New Website

I set up a new website at http://kassamphotography.wordpress.com to replace this one. It is accessible via www.kassamphotography.com

This is for those that are using a direct link to the Blogspot. All new posts/work will be posted to the new website, which I think it a lot nicer looking and more organized.

Balloons Inside Balloons

As a follow-up to coloring the water inside water balloons, I focused this photoshoot on popping balloons with balloons inside them. The idea is to dye the water in the inside balloon and the outside balloon different colors or leave clear water in the outside balloon so, when it pops, there will be a cool effect and/or mix of colors. The only problem is that the 300fps airsoft pistol I've been using wasn't powerful enough to pop both balloons. It still made for some interesting shots; I'll have to get a metal pellet gun to do them right.

Setup is the same as last time: piece of clear fishing line that I used to hang the balloons, a Nikon D60 on tripod about 10 feet away from the balloons, two Sunpak 333's on stands at 1/16 power to the right and left of the balloon, IR remote, 1/160, 200ISO, f/9, WB set to flash. I picked up some new balloons to solve the issue of BB's piercing and not popping the balloons. Or so I thought.

It definitely happened a lot less and still makes for a great shot when the water splashes in a particular direction.

If you're going to do the balloons like this, put one inside the other, fill up the inside balloon and tie it off, then fill up and tie off the outer balloon. If you are using dyes/food coloring, be sure not to wear nice clothes. I now have a semi tie-dye undershirt.

Even after moving the gun fairly close, it wasn't enough to pop the inside balloon. I had anticipated that this might happen and actually was wanting to do it for a few shots (before I knew they would all turn out that way) since it would be cool to see the complete balloon inside a balloon of water.

And the shots I uploaded to Flickr.

"The Pear"

A shot of a multicolored balloon. No colored water.

With a few balloons and still wanting to pop both, what do you do? My slingshot was broken, so I went with the next best thing: an old and small amateur archery kit. Unfortunately, my timing basically sucked, so the only shot I got that was even close was one right before the arrow hit the balloon. It leaves something for next time...

All photos on this blog that are not on Flickr and as a result do not have a specified license are "All Rights Reserved." Please contact me for use - as you can imagine, I'm usually fine with bloggers using them.

Monster IV & A Vinyl Shot

As part of the initial idea I had for the Five Hour Energy Syringe I wanted to put a Monster can on an IV (ordered the IV with the syringe from, you guessed it, Amazon). Why? It's the same idea of mocking energy drinks and people's dependency on them. Monster also seems to be one of the most popular ones, and it comes in an awesome three serving can with a screw cap that made it ideal for this shot. I cannot bear the smell, yet alone the taste of these, so it's a mystery to me how some people can chug down a whole bottle in a day or less. Perhaps this is an alternative...

I drilled a hole in the cap for the IV drip and sealed it off with hot glue from the inside. Unfortunately, I didn't seal it off enough since it was dripping during the shoot, which made it very hard to get everything arranged, clean off the black foamboard, and take a photo before more Monster dripped down. I drilled two more small holes in the sides of the can near the bottom where I threaded through clear fishing line to hold it up. Finally, I drilled out a whole in the bottom where I could pour in some Monster after it was all set up to let it flow into the IV drip.

Here's the setup:

Strobist: Sunpak 333 at full power on stand with shoot throw white umbrella to left, Sunpak 333 at half (or full? Don't remember) power with stand and an index card for a bouncer to right. 1/160, 200ISO, f/10. The camera sat on a tripod beyond the bottom left of this frame, and my mother was kind enough to hold up the Monster can while I fiddled with things.

It took a while to get the exposure right and eliminate any shadows; here's what it looked like before I added the liquid.

And the shot once I figured out how an IV drip works. [on Flickr]

And since three times the normal serving of Monster isn't always enough... [on Flickr]

On an unrelated note, I received my copy of Mellowhype's Blackenedwhite on vinyl. Much to my delight, it was clear.

Not the best shot, but I liked the composition.

All photos on this blog that are not on Flickr and as a result do not have a specified license are "All Rights Reserved." Please contact me for use - as you can imagine, I'm usually fine with bloggers using them.

Water Balloons Part Two: Food Coloring

After my first attempt at photographing water balloons right after they pop, I thought I'd try coloring the water. I actually tried this a couple weeks ago; I had everything set up and ready to go only to find out that my knockoff remote wasn't working. So I ordered the real $15 one from Nikon (hopefully it'll be worth the 3-4x price tag, it definitely feels better made). I made about 15 of the balloons with various combinations of different colors and amounts of food coloring. The setup was piece of clear fishing line hanging from our gazebo that I used to hang the balloons, a Nikon D60 on tripod about 10 feet away from the balloons (enough distance to prevent water from splashing all over it), two Sunpak 333's on stands at 1/16 power to the right and left of the balloon, and a 300fps airsoft pistol with black BB's. I had to adjust the height of the flashes for each shot and make sure the balloon was still in the frame, and I still used the remote and my trusty timing to take the shots in lack of a sensor, but I was fine with the results. The only real differences from last time were adding an additional flash and using black BB's. I had forgotten I only used one flash last time and wondered why I didn't stop the aperture more down this time, but that could be due to either 1) the flashes not being as close, although I did zoom them to 50mm for some shots. Although, moving them any closer would've just gotten the stands and flashes wetter than they already did. Or 2) the colored water probably doesn't light up as well, which is why using two flashes would produce only slightly brighter results. I did vary the aperture on some shots from f/9-f/13. You can check the EXIF on the shots I uploaded to Flickr by clicking on the name of the camera used in the upper right under my name.

Protip: use new balloons. I've been using really old ones and a lot of them are very stretchy. As a result, about half of the balloons I used didn't pop, but instead spun around and sprayed water everywhere out of a small hole or bounced the BB back at me.

It still made for interesting shots.

Even when I had the airsoft pistol very close, some of BB's either bounced off or only pierced the balloon without popping it.

Just to show you how stubborn some of these balloons, here's one that had two BB's lodged in the side of it. I would usually try to shoot the balloon even after one BB only pierced it to see if I could get an interesting shot or at least stop it from spraying onto me, but that tatic failed here.

Here's a nice shot that I didn't think made the cut for Flickr, mostly since it looks partially out of focus.

And another shot from a balloon that was pierced from the first shot and I managed to shoot a second time.

I also had the idea of putting a balloon inside another balloon. This required putting one balloon inside another before filling them up, then filling up and tying the inside balloon before filling up and tying off the outside one. The idea is to have two different colors of water or just dye the inside for a cool effect. Unfortunately, I forgot to prepare a lot of these and only had time to make one before it got too dark. And, of course, it didn't pop.

At least that leaves something for next time. Here's the shots I uploaded to Flickr.

This last shot was from shooting a balloon a second time after the first BB only pierced it. I told you there might be an interesting effect.

All photos on this blog that are not on Flickr and as a result do not have a specified license are "All Rights Reserved." Please contact me for use - as you can imagine, I'm usually fine with bloggers using them.

Five Hours

After witnessing the widespread use of Five Hour Energies in the debate community (myself included, but only one a day at tournaments) to make it through long days, late nights at camp, and tournaments in general, I had the idea of making a "Five Hour Energy Syringe." I'm sure you've heard plenty about the wide variety of energy drinks on the market and their potential for abuse and bad side effects, so I though it'd be a clever way to mock their use. It did require me to order a syringe from Amazon (the parents loved that...) but I've always thought that I lacked creativity when it comes to thinking up studio type shots, so I ran with the idea.

Here's a really poor shot of the setup in my room (click for larger).

Strobist: Sunpak 333 @ full power with white shoot through umbrella to upper left pointed down, Sunpak 333 @ 1/2 power with an index card for a bouncer to the right and angled down. 1/160, f/11, 200 ISO, focal length varied. The cameras was on a tripod with my 18-200mm slightly to the right of the center of the board. And of course, I used a piece of black foam board and red art paper propped up by white foam board for an oh so professional background.

I poked a hole into the cap of the Five Hour Energy bottle for the first shot: drawing up a dose.

Next, I drilled out the bottom of the bottle (messed up the first time, luckily I had bought two bottles). To make the syringe fit inside the bottle, I took a pair of pliers and cut down the plastic from the end of the syringe until it fit fairly level with the back. I dumped in a bunch of hot glue to get it to stick. The whole I drilled out was much larger than needed (I'm bad with these kinds of measurements, although this let me pour in lots of glue) so I cut a "O" shaped piece of index card to glue over it.

Something about putting Five Hour Energy in a shot glass seemed appropriate.

The best part? It works! Just kidding...

Bolyston and Tremont St

I just returned from Boston a few days ago, where I was attending a two week debate camp at Emerson College. I had a great view from my window, as you can see below.

For the above shot I used a small tripod I had brought with me. It took a bit of fiddling around to get the right angle and everything from the corner of the window (luckily they had very large ledges on the inside), but I liked the results. 4 second exposure, 80 ISO, f/3.2, 7.1mm on manual, check the EXIF for more detailed settings. All of these were shot with a my dad's Canon Powershot SD750 since I didn't want to lug along my D60.

(EXIF)

(EXIF)

The exposure on the above two shots was a bit tricky since the side of the buildings that face my window was not directly exposed to the sun (I wonder why I didn't try some evening shots). So, I did two different shots: one where the sky is more vivid and the buildings a little darker and one where the buildings are brighter.

It rained and they happened to clean my window on the last day, which make for a clear and interesting shot. I picked this over some of the other since it has the state house in it. 2 second exposure, 80 ISO, f/2.8, 5.8mm (EXIF)

Sugar Land Fireworks

I finally went through the shots from the Fourth of July Sugar Land fireworks. These were shot from my backyard, which offers a pretty good view of the show. Not much to say, so I'll just link you to the set on Flickr. A few trees got in the way in some of the shots, but it wasn't that bad of a trade off for not having to bear the crowd at the park. They were all long exposures, check the EXIF for details.

Laser Painting

I got a 5mW green laser from DealExtreme a few weeks ago and have been wanting to use it for some photos. I'm terrible at drawing with the laser, so I just tried writing my signature. To make it more interesting, I decided to include myself in the shot while doing the laser painting all in one photo.

I set up my Nikon D60 on a tripod at f/10, 200 ISO, and 20 seconds on the exposure. Strobist: Sunpak 333 at full power with the head zoomed to 135mm on a light stand, camera set to rear-sync flash (that's where the flash doesn't go off until the shutter closes, which means I was able to run in at the end and still be in the photo). The trick was getting proper lighting on myself without shining too much on the fence behind me or overpowering the laser. It took a bit of trial and error, but I eventually positioned it in front of and to the right of the camera with the flash facing almost to the left but tilted towards me enough to get some light.

I could have easily merged this from two shots, but it was a lot more fun and challenging this way. There's no post-processing other than cropping off a bit from the edges. Unfortunately, I didn't really have a surface other than the fence that I could use, so I had to deal with the small breaks in the lines from the spaces in between the boards.

Vinyl Reflections

I was looking at a few of my vinyl records yesterday and had an idea about reflecting the covers onto the records. I picked my two favorite album covers, which I happen to have on vinyl, and gave it a shot. In a dark room, I laid a piece of black foam board on the ground with the record on top, blew some compressed air to get rid of the dust, and had someone hold the album cover at the 10-11 o'clock position in relation to the text in the center of the record and tilted down towards the record at about 45 degrees. Strobist: Sunpak 333 laying on the ground on the side opposite the album cover and tilted up to the 60 degrees position. Power ranged from 1/16 to 1/4. Lens was an old 35-70mm Nikon that can get pretty close and thus I like to use for macro shots (you can also attach cheap extension tubes to it).

Is This It by The Strokes

In Rainbows by Radiohead

If I did this again, I would set up the D60 on the small tripod (forgot that we have one) and position it to aim at the center of the record or however I wanted. Then I would focus it, turn off the lights, and position the album cover myself in various positions using a remote to take shots.

Water Balloons

With not much else to shoot, I've been thinking of things that I can do at home in more studio like setup, specifically high speed shots. And what is easier (well, in principle) than shooting airsoft BB's through water balloons?

These were shot outside with the balloons hanging on a piece of clear fishing line from our gazebo. Nikon D60 on tripod and a Sunpak 333 @ 1/16 level with the balloon and on the right side of the camera. No flash trip sensors - just a knockoff infrared remote and good timing. Now that I have a hang of these shots, I'll add a second flash and stop it down to about f/16 to get everything a bit more in focus and try things like coloring the water. I'll also try to zoom in more (wasn't sure the kind of shots I would get and didn't want to miss anything.)

I was too far away on this shot with the airsoft pistol and the BB only pierced the balloon, spraying water over everything, including me. You can see the BB inside the balloon (the small yellow thing).

This time the BB popped the balloon but I only caught the initial entry. You can also see the BB on this shot.

And finally, the best shot and the closest one to what I was looking for. The BB is not in this shot (not that I really wanted it to be) but you can follow the water trail behind it.

UPDATE: I just noticed that you can see the BB at the very bottom of where the balloon was. It must have bounced back into the balloon.

Paint On A Speaker

I've been meaning to try out some more high-speed macro photography ever since I tried doing the coffee drop shots. I found some inspiration in PhotoBoothGuy's work. He has an awesome write-up/tutorial on how he does his water figure shots here. Using that, I grabbed my Logitech sub woofer and set up in the garage. Of course I forgot to take a shot of the setup, but it was just a sub woofer propped up on two tissue boxes on a card table with lots of paper towels covering everything. I set up my Nikon D60 w/ 18-200mm (didn't want to get too close with the 35-70mm because there would be paint splashing everywhere) on a tripod. Strobist was two Sunpak 333's at 1/16th power on stands to the left and right of the tripod at a general 45 degree angle. The heights varied as I figured out what I was doing. I didn't have an infrared or sound flash trigger of any kind (I should probably build one from a kit) so I used a knockoff infrared remote and winged it.

I didn't have a nice small powerful speaker I could put a ballon or piece of rubber over (though I'm not sure that's what Ryan does - he mentioned using a sub woofer in a post). Regardless, I wasn't sure whether to use the side with the speaker or the hole that vents air.

I started with the hole on the side of the sub since I anticipated more air coming out. I taped a piece of black plastic cut out of a garbage bag over the side and tried various shots with different amounts of paint and different mixes of water and paint. Not much happened other than making a mess. The problem seemed the be creating a tight seal around the hole which the garbage bag didn't do a great job of. It was also a pain to wipe off.

So I tried the side of the sub with the speaker. More tape and plastic, only to have similar results. I tried one with a lot of paint and just made this mess. (Other reason for setting up the blog: I can post shots like this without clogging up my Flickr.)

Gold Acrylic Paint

So, what to do now? It was really hot in the garage, and the results were not encouraging. But then I got the idea of sticking some kind of tube into the hole that I could stretch a balloon over. Half of a toilet paper roll with a cut up balloon and a rubber band jammed through some paper towels into the hole did the trick (the full roll created too much space and didn't have the same kick). It took a bunch of shots but I started to get the hang of it. Unfortunately I was more focused on getting the thing to work that I didn't think to lower my camera to let the darkness in the back serve as a background. Here's what it looked like (mix of purple and gold metallic paint):

And another shot that would've been much better had I positioned the camera properly. (I also managed to have the leveling slightly off, or maybe the tube was just crooked, but I had to crop the images anyways so it wasn't a problem).

Two nice shots of purple paint:

A mix of milk or cream (can't remember, I tried both) and blue dye.

Milk and green dye (mixed together before being put on the speaker).

There's some kind of ghost from the flashes being out of sync. It may have been due to using two slightly different models of a knockoff $20 flash trigger. After this shot I switched to one flash (I have two of the triggers that match so I'll use those next time). I still thought it looked cool; some people may desire that effect.

And the best shot was the most delicious: smoothie.