Just one take, CSLR Challenge 143

2009095_Spring Studio_141, originally uploaded by photogeek21.

Sometimes you only get one chance to get the shot. This was a fun shot I did just before packing up the 'studio'. It took a bit of planning - and an assistant. Lighting was provided with a single off camera strobe fired into a styro-foam igloo soft box. I bumped the iso up a bit to lower the strobe power down to 1/32. At this power I the strobe could cycle fast enough to keep up with the frame rate of my camera.
So once it was all set up, prefocused, and pre exposed, I shook the bottle really hard and started the cork, as soon as I saw it start to move, I put it down on the table and had my assistant hold the shutter down to fire off a series of shots. This was my favorite. I like the shot just hated the clean up afterwards.... BTW the shot took third in the CSLR challenge #43

Denied!

Well it seems that even I can fall victim to censorship. For my latest entry for the CSLR challenge I chose Aly for the model. The topic was Pink Floyd lyrics and I had an idea for 'Shine on you crazy diamond' which I intended to protray Aly as a burned out child star. I shot her huddled in a corner, curled up in a ball. I photoshop'd it with some dramatic lighting techniques, which I'll post here as a TaW since this blog is solely for my benefit.
Anyway the resulting pic was truely a winner in my eyes... but it was pretty disturbing... actually a bit too disturbing for Mama to approve. After looking at it again, I had to agree. Now it's back to the drawing board...

Technique a week.

This year I got a subscription to Lynda.com which, for those of you that don't know is a online video training site. My intention was to learn as much as I could about coding 10framesasecond.com. They have a lot of video training courses on webdesign but also photoshop and all things adobe - I started to plunge into there large library of courses. But it didn't take much time for the material to go in one ear and out the other. As it is I don't use this stuff everyday so how am I going to remember it? I'd often want to do something weeks after learning only to find out I'd forgotten all the steps.
So to put an end to all that forgetting and to hopefully ingrain anything I've learned into my thick skull, I've decided to do 'a technique a week' where I take technique I've learned - no matter how small and apply it to one of my images and post them here. Just like the CSLR challenge, this will force me to apply new concepts and to my photography and hopefully as I continue to practice these techniques, they'll become part of my workflow and hopefully become the inspiration for the creation of new techniques all my own and maybe even one day help to develop a signature style of my own.

Watch for the posts I hope I can keep it up for at least a year....