Fireworks in the dark!

Well why would you have fireworks without the dark? Ok fine lets get on with what this post is actually about, cheese! Ok just kidding, as the title states I am pretty sure that you know this post is about fireworks! I took these pictures back during 4th of July and I saved them to post for now because I figured New Years has fireworks and you might possibly want to take pictures of them. Also lucky for you these pictures were on my computer at work! Otherwise we would have been SOL because they would have been on my hard drive that got stolen and not on my personal computer.

What I used in this shoot:
-My Nikon D7000
-Vello wireless remote trigger
-Tripod

As set up you will want to out your camera on a tripod because I don't think you can hold a camera 100% steady for two seconds. You will also want to set up your remote trigger and I will explain its importance in a bit. While on setup I should inform you that you will want to be set up on something that does not move.

Firstly you are going to want to set your f-stop as high as your camera will let it, mine was at 22. You want to do this because the higher your f-stop the more you will have in focus and this is very important for fireworks. (you can refer back to my depth of field post) Since you are not able to focus on a firework before it is set off you will want to give yourself as much wiggle room as possible. If you know where they are shooting the fireworks from and you can focus on something right there I would recommend focusing and then setting your focus to manual so that it doesn't try to focus every time you push the shutter.

Also you will want to zoom out as far as possible and leave it that way because it is extremely hard to tell where the fireworks are going to end up so the wider area you can capture the better. So keeping this in mind you will want to use the widest lens you have at your mercy.

Your ISO in this instance isn't too terribly but you do not want anything too low or too high. I usually set mine anywhere between 800-1000.

 Now on to the actual shooting part! So once you are set up the first couple shots will more than likely be testers to make sure everything is good. most of the time you will have to adjust where the camera is pointing because either you will be too low or too high.

The shutter in this instance is controlled solely on how much of the firework you want to capture so this is the biggest reason for the remote. You will have to set your shutter to bulb which on my camera you just adjust the shutter all the way to the slowest and the last option is bulb. Keep in mind that the reason you will want the remote is that with a remote you are not touching the camera and therefore you will not accidentally shake the lens in the process of holding down the shutter.

Once you are set up and pointing in the right direction have fun! Trial and error are the only ways to really know how the shot will come out.

One thing to keep in mind is that fireworks do create smoke and the light of the next firework will light up that smoke so don't be alarmed when your image comes out with something that looks like a smudge on your lens.

 Also remember that the longer you hold the shutter the more streaks you will get so eventually your shot might just be a ton of streaks and be too light to do anything with.

There is no 100% formula for shooting fireworks but this is sure to get you as close as possible to shooting them the best way I know how! So go out and have fun on New Years and please don't start any fires!

Water water everywhere but not a drop to drink!

Well at least I would hope you aren't planning on drinking this particular water... So today's post is gonna be about one of my favorite things to photograph, you guessed it! Water! So today we are going to talk about water in relation to your shutter speed and how you can achieve different looks with different shutters! So I don’t have a model for this post because I want you to get the idea of the water first also you would need a model whos also a statue for some of these!

So we are going to start with what you usually see from me that that’s more of a frozen in time water. For this shot my settings my ISO at 250, shutter at 1/250 and f-stop at 9.

Here comes the fun part, if you slow your shutter you can achieve a more painted look from the water with its movement so on the extreme other side you get this:

For this one my shutter was at 1/8 (Which is where the whole model standing still thing comes into play) my f-stop at 32 (remember since the shutter is lower you will have to make the f-stop higher to compensate for the amount of light you are letting in the lens) and my ISO stayed the same at 250.

Now here are some in betweens on how we got to this point:

Shutter 1/10, F-stop 29, ISO 250

Shutter 1/15, F-stop 20, ISO 250

Shutter 1/40, F-stop 14, ISO 250

Shutter 1/100, F-stop 11, ISO 250

So as I've said before water is one of my favorite things to photograph because there are just so many different options you have with photographing it! Until next time!

Better then spoiled milk!

Ok so I know this post is going up super late and I am sorry just been busy and time got away from me! So I know those of you who follow my facebook are expecting a fireworks post but I think I am going to save that for closer to new years so you can get your own amazing shots! So that being said I am going to talk about the amazing session that I had this weekend with the most amazing model ever!

So the best I can describe this shoot is basically we played in colored milk all day! Well we started with water but I am getting ahead of myself! So setup is the most important part of this because it can get MESSY! So this picture of the setup is after because I was too lame to get one before but you can see the mess it can make!

 

So for the setup we put the backdrop as far from the splash zone as possible. For the splash zone we had the bars for a backdrop set up and attached a painters drop cloth to it. This was to catch any extra spillage that didn’t immediately drop down into the little pool we had. As an added security we taped one of the drop cloths to the other to make it longer and extend into the pool so we could easily poor the liquid out.

For the lighting we had one strobe to the right of us and one strobe behind the model off to the left of us to catch the liquid. The camera was set at 1/250 shutter, 250 ISO and 13 f-stop which for me this is a usual “studio” setting.

Next was the fun part, so this shoot is only successfully able to be pulled off with a minimum of 3 people (a photographer, an assistant and a model). So to start this shoot we started with water because as weird as this sounds it’s not the easiest thing to throw liquid at somebody and make it land where you need it to. So we started with water to test our skills. We got fun and creative with the water because we didn’t have to worry about running out of it! We switched places so we could each get pictures and get the timing down because that can be tricky too! Everyone is different but the best way to be ready is have the photographer count down so that when the water is thrown the photographer is ready.

Next we moved on to the colored milk. For this we used a gallon of whole milk, a big thing of plain yogurt (for thickness) and dye. Mix all of these into a bucket with a mixer so that it is a nice smooth mixture. Then came the fun part, throwing the mixture on to your model. It was SUPER cold and she was definitely not expecting that but she was a trooper and continued getting pelted with freezing cold milk mixture.

We switched it up at the end, I was shooting the pink mixture and my super amazing photog friend Everett (who I posted about last week) was shooting the purple mixture. So we each had turns in the water round to get our aim right and then continued on to the milk mixture. After all was said and done we were ready for cleanup and our model wanted to take pictures of us in her position. We were a bit hesitant but we obliged because you shouldn’t make your model do what you wouldn’t. It was quite fun but in the end we ended up smelling like soiled milk which is why wherever you do it you need to make sure cleanup is easy. We were in Everett’s garage so we were able to mop everything up and spray it down with the hose. All in all it was a super fun shoot and I definitely want to be able to do it again with different colors!

Here are some other shots from this shoot! I'm just in love our model was amazing and was up for anything! The water portion of this shoot has inspired me to start a series of elemental shots so those will hopefully be on the way I have plans for fire, air and earth basing most of the posing off of Avatar the Last Airbender (because I'm a nerd and that;s how the idea came up).