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!

Lets Have Some Tea!

Ok well not really but yesterday I was up in San Antonio because I can, well actually because I was taking a mini vacation and went to Six Flags on Monday then Tuesday we went to the Japanese Tea Gardens and the mall. So first I would like to apologize for not having a post last week I was super busy with work getting ready for the wedding fair and my days got away from me.

So today I am sharing some of my pictures from the Japanese Tea Gardens with you. The place is unbelievably beautiful I wish I could have stayed longer but it was super hot and we were super tired.
There are lots of stairs there so just warning you if you have any sort of physical problem just be careful because the stairs are made of stone so they aren’t really level.

For this my camera was set to F-5.6, my ISO at 250, my shutter is what changed depending on if I was shooting in the shadows or in the sun, the highest my shutter went was1/640 and the lowest was 1/160. The brighter the spot the higher the shutter but the lower the shutter the more likely you are to catch movement so usually I recommend changing the f-stop if you don’t mind the depth of field difference. The only reason I was doing the shutter was because I only took my D5000 and its easier to change the shutter than the f-stop.

So these are some of my favorite images from the gardens, I have tons more but I don't want to have y'all scrolling forever and ever looking at pictures so here's a couple more shots, I will probably post more on my photography page as well as my personal page so you can see them there.

Sorry this post is going up late life got in the way...

Backdrop it like its hot!

Navi annoying Link like always.

So this past weekend I was up in Houston for an anime convention, Delta H Con. It was fun and I had my backdrop setup like before with the white but this time I had a different backdrop because my last backdrop was messed up by my last shoot :o but it was so worth it. So when I went online to get a new backdrop I got a vinyl backdrop and I LOVE it! Here are some of my favorite shot from this weekend!

Link ready for battle

Navi being ignored like always :(

 I did not have any lights directed at my backdrop so it came out a bit grey in photos but that doesn't matter because I was aiming for a solid backdrop. Also for this con I forgot one of the key pieces for my off camera flash system so I had to use all three flashes one on master the other two on remote and I was bouncing the flash that was on my camera. Most of these shots are from a production company I work for Twisted Dreamscapes Productions you can find us on facebook. I will post up a review for my backdrop I just need to write it up first :D

All of these have already been posted on my facebook but there will be more so keep an eye out!

The Mad Hatter

Ariel and her dinglehopper

Star trek engineer, she was super sweet!

Happy bat family? probably not...

Cat woman can steal me any day!

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).