David's Project 365

[Mike Farley]

How about wildlife in the woods, how about making a hide and sticking some food out and seeing what comes along?

Dogs - if it is my local woods.

[davidc]

Dogs in IR?

[Mike Farley]

Dogs in IR?

That would exceed even my enthusiasm for shooting IR.

What I can tell you that my presentation on IR at the club on 6 February will include some animate subjects, as well as the more traditional type of image.

[davidc]

After yesterday's image I really wanted to do something better today. I hope I have

Once I'd nailed the setup and lighting it was great fun trying to get the most interesting shapes possible! This was one of the best so I thought I'd run with it.

Definitely got the bug for this style of photography, brain is buzzing with ideas for other shots!



http://500px.com/photo/24514001

[Mike Farley]

Very inventive. You seem to have found your metier with trick photography.

Are you going to let us in on the secret?

[davidc]

Heh I wouldn't call it "trick" photography. Just photography like any other

The setup and "hit rate" is pretty high so it was quite good fun playing with it & experimenting.

How I did it
Very low tech, you could probably all do this with what you have in the house!

You will need

Camera
Remote flash trigger
Flash (set on low power), I set mine to the 2nd lowest level (1/64th)
A chopping board
Three tins of beans (I used Heinz, other beans are available)
White card for the backdrop
Food colouring
Gaffer tape/superglue
Either a device to trigger the shutter via sound or a willing/able partner

I positioned the bean tins on the floor to act as rollers and placed the chopping board on top - with a gentle push I could then knock the whole setup against the kitchen skirting board. I setup white card against the wall itself just as a precaution then positioned another large white card behind the whole setup to form the plain backdrop. I also blu-tacked white card onto the chopping board too - I wasn't sure if the gaffer tape would stick to the wood board and also wasn't sure if I wanted the whole stem + base of the glass in by that stage. In the end, this extra card wasn't needed. Attach the glasses firmly using the gaffer tape, you're going to be knocking them about a bit so don't skimp on the tape.

Next I positioned my camera and framed the shot as you can see, set the exposure manually (getting quite good at predicting what's needed now) and then setup my triggering system. This is what I used - https://triggertrap.com/ - essentially it uses any of the multitude of features on my iphone to trigger the shutter, be it vibration sensor, the internal camera, a wifi signal from my network/internet... far too many to go into. In this case I used the internal microphone and set it so the sound of the board knocking the wall would be loud enough to trigger three shots. Trialled the triggering with empty glasses to make sure it was looking good, then repeated with full, then again with the moving full glasses to see how much force was needed to get the water to leap out. Didn't use food colouring at first in case it needed a prohibitive amount of cleanup. It does

*If you don't have the remote trigger mechanism, enlist your trusty photographer's assistant to push the chopping board while you burst trigger the shutter *

So with the set-up working I added the food colouring. Far, far too much of it and it was too darkly coloured for the flash to shine through so I needed to then empty them all, clean out and refill for it to work, all while still taped to the board. At least I knew the gaffer tape was working!

Tried again with just a couple of drops of colouring and this time the result was much better! Except I hit the wall so hard the red fluid cross-contaminated the centre one resulting in a 5 minute cleanout using a syringe before I could start again...

Anyway... with everything setup again it was just a case of repeatedly banging the board against the wall to cause the liquid to slosh up and over the glass rim. Water does escape as you can see but it wasn't too bad and only moderate cleanup was required. Though it did briefly stain our kitchen floor tile grout red and green

Hope this helped, let me know if you have any questions!

[Ronald Barker]

Congratulations on the set up. I don't know who you dream these up but well done.

[davidc]

Congratulations on the set up. I don't know who you dream these up but well done.

Thank you!
An overactive imagination and frequently boring job help

[davidc]

I'd scouted this location out a few weeks ago and vowed to come back with a tripod to do it justice, and in the "blue hour" to get a prettier sky. Such a cool spot!

Was a bit worried when the nearby offices had a fire alarm and hundreds of people streamed into shot! Thankfully it didn't last long



http://500px.com/photo/24612979

[davidc]

This is a test post.

http://www.google.com

Well it worked