

So the basic principle is get a vase, fill it with water ( not too full ) place it infront of and preferably surrounded by a matt white surface. light it as much as you can, using tissue paper on a window could work quite well on a very sunny day. you want the light coming from the back and/or sides, not front lit as that produces glare/reflection off of the surface of the glass vase.

set up the camera on a tripod, zoom in as far as you can trying to get the surface of the water and the inside edges of the vase in screen. put the camera to the minimum focal distance and then move it towards/away from the vase untill the focus point is a couple of cm under the surface of the water in the centre of the vase. I found the easiest way to do that is to dip a pen into the water and focus on it. For supreme focus use live view and then zoom in 10X and use manual focus to tweak focus down to a pin point.

once focus is achived, leave the camera on MF, ready to capture some Dye! you also want to throw the background out of focus so it looks just plain white, moving the vase away from the background and the camera closer to the vase will achive this. now take a test shot. keep the ISO as low as you can afford, get more lamps if necessary. use a fairly fast shutter speed, nothing below 1/20 or it will start to blur and look rubbish.

If you can, close up the aperture from its maximum so as to get the full depth of the dye in focus, I reckon f/7-10 should do it. obviuosly this will get taxing on the amount of light that you can get so balance it out as necessary.once you get a clear picture of whatever it is your using to focus on in the vase its time to introduce Dye :) possibly the hardest part is a reliable delivery system. if you have a pipette handy it would be ideal. I do not suggest pouring, it will give too much and the simplicity of the shot will be lost, though it depends on what your going for i suppose. I managed to find a waste tube of plastic and punctured it with a pin, when the dye was in i covered the hole at the top so that no Dye came out the pin hole due to air preassure!

I then held the plastic tube with one hand and had my finger on the shutter release with the other, I removed the cover from the top of the tube and pressed and held the shutter release simaltaneously. the first 3-4 shots are the fastest in succestion due to the way that the pictures are saved to the memory card, you idealy want these shots to catch the action of the drop actually hitting the water as they are the hardest to capture. once the dye is in put the delivery device down and turn to your camera, you may want to tilt to follow the dye as it makes progress down the vase or continue shooting the entry point, its really up to what kind of picture you want.

another method is to put the camera on timed continuous shooting where it will wait for 10 seconds before taking a succesion of 10 pictures as fast as it can, the advantage being that shake is reduced as you dont have to press the shutter release as the photo is being taken though getting the drop of Dye to fall when you want it to can be challenging. If you have a remote release this could be handy though I belive that the pictures wont be in quick succesion if you use one due to the processing time of a remote button.

Now ... drop Dye, take pictures, empty and rinse the vase and repeat! It will probably take you a few hundred photos before you get a cracker of a shot, but once you blow it up to A2 and stick it on your wall ... it will be worth it!

Things to note:
Dye stains! - if you can, outside is a good place to be though not always the most practicle. alternatively plenty of white paper surronding the area you are shooting in. the riskyest time will be when you are trying to put down you delivery sysem in a rush to get to your camera.

Glass reflects light! - no matter how tempted you might be to stick the flash on, resist! you will very likely end up with glaring reflected light from your vase. its better to use an external flash/light from behind the subject but not in shot and plenty of reflective white surfaces around.

Your vase might be dirty! - give it a clean before use, any spec of dust, or left over foliage will be picked up by those 12million plus pixels your packing.

Use Cold water - this may sound a little obscure but generally cold water is clearer, hot water tends to be cloudy and produce tiny bubbles which look like noise in the final picture and they stand out like a soar thumb when well lit.

Experiment - dont be afraid to try new things, once you have got a handle for the concept imediatley try and break all the rules, get arty and see what original and beautiful pictures you can come up with! dont always stick to a tripod, dont always take from the same angle/perspective.

Edit - dont be afraid to crop and touch up photos with photoshop, take Raws and play around with the WB settings, remove specs of dust, clear up the background. mess around with the Hue to get different colours ... its not always about recreating what you can see with your eye butgetting a good looking picture.