Yesterday had a fun and informativfe evening at my photo club in The Hague (Images Photo Club). Of course I entered the Photographer of the Year competition with my first entry and got nowhere (nothing changes). Anyway the winner was a smasher so I don’t feel bad. Here’s my entry. The competition title was “Green”.
As a club project with the title “graffiti”, I challenged myself to take some night shots of some near-by street art (sic). These are some of the results. I used exposures of around 10 to 15 seconds whilst my beautiful assistant (aka the wife) shone a 5 euro LED strip-lamp along parts of the wall. I also fired my flash in some shots to highlight the wall furthest from the camera.
10th to 12th September was the Strandwalfestival in Rijswijk.
This annual fesival is the town’s excuse to allow all the local bands and clubs and societies to show what they can do. It’s also a great opportunity for some street photography. I took my 70-300mm Canon lens and Metz flash set to HSS (High speed synchronisation) to see what I could do.
Something I always wanted to try and finally decided to make a go of it…. A high speed photo of an object falling into a liquid. I decided a strawberry into milk would make a suitable subject and it fitted well with a task I had been set to capture something that suited the title “bon appetit”. My setup was basic with my two Metz flash heads set at 1/32 an 1/64 power and placed diagonally at 45 degrees from the camera (one bottom left the other top right. As this was my first try at such a thing I simply left the heads unmodified but believe a diffuser would have been to my advantage to try to remove some of the shadows. I dropped that strawberry into the milk so many times the poor fruit started to become strawberry jam. It was not easy to synchronize the shot and hitting the milk. More often that not it was too early but mostly just too late. Also it does splash a bit. Next time I’ll wrap some cling-film around my flash head bodies. Anyway, here are some results….
