Watching time pass by...

Its been a good learning weekend for me.  I had a chance to get out late yesterday to play with time exposures.  The results are below. 

Over the past month or so, I have been scouting spots to take long exposure shots of streets/roads/highways.  I wanted to capture the lights and colors of cars driving by at night. 

I settled on the roof level of the North Star mall parking lot, adjacent to 410.  Below are some of my better results. 

I experimented with different shutter speed settings ranging from 1/2sec to 10sec.

Setup:  Top of North Star Mall parking garage, tripod, camera, and remote trigger (to reduce trigger vibrations).

Setting for these images. 
Mode: Manual
Aperture: f/8, F/9, and F/3.2 respectively
Shutter Speed: 3sec (all)
ISO: 100 (all)
Focal Length: 35mm on DX sensor. (~50mm on full frame camera)

Notes:  Exposure was less of an issue in this session due to the long exposure time.  (Plenty of time for the sensor to gather light.)

Artistic notes: I love this perspective time.   

Beauty everywhere...fire

Well... continuing on my 4 elements theme, I gave fire a try.  The results are below.  It was a fun session and I didn't burn the house down.  I got some good practice with working on setting my exposure. 

The last two images, I did some split toning to give the photos a more dramatic/artistic look. 

Setup:  Nikon D3100, tripod, two clamp lights, garage overhead light, lighter fluid, a nice looking glass, a mirror plate, black sheet, lighter, and fire extinguisher (just in case.)

Camera settings:
ISO =100
Focal Length = 35mm (loving my Prime lens)
Aperture = 4.5 to 5.6 range
Shutter Speed = 1/125 to 1/640 sec

Earth is next on my agenda... not sure what to do with that???

Oh and I adjusted the blog setting so that anyone can post comments. 

Bubbles...Hoo ha ha!

Hi all...
This one was harder to capture than I expected.  I wanted to capture the psychedelic fluid look of the exterior of bubbles.
 
Setup: Two can lights, tripod, camera, black sheet, and bubbles (of course) 

Camera settings:

• ISO = 1600 (I played with ranges from 400 to 1600.  I need a better way to diffuse the light to get better exposure.  I will have to work on that.)
• f/stop = 4.5
• Shutter speed = 1/200sec

 So, what do you think?
AP

Liquid stop...

Hi all,

I didn't have to much time to miss with this one, but I am pleased, in general, with results. 
I wanted to stop time. 

Setup: Wine glass, water with food color, 100w light can, camera, wood board, mop, and pitcher. 

Shot setting as seen: 55mm, Iso 1600 (A bit high, need an external trigger flash), f/7.1, 1/1000sec. 

Overall, I am generally happy with the results.  I wanted a little more stop action to the water, maybe a higher speed next time.  The most difficult part was pouring the water into the glass. 

It seems I am on a 4 elements kick lately.  Let see I did smoke (air) and water.... maybe fire or earth is next.   

There is beauty everywhere...

Its been a few days since my last post... been busy with family and work. 
But all in all its been going good. 

Today I decided to go up in smoke.... lol
Smoke photography that is...  I saw an awesome photograph of smoke several years back and was taken back by its simple beauty.  One does not think of smoke as beautiful, but it can be.  Or at least that is my goal. 

My setup---
Trip to Walmart with my girls before practice to get:
Incenses and a black sheet.

Simple setup.  Tripod, camera, remote trigger to reduce shake, incenses, lighter, and sheet of paper to diffuse my onboard camera flash. 

Played with camera settings for about 15 minutes and the final results are below. 
The best photos ended up with 1/60sec shutter speed, 1.8 f-stop, manual focus, and iso 100.  I was surprised about the f-stop setting. 

I would love to here what everyone or anyone thinks.

Until next time...

Candle Timelapse 1st attempt....

Hello My Friends,

I hope everyone is well.  Today I got an intervalometer (basically a fancy remote trigger that lets me set shot interval).  With it I hope to do some timelapsed photography. 

To that end, here is about 40mins playing around with it and a candle. 
Its a little over exposed and not the best job of focusing.  Not a great timelapsed but not bad for my 1st attemped.

The action really starts happening at around 10 secs in. 

I used Adobe Lightroom to create the video. 

Photoshoot data:
4sec shot interval  
Start time ~9:50 pm
End time ~10:28pm
Total Photos: ~500

Result: 23 second video
I am not sure how well the video is going to show up on blogger...I might link to youtube next time...

First Shots with my Prime Lens :)

Got my the 35mm Prime lens in this morning...you gotta love Amazon.  Paula had to work tonight, so I told my girls that we would head to the park when the sun started to go down.  They had been couped up inside most of the day due to the heat, so they were excited. 

This gave me the opportunity to try my new lens out on my two of my three favorite subjects...

Here are some of the results....  I am so glad I got the lens...it is awesome! 

Bokeh who....

Hello all...

Hope everyone is well.  Lets see... I met with a retired mentor of mine this week for lunch.  He has been into photography for a while.  After talking to him and seeing his work I am even more inspired. 

Today I experimented with getting Bokeh effects... basically artistic blur.  In that effort, I broke out some x-mas lights.  You can see the results below.  The Bokeh effect came out a little stronger than I would of liked, but over all I am pleased with the results.  Here were my settings for those who are interested.  Manual setting...120mm...f/5.6...1/8sec. 

I was trying to make the Bokeh light effect to look like it was raining/pouring into the glass.  I think I accomplished that...

Oh...by the way I ordered (thanks my love for the gift) my first Prime lens...Nikon 35mm f/1.8G AF-S.  Since I have a DX or compact DSLR, this will get me to about 50mm of a full frame DSLR. Very excited.