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.

National Wildlife Federation Contest

I entered this photo in the National Wildlife Federation contest. I fall under the Youth category, so that means I can only have a shot at a free iPad, but that and the free publicity would be well worth it.

Vote here: www.nwf.org/PhotoContest/ViewPhoto.aspx?imageid=333105 You can vote once a day, every day until the contest closes. If you have a photo you'd like to enter, you still have until July 14th to do so. It's $20 an entry, but you get a subscription to their magazine.