Taw:#8 - Cheap Smoke

Okay, I'm cheating by doing two techniques from one shoot, but I trying to prevent renaming all these posts 'Technique a Month'!
- So How did I get that smoke in the Flash in the Can Entry? Well I don't have a smoke machine and you can only really find them around here during Halloween (and I'm too cheap to buy one) so with small objects like this, I used my ultrasonic humidifier which produces a good thick white vapor into my 'Set'.

That's it!

Taw:#7 - Flash in a Can

Here's a little how to on my latest CSLR entry entitled Just a flash in the can. It's basically, well, a flash placed in a can.
First I took a can of coke, cut the back off of it and used a thumb tack to poke holes along the lines I wanted the lights to show through.
A piece of Aluminum foil was used as a baffle so that I wouldn't have a 'hot spot' right in the center of the can where the flash would have a direct path out the holes - This diffused the light and evened out the 'power' of each hole.
Put the can on the flash and 'Wa-La' you have instant Las Vegas effect on your can!

A win for Aly.

Hey Aly's pic, Streetlight, ended up taking first place! That just leaves Matthew to make a complete set. (although he did get a second place finish on his first and only entry so far. We'll have to wait for the right topic.

What a difference a background makes.

Had an interesting thing happen in my CSLR entry, Streetlight. I wanted a diagonal crop to emphasize the centered-ness of the photo but of course you can't post diagonal crops on the typical web page so I put it on a grey background that was close to the CSLR background color. Initial I got a few comments that didn't like the crop, saying it was awkward. After showing it to Alma she said it was because the backgrounds didn't match so it looks like some dorky frame around the pic. So I set out to match the background, digging into the page's .css file to find the background RGB values (38,38,38) but photoshop skewed the colors when I converted the image to SRGB so I had to revert to the tweak and test method and eventually found 42,42,42 were the right values - reposting the comments all change on how nice the crop was. You can see the difference in just these two blog entries. - and the pic is currently in 1st place in the 1st day of voting - thanks Mama!

CSLR Challenge 114 Entry

Streetlight

So again I'm squeezing in a last minute entry in the CSLR Challange. This time around the Challenge is 'Centered Composition' - which I think I got here, but I don't think this diamond framing is working for me. Thought it'd be clever to tilt the composition but guess not. Not a whole lot new going in in this one as far as technique goes. - Well, I did use a ladder to take the shot. Exposed ambient for 2 stops under exposure and used a tight flash to light Aly's face and hands and make it 'glow' (I did apply some 'soft-focus' PP).

I clamped the flash on the ladder and triggered it with a set of Cactus V2s. Need to hack them I did'nt notice any false fires but I had about 20% no-fires! And I was only 3ft away! Gonna try the antenna hack and see if that helps.