Photograph of the Week #0041

"When not scribbling away in a sketch book or dabbling on a Wacom tablet i'm invariably fiddling around with exposure settings on my Nikon D90 trying to capture moments in aesthetically pleasing ways.
So here we have "Photograph of the week"

This weeks photo is of our pet cat, Eccles, whilst he lounged on a seat in the garden. I was trying to take advantage of the fact and get some close-ups of his eyes but the light was tremendously uneven.

Photograph of the Week #0040

"When not scribbling away in a sketch book or dabbling on a Wacom tablet i'm invariably fiddling around with exposure settings on my Nikon D90 trying to capture moments in aesthetically pleasing ways.
So here we have "Photograph of the week"

I've been meaning to do this for a long time. It's a very basic photograph and more a snapshot really. Nothing special in the exposure or anything but i've just been meaning to get a shot of this sign.

It sits on the side of a cycle/footpath, as you might imagine, beside a bay that I walk around every lunch time to get some much needed exercise/fresh-air.

There is something a little unusual about the sign though, took me months to notice it, mostly because I wasn't paying attention to it but still, I don't imagine it will take anyone viewing this image long to notice what I didn't.

Photograph of the Week #0039

"When not scribbling away in a sketch book or dabbling on a Wacom tablet i'm invariably fiddling around with exposure settings on my Nikon D90 trying to capture moments in aesthetically pleasing ways.
So here we have "Photograph of the week"

A quick, colourful shot from a previous trip through the new forest.

Scribble of the Week #008

My sketch books are forever filled with random mind-scrawlings and scribbles that will otherwise never be used for anything or be seen by anyone, because of this I bring you "Scribble of the week".

Scribble of the week is a weekly feature(on and off probably) where i'll be posting a random sketch, scribble, design or element from one of my various sketch books. These will always be unfinished pieces of work and will often, most likely, be very random.

I'm not too good at keeping up to date with my Scribbles of the week in comparison to my photos but that does not mean i'm not scribbling. I'll try to get more on the ball in the coming weeks but no promises. :)

For now though, my current work-in-progress is actually an extension of a previous post. This is apiece of art depicting my boy and his awesome mount and travelling companion the Alphabetepillar.

As always with these pieces it's very much a work-in-progress. The background is miles off and more shading/highlighting/details and such needs to be done with a splash more colour but still.

Photograph of the Week #0038

"When not scribbling away in a sketch book or dabbling on a Wacom tablet i'm invariably fiddling around with exposure settings on my Nikon D90 trying to capture moments in aesthetically pleasing ways.
So here we have "Photograph of the week"

Yet another quick macro shot, this time taken of a fly in my garden that landed on a large, green, plastic, riding-dog toy that my son got last christmas. It was only there long enough for the one shot which is my excuse for not adjusting my aperture to give a better depth of field.

Photograph of the Week #0037

"When not scribbling away in a sketch book or dabbling on a Wacom tablet i'm invariably fiddling around with exposure settings on my Nikon D90 trying to capture moments in aesthetically pleasing ways.
So here we have "Photograph of the week"

...We are men of groans and howls, Mystic men who eat boiled owls...

Last night I went ahead with a little experiment I'd seen recently in a YouTube video involving a thin metal tray, a sub-woofer, some cornflour and a bit of water. See video below;

 

Initially I found the video when I was inspired by a challenge I read about on dpreview, the challenge was already over but it made me look up what non-Newtonian fluids were and more pertinently, google the term "fun things to do with non-Newtonian fluids?"

(Next time I might google "stupid things to do with non-Newtonian fluids")

 

With this in mind I grabbed an old sub-woofer I had no intention of using again(though I could) and begun the experiment with a friend of mine called Gordon. A fellow dabbler in photography and other such things and always happy to assist in anything even remotely interpretable as chemistry.

The plan of action was very simple.

1. Mix up some oobleck using cornstarch(we used cornflour) and water
   Most recipes I found say 1.5 parts corn-starch to 1 part water but we ended up adjusting the mixture to suit as we went. The ingredients are so simple you can play with it.
2. Pour it into a tray
3. Slap the tray on a sub-woofer/speaker 
4. Ramp up the bass.

To avoid having to spend too much time poking the mixture and holding the tray down we simply used masking tape on the underside of the tray, strapping it directly to the speaker, which basically served the purpose necessary and meant we could concentrate on things like focus/aperture/shutterspeed/etc.

I decided to go for macro shots of the fluid as it bounced and formed it's tendrils and blobs as wide angles, whilst interesting and documentative don't have much impact or visual appeal I think. Due to the nature of the experiment however the fluid is constantly vibrating at a high speed which is again exaggerated by being zoomed in so close to the subject. What this means is it's necessary to shoot at a fairly high shutter speed.

I went for 1/1000th of a second in the end which seemed to suitably nullify any motion blur, this ofcourse required some carefully controlled flash. Too much light will easily over expose the already white liquid and/or plunge the shapes into heavy shadows while too little light can result in a total lack of definition in the fluid or of course under-exposure. Shooting at a high speed such as this though does have the advantage that you can hand-hold the shot quite easily. 

Anyway, what follows is my pick of the results.

That's a tea spoon by the way.

The above two shots had too little depth of field I think, thankfully what i focused on is fairly interesting to look at but it would've have been nicer to see the rest of the image clearer.

Really these photos exhibit a technique of what's called "high-key" photography. (Something I've previously been quite poor at in my opinion.)

Shooting a white subject on a white background is basically a challenge, any definition in the subject can only be obtained from well-considered lighting.
I think I've managed to achieve the effect I was after, if I was to do this again(which is likely) I would probably try to incorporate more colour, either using food dye or possibly some coloured filters on a couple of flashes.
Only question now is what to do next.