Life is kind of a living hell right now...

So I've been on this crazy long hiatus from you all because of life and all that jazz. I want to update you that I am still alive I have just been going through some crazy stuff, I have lost a friend (not dead just not really friends anymore), had a ton of stuff stolen from my car (which included my external hard drive so most of my pictures are all gone) and most recently I had a flat tire which hey isn't all bad but one on top of another on top of another is all fun right?

So I am not here to bore you on the woefulness that is my life but I as I make my way through all of this am thinking of starting up a separate blog about how my life could be a c list movie. I do plan on updating as soon as I have more free time but I know for sure there will be an update immediately following new years and hopefully one just before.

The one just before new years will be about how to shoot fireworks, all of those pictures should have been posted on my facebook so I should be able to go back and get those for that post, if not then I am a bit SOL because it really isn't firework season so lets hope I have them on my facebook :/

The one after new years will be of my trip to New York! I am super lucky to have this chance to go up to New York for new years, I have an amazing friend who is letting stay at his place so I don't have to pay for a hotel. I will be up there a week so I expect to have a couple different blog posts separating all of my pictures.

I am now in the midst of finals and getting crap done for my stupid art class and hopefully I will be able to have a post up in about two weeks(hopefully sooner if my life lets me do what I want) with a couple pictures I took over the Thanksgiving Holiday.

Now I don't want to just throw a bunch of words at you and not give you any pictures so here are some pics I have either previously posted the shoot and didn't share or I just hadnt had a chance to share it just yet.

 This picture was from my Night Time Photography blog post. This was a little pencil pouch I used to carry arround so we have a bit of fun up on the bridge.

 This shot is from the Photoshoot with off camera lighting blog post. I have a TON of pictures from this shoot that were just down right amazing, most of which are posted on my facebook page if you would like to check them out.

 This one is an extra from the Better then spoiled milk blog post. Yet again I have a ton of these but I havent gotten around to editing most of them! Hopefully there will be more of these up on my facebook page in the future.

This picture or rather composite is from a photoshoot I did almost a year ago. This is one of my very good friends and we were doing promo pics for the cosplay group she runs and I created this little beauty for her. 

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).