Firestarter
No smoke without fire, right? Well actually you can have smoke without fire. Enter the incense-stick.
Took a break from editing wedding shots from last weekend and had a go at the classic smoke against black background shot yesterday. I’ve seen this on numerous blogs and several great photos of it around the web and thought I’d give it a go. The setup is simple; incense stick, snooted strobe and a black backdrop. Then all you have to do is sit around waiting for the smoke to make some interesting abstract shapes.
I spent about 15 minutes on this as it was getting late, but spending a bit more time is probably wise as you can experiment a bit more with composition. Also, the smoke is quite unpredicatble so you might get some pretty amazing shapes there. I love the spirally thing in this image, but I’m not content with the top part of the image.
This image was shot with Canons cheapo 50mm prime and I urge you to check out the picture in 1280×800 on flickr to see some great details in the smoke. The sharpeness in this lens is amazing.
The slight blue/green hue in the smoke is courtesy of Lightrooms split toning tool but I’m sure you could accompllish something similar with gels on your flash.
I also did an inverted version of this which gives you a great image against white background, but i went a bit overboard with some color overlays on it so I basically ruined it :p
Tomatoes
In the about section here on the blog I state that I don’t limit myself to automotive photography. But looking at the posts from the last couple of months you might think otherwise seeing as almost all of my posts have been related to cars in one way or the other. About time to put my money where my mouth is and show you guys something else then.
From time to time I wander over to David Hobby’s Strobist Blog for both useful lighting tips and inspiration. Some time ago he had this article on Food photography which inspired me to give it a go. When I tried it the first time shortly after reading the article I failed miserably, and the shots went straight to my recycle bin.
Not content with this I had to give it a go again and yesterday I bought some tomatoes and set up my DIY-studio at home. The result can be viewed below. Not exactly the same as David’s shots as he has a nice shine/highlight in the acrylic his tomatoes sits on, a shine I struggled quite a bit to get rid of. (note to self: read instructions one extra time before venturing into something new). But although a bit different from David’s shots I still feel my shot came out good.
The small picture here really doesn’t do the tomatoes justice so please View Large On Black.
Picture is shot with a Canon 430 EX positioned high above an directly behind the subject.
For the Norwegian Strobists out there, who might have the same hard time I had sourcing the acrylic background, it can be found and bought at Plastkompaniet in Oslo
Bug(s)
So, it’s been a while since my last post, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t been busy. After the making of the event posters I’ve made some layout/design suggestions for a magazine i write articles for now and then. Personally I think the layouts came out great and I’m exited to see if they’ll ever make it into the magazine. I’ve also had a couple of shoots lately but I’m not at liberty to post the images here.
Other then that I’m enjoying the summer and the fantastic weather. With the temperatures being high and the sun shining I’m really looking forward to my vacation next week. I’ve wanted to practice my strobist skills lately, but the sun doesn’t set until after 22:00 and even when it does, it really never gets dark outside. But, after I had washed my girlfriends 59 Volkswagen Beetle I decided it was dark enough and brought out the flashes and their stands. I had hoped to catch some more of the setting sun, but my China triggers has some kind of bug and does not want to cooperate. So by the time I had them dialed in, the sun had disappeared over the horizon. Still, I like how the shot came out.
Clicking the picture will take you to the flickr-page where a higher resolution version is available.
I also decided it is time I invest in some Elinchrome Skyports and will be doing so shortly. Also, I know that my pictures appear a bit dark on some screens so I’ll finally be getting my monitor recalibrated within a short while.
Another Crazy week
So it has been some time since my last post where I said I had had a crazy week, Guess what? This week has also been crazy ;)
I’ve just returned from a 7 day roadtrip to Denmark, Germany, Switzerland, Italy and Austria. Some friends and I decided to go to the AutoNews Treffen 2009 which takes place in the town of Reifnitz by the Wörthersee lake in Austria. AutoNews, Gti-treffen or the Wörthersee-tour as it is also called was held for the 28th time in really pictorial surroundings and draws a huge amount of modified Volkswagens and Audis from all over Europe. All the cities arond the Wörthersee lake is litterally invaded by all the cars and there is people absolutely everywhere.
I’m sure I snapped about 1500 pictures, but with the sun gleaming from a cloudless sky the conditions for taking pictures could have been better. Take the huge crowd in consideration and you can forget about getting any cover shots. But I’ll try to post some even though…
I’ll start of with a couple of shots from our trip down. The first is of a random Volkswagen Scirocco we passed an the Autobahn on our way down. The picture is taken while traveling at about 120 km/t and the lady driving it must have thought we were crazy hanging out the window of my car just to take her picture ;)
The picture below is of my friends Volkswagen Golf Gt whom we traveled with. The picture is taken at dawn while driving at the foot of the Swiss alps. The light was fading rapidly and hanging out of the window at about 100 km/t I didn’t have much time to really compose the picture, but it still came out ok ;)
That’s it for now, I still have a ton of pictures to look through and I’ll try to post some of them as soon as I can :)
Linselus
En av vårens gleder er for mange av oss når vi kan ta ut go’værs-bilen av garasjen.
Ida og jeg tjuvstarta litt idag da vi måtte flytte bobla hennes fra den ene garasjen til en annen. Nå bobla først var ute måtte jeg jo ta noen bilder av den. Mens jeg holdt på bestemt Ida seg for at hun ville være med på bildet.
Klikk på bildet for å komme til flickr hvor du kan se bildet i større format.
Marihøne… Midtvinters!
Nå har det vært ett par dager uten oppdateringer her, men det betyr ikke at det ikke har skjedd noe. Helgen har vært fyllt med alt fra Gatebilmesse, ikeamøbler og snømåking.
I tilllegg skjedde det noe merkelig her om dagen. Etter en dusj satt jeg på sofaen og klødde meg litt i hodet. Plutselig kjenner jeg noe i hånda og må se etter to ganger før jeg tror mine egne øyne. Ute er det jo nesten en meter med snø, og der satt jeg med en bitteliten Marihøne i hånda.
Selvsagt måtte jeg få tatt ett bilde, så jeg la marihøna på en serviett på spisebordet og satte på 55-250 objektivet på 50D’n og fyrte blitzen opp i taket.
Resultatet ble dette:
Siden Macro-objektivet mitt er på service måtte jeg nøye meg med 55-250 objektivet mitt noe som desverre gjenspeiler seg i kvaliteten på bildet, men men, det får duge :)