Once again we were playing with water and fruits. Small inflated pool, 3 Canon Speedlite Flash units and some handy support hardware makes it possible. Around 1/10.000 second flash duration can freeze any splash, only you need to worry about is a light distribution: reflectors and white backdrops are must to be here.
I was using canon 180mm Macro lens with f16 aperture to increase DOF, as water was moving berries away from a focus plane during a splash. Berries and fruits were hang on a rails with help of tiny fishing line.
The results are below
As some have noticed, I’ve got a new profile image. We had a self-portrait photo session (my less favorite type:-), so its one of the photos. We tried to stay away from a usual “me and the camera” portrait, but… Were not successful finding something else to describe the nature of photographer. The good thing, I’ve add some emotion into this.
Soon I’ll post the best of me form this photo session for you judgement. Stay tuned!
We had our very good friends visiting us for a 1.5 weeks. That was a fun! Have not seen them for about 10 years. They are still very nice and creative guys, we had a few (unfortunately) photo sessions done. The rest of the time was spent together in St.Pete, FL with vine, ocean and sun:-)
A cake from a Whole Foods Grocery, same technique as we have used HERE, except white background. White because it was for a microstock, as they like products on a white. Start feeling that we’ll need to shoot more like this, as these images age quite popular on iStock and Shutterstock.
Some examples oh high-speed photography we did a while ago. I have used 3 Canon Speedlite 580EX II Flash units, synchronization was done by hand:-)
Canon EOS 1Ds Mark III camera, manual shooting mode, 1/250 sec, F4.5. Shutter speed does not really matter, as actual flash duration was about 1/3000 sec.
Do you like the result? Let me know if you want to see detailed explanation on how it was done. BTW, most images from this photoshot (and similar ones) I have for sale on my mini-stock site: www.akelphoto.com
Update: Waiting for my Paul C Buff Einstein to arrive, will see if they will be capable to do the similar action freeze.
Have decided to try micro-stock agencies, like Shutterstock.com and iStock.com. Loaded several photos, mostly water splashes I did a while ago. So far Shutterstock.com is the best, it start producing a revenue from the fist day. Not much, but considering that I have just a few photos there, it looks promising.
So, it appeared that I need to have more water waves, splashes, etc in my portfolio. I do not have hi-speed flashes like Broncolor pulse (yet:-) , so I found a very simple but still very good solution: 3 canon dedicated flash units with remote trigger:
We have shoot hundreds of the photos, hopefully there will be at least 10-15 good ones:-)
However, the result was quite acceptable:
Eventually we have updated our web site: http://www.koloskov.com
The biggest advantage is a re-sizable content.
Also we have decided not to do any people/portraits anymore. Feels like need to narrow down my specialty.
However, I’ll miss our models:-)
August 11th, 2009 | 
