Homework

My new photography class is mostly technical stuff - which means there isn't a whole lot of neat arty farty pictures.  I am working on learning / understanding shutter speeds..... and ISO's and apertures (which I mostly do get) and light and how to use it 

This past weekend was work on ISO's and shutter speeds.  To get the concept - he had us take pictures at a very slow shutter speed - which was 10 seconds for me.  Now does that sound slow to you???!!!  (which has been one of my difficulties - slow / fast) and then a picture at a very fast shutter speed - mine was 1/10 of a second.  I have to say I think I have the concept now.............. but between 1/10 of a second and 10 seconds there are a whole mess of increments of seconds and when the hell do I use them??!!!

Anyway here's the resulting pictures from the shutter speed homework............

This is called light painting.......it was a technique learned last year -  but as I wasn't much impressed with it didn't I pay close attention.... at the time I said "I'll never use that"  now I have learned never say never!!

I set up the camera on a tripod in the pitch black back garden....... set the shutter speed at 10 seconds ... lit the sparkler - dashed 5 feet in front of the lens and swirled the sparkler around.... waited for the click .. then dashed back to see how the picture turned out.  It took me 18 tries to get this one.

I am not all that happy with even this one - 1) I can still sorta see myself and you shouldn't be able to see me and 2) the whole picture has a yellow hue to it - but trust me the sparklers were bright white when I used them - still got some work to do I guess.


Now this one was slow shutter speed...........(OH and if you click on the photo - if you don't already know this - it will open up a much bigger picture which might work better for these photos - to see the detail)

Now this took most of Sunday morning....... it involved tipping a wine glass at an angle - having a dark background - a light source shining on the glass - and slowly pouring water into the glass while you also took multiple pictures at a shutter speed of 1 tenth of a second.

First attempt involved the glass tipping over from the weight of the water and spilling water all over the kitchen!!!  So then I asked W for some duct tape to tape the wine glass to the tupperware lids I was using to create the angle - then a plant was plunked on the lids as well to weight them down (W's suggestion) and then shoot some more.  Every once in a while the duct tape would let go and the glass would fall and water would splash all over the kitchen!!  (What I do for a good shot!!)  

I took hours of shots -  trying to get just the right shutter speed - get the damn thing in focus - and get some sort of decent shot.  

This picture is an extra - W spotted - when he was reviewing the multiple pictures trying to help me select the best one for class - that there is a droplet arcing away from the glass onto the counter - you might see it best if you enlarge this picture............

Anyway after a couple of hours I was done - emailed the homework off to my teacher and cleaned up the make shift "photography studio" in the kitchen and breathed a sigh of relief.