Final Project - finals prints

I should say maybe the final prints. I took the critique prints and made several changes. I changed the black level on the front lit shots to remove the base completely. I also sharpened the photos to make the splashes really pop. The back lit photos were much more of a problem. I had to overlay a white layer and mask out the glass to remove the base the glass was sitting on. I could not get the white background from the 4 shots to match exactly. I used cloning and masking.. It looked acceptable on my monitor but when printed large the color changes and edges are obvious. I'm not sure if I will turn them in or just use the front lit photos.

The color changes in the print isn't as bad as it looks in this photo. The resizing for the web and jpeg compression makes it look worse.

Once the black levels were reset to remove the base, I also did some cloning so the splashes on the lower photos did not have flat tops.

I like the front lit strawberry photos the best. The colors pop and with enough sharpening the water also pops. If I was doing it again I think I would shoot it so there was more space above the glass to ensure that splashes did not get cut off.

Final Project - critique prints

Once I had enough good photos I took a first attempt at creating posters. I made 4, each a different combination of fruit, glass, and lighting.

I tried to set the levels so each shot would blend with the others. No matter how I tried I could not get all the whites to match.

The upper left photo was way off on white color.

The front lit photos were much easier to match.

The base the glass was sitting was black but did not match the background.

Final Project - third try

I used everything I learned on the first two attempts when I shot the photos I would use for the final prints.

I tried different types of fruit and different shaped glasses to get some variety.

When shooting back lit I needed to use a flash for fill and the flash had a recycle time of 3-4 seconds so I was only able to shoot one photo each time I dropped something. For front lighting, since I only used the strobe and the strobe could fire as fast as my camera could shoot (6 frames a second), I changed methods. I set the camera to high speed and used a wired remote to fire it. I would just hold the shuttle and drop the fruit so I would get several shots each time, although like this one, the timing was completely random.

One of the good shots.

One of my favorites.

An example of the timing being off, and also if you look at the lower left of the glass you can see a reflection of my hand. I had to be close enough to drop the fruit into the glass but behind all the reflectors to make sure I wasn't in the shot.

The strawberry photos were my favorite, they were much more colorful than anything else I tried.

This was the orientation I wanted to catch with the strawberry, however once it entered the water it always turned or rotated.

Attempting to get a bigger splash I tried dropping the strawberry from higher and missed the water and impaled it on the edge of the glass.

Notice the single drop of water above the glass. I tried dipping the fruit in the water then using the drops to try to center the fruit in the water before I dropped it.

When everything goes right.

Final Project - second try, using front lighting.

For my second try, I wanted to try front lighting to bring out the fruit colors and set all the backgrounds black.

I took out the plexiglass behind the glass, moved the strobe to the front left of the glass, hung black fabric behind the glass, and removed the fill flash. The white area behind the base of the glass was because the black fabric wasn't big enough, I had to replace it before the final shoots. The strobe was firing thru a beauty dish which causes the white circle reflection.

To get rid of the strobe reflection I tried shooting the strobe into an umbrella which didn't work well either.

The beauty dish with the white cover, still not what I wanted.

Removed the beauty dish and shot the strobe through the white plexiglass. This was close to what I wanted but the reflections were still annoying, however I found that the splash obscured the reflections enough that this setup was acceptable.

Front lighting setup.

After the first test shots I added more black fabric to cover things that were showing up in reflections. I also added a reflector to try to light both sides.

 What happens when you work in a dark room. I forgot to put the glass back. When I turned the light out to fix it, the light triggered the flash.

Final Project - first experiments

I decided to photograph fruit dropping into glasses fill with water, using flash to try and capture and freeze the water from the splash.

This was my setup for back lighting the shot. There is a strobe firing through an opaque white piece of plexiglass which I got from a sign shop. There is a photo sensor on the top of the tripod that runs to a timing box. When the fruit makes the sensor the box opens the shutter then fires the flash .01 seconds later.

Color card I shot first so I could use it to set the levels in photoshop. This got me close although I had to adjust all the levels slightly to get the something I liked.

I set the camera to manual focus and live view and zoomed in to set the focus as perfect as possible.

Experiment to set the flash delay to try to capture the moment, or shortly after, that the fruit hit the water. The room was black so the shutter was set to 5 seconds and the flash captured the photo.

One of the first try's, using apple slices. Since these were just to prove out the method I didn't clean up the water between shots. Notice the horizon is off, I wasn't careful about setting the camera at a right angle to the glass and perfectly level.

Tried with the camera closer, decide I didn't like this as much.

Example where the timing wasn't perfect.

The strobe was used with a beauty dish with a white cover to smooth out the light as much as possible. With 100% back lighting the fruit came out black so I added a flash next to the camera for fill flash. I was having problems with the strobe triggering the flash so I switch the timing box to trigger the flash and the flash triggered the strobe.

I liked most of the photos, but wasn't thrilled with any of them. None had the wow factor I was looking for, so instead I tried a poster idea with multiple ok shots to show how ever attempt is different.

Poster idea except with the close cropped shots.