Disco Fun - Hands and Colour

I can just about hear again after 2 hours photographing the local primary school's disco. Most of the shots were taken with fast enough shutterspeeds and single mode flash to get portraits of the kids enjoying themselves but I also like to do some slow shutterspeed work with strobe flash hoping that faces will just be caught in the flash. Obviously, these cannot be viewed on social media but here a few of the hands raised while the bubble machine is operating giving some great hand images plus one ghost-like image of a headless figure. (first six are 1 second exposures, last two 0.5 secs)

Photographing Crystals

Some time ago I purchased a Photix transmitter and two receivers to do table-top and macro photography and thought I better get them out and practise some techniques. The receivers work with any flash guns so I was using one small Fuji and one old manual Metz each side of a light tent with black back and base. My granddaughter and I have been growing monoammonium sulphate crystals from a supersaturated solution, some with a blue seeding solution and the rest on a porous base. It crystallized as elongated tetragonal prisms or needles. 

 

  

CCC Flash Workshop

 Yesterday, we ran a workshop at Sylvie's house for 12 people to practise their skills with flash photography, including balancing ambient and studio flash in portraits with model Bernadette, using off-camera flash guns for dramatic lighting and lighting table-top set up with their own flashes and triggers. The last image sums up the day as we all trouped in and out for warming cups of tea etc.

 

 

 

Fun at the Disco

On Monday, I photographed a local school disco for their magazine. For most of the time (images 1-6), I shot slow shutterspeed images (around 0.6 secs) with ETTL flash bounced off the ceiling and Rear Curtain Flash set. This meant that some children were caught in the flash but they also recorded while they moved around and if the bright disco lights hit them then this action was also frozen giving a variety of coloured hands etc. Obviously for the magazine, I wanted images that had the childrens' faces, but here are some of the creative ones. Images 7-10 are without flash relying on the disco light to illuminate the scene.

High-Speed Flash Photography of Insects in flight

We spent a very enjoyable day being shown and trying high-speed flash photography on Six-Belted Clearwings. Many thanks to Richard Revels for sharing his expertise. The techniques involves using multiple flash guns set to ETTL so that they reduce their power to a very brief flash that freezes the motion of the wings. The first shot is my best effort. If the ambient light is too bright as in the second shot, you get ghosting from movement of body and wings not overridden by the flash.

The males have six yellow bands but the females have only five so I think the third image is a female that appears to have the ovipositor extended. They lay their eggs in the roots of Birds Foot Trefoil.

Experiments with Strobe Flash and Bubble Refraction

Many thanks to Paul for an excellent evening last night when seventeen CCC Members had great fun using strobe flash for walking figure and for capturing large bubbles. I failed to get one popping but did enjoy trying and am intrigued by some of the results. Multiple flashes have produced psychedelic landscapes from alien planets - the stripes are Shelagh's sweater I think. Note the different techniques in producing good bubbles - Shelagh and Richard win for their athletic poses. We also photographed static bubble films for the colours but I didn't take a macro so one to try again.