Capturing Ice and Fire in Photographs

Carltonautblack and white, candle, Canon 60D, Canon Speedlite 430EX II, capture, fire, frozen, ice, ISO 100, LED Flashmate, macro, manual mode, photo, photograph, photography, picture, RAW, saturation, shoot, water, wick 2 Comments

My kids looked at me like I was crazy when I poured nearly boiling water into an ice cube tray, gently placed 10 candle wicks into the water and ever so carefully placed the tray into the freezer.

I think I got more funny looks from them when I placed the cubes on a black foam sheet, grabbed a lighter and started running the flame around the cube. The flame helped shine up the cube to make it more transparent, and it also allowed me to shape the cube and create a puddle around it to offer an additional visual element.

My Canon Speedlite 430EXII flash with a blue gel across it was set on the left, with my LED Flashmate set to maximum on the right. My 100mm 2.8 macro lens was mounted to my Canon 60D and focused in on the cube. Once I had the shot arranged and fired off a few test shots, I lit the wick and started snapping.

Canon 60D | 100mm 2.8 macro lens | 1/50 | f/2.8 | ISO 100 | Addtl. Lighting | RAW

In total, I lit six ice cubes and snapped more than 100 photos. It took a bit to check all of them out, but I am very pleased with the final outcome. And even though I shot the photos with the intent of showing them in color, I de-saturated some of the RAW photos to make them black and white, adjusted the temperature and eventually the levels to get the look that I thought best represented ice and fire.

Check out more of the photos I captured, including the ones that are in color, on my Flickr page.

I’m gonna give this setup another go, hoping to achieve a more transparent cube. I will try bringing the water to an actual boil, as I’ve heard that helps get some of the air bubbles out. I’m also going to try freezing the wicks before I insert them into the water to see if that will help make the cube clearer. In short, I am not ready to give up on this concept – it just might take me a bit to get everything reset and have the time to give it that other go.

~signed, Carltonaut

August 17, 2012Just for fun

Jumping the Baseball Ladder

Carltonautagility, agility training, air, baseball, Canon 60D, jumping, ladder, orthopedic specialty hospital, photo, photo contest, photographer, photography, picture, play, playing, running, sports, sports authority, stop action, stop-motion, train, training Leave a comment

I was given a photo assignment for work to grab some shots of a baseball clinic at a local field. However, when I got there and realized they were all minors, I couldn’t take photos of the kids unless I had parental consent, so it threw a big wrench in the works. However, I didn’t let that stop me from grabbing some fun shots that didn’t identify the kids in them.

The trainer, who I was there to shoot, too, got the boys warming up for his agility training by having them hop through the holes in the ladder, both feet together, using the balls of their feet to increase speed and accuracy. While some of them were a little off, some of them did a pretty good job, which allowed me to snap a few photos like the one above.

I had to use a quick shutter speed to get the stop action, and I had to be low enough to actually see the “air” they were getting in their jump. I’m not sure these photos will ever be used in my work setting, I had some fun grabbing a few sports shots.

And now for a shameless plug at the end. If you have a sports photo you would like to enter into TOSH-The Orthopedic Specialty Hospital’s The Sports We Love photo contest, here’s a link. There are a few $25 gift cards and one $100 gift card to Sports Authority up for grabs, so don’t delay.

~signed, Carltonaut

August 12, 2012WordPress Photo Challenge

Weekly Photo Challenge: Wrong

Carltonautauto, Canon 60D, car, county fair, crash, demolition derby, entertainment, fairgrounds, photo, photo challenge, photographer, photography, picture, postaday, postaweek, salt lake county, Salt Lake County Fair, Salt Lake Equestrian Park, smash, tire, transmission, transportation, vehicle, wreck, wrong 5 Comments

It’s been far to long since I’ve contributed to the WordPress Weekly Photo Challenge, which is wrong in and of itself. So with this week’s photo challenge theme, I tried to find something that was wrong. Instead, I found an event that, if something went wrong, you were out for the count.

As you can tell from the photos I shared, it was a demolition derby with the Salt Lake County Fair. Here are four photos from the event, and each one has something wrong with the car. Can you tell what it is without looking at the answers at the end of this post?

ANSWERS: 1) Stuck in the mid; 2) Lost the transmission; 3) No rear tire (among other things); and 4) A really messed up front tire.

It was fun shooting the demolition derby, but it would have been really cool to have been the one flying a GoPro attached to a remote control helicopter right over the arena. However, I would have been worried about getting too low, falling into the arena and getting it demolished.

What have you photographed from your county or state fair?

~signed, Carltonaut

July 30, 2012Just for fun

My Day of Reckoning – The Salt Lake County Fair

CarltonautCanon 60D, contest, Critique, game, golf, Hawaii, journalism, landscape, lens, Life Flight, photo, photographer, photography, photography contest, picture, salt lake city, salt lake county, Salt Lake County Fair, sharing photos, splash, Sport, Travel, utah Leave a comment

Since January I have been sharing photos on my blog. Ones that I found interesting, or ones that I was particularly proud of for one reason or another. So as the Salt Lake County Fair photography contest approaches (this Saturday), I thought I would reach out to my readers to see which three photos I should submit and why.

Here are nine photos I am debating between, but if there are others that I shared on my blog that you like, let me know and I will see which ones I end up submitting. Thanks in advance for any suggestions and critiques.

Let me know which of these nine you like best and why. It’ll help me decide which ones to enter into the Salt Lake County Fair.

~signed, Carltonaut

February 3, 2012Just for fun

Go Red for Women Day

Carltonautphotography, photo, Canon 60D, picture, canon, 50 mm lens, carltonaut, heart, Go Red, Red, wear red, health, women, aperture priority, Go Red for Women, February 3, heart health, heart disease, red heart, fun photo, women day Leave a comment

When I woke up this morning, I recalled that it was Go Red for Women day. To be part of this great cause to build awareness about heart disease, I took this photo of a bendy guy holding a paper heart and posted it to Facebook. But I thought it would also be good to share this on my blog post to help encourage heart-healthy activities for women, and men.

Av priority | 1/5 | 2.8 | 50mm lens | ISO 400

Initially, I tried taking the photo without a flash, but the red heart blended in too closely with the red bendy guy. I played with the angle of the flash, but found that a straight-on shot provided the best contrast between the two, and wasn’t overbearing. I just wish the bendy guy wasn’t so reflective that he ended up with a light-spot nose.

Oh well. A fun photo for an important, healthy day.

~signed, Carltonaut

February 2, 2012HDR, Just for fun

Starbursts on the chandelier

Carltonautcarltonaut, chandelier, elegant, exposure, exposure compensation, HDR, hotel utah, joseph smith memorial building, lightbulbs, long exposure, photo, photograph, photography, photos, photoshop, picture, salt lake city, starburst, utah Leave a comment

The other morning, while photographing in the Joseph Smith Memorial Building, I noticed the chandelier hanging in the center of the room. How could I not photograph something so elegant?

The longer exposure allowed the lightbulbs to have that starburst effect, which I really liked with this photo. Otherwise, it would have just been any other chandelier, right?

That morning I was also playing with some HDR in the grand lobby (which I will share in another post), so I gave this chandelier a shot, too. When I combined the photos in Photoshop CS5 today, the third +2 exposure compensation photo made the whole photo look terrible – which means the above photo is a combination of only 2, but I think it turned out pretty snazzy.

~signed, Carltonaut

January 28, 2012Alphabet Photo Challenge

Weekly Challenge – D is for Driving

Carltonautaction, blurred, car, city photography, commuting, drive, driving, long exposure, meetup group, movement, photo, photo challenge, photography, photography skills, picture, shutter release button, shutter speed, shutter speed priority, tripod, true emotion, TV 2 Comments

While perusing on Facebook, I found a group of photographers in Salt Lake City that presented a weekly photo challenge. I relished the idea of a weekly photo challenge in order to try and stretch my thinking and photography skills. Plus, since it’s local, I know a few people who are also in the group, the Capturing True Emotion (CTE) Salt Lake City Photography Meetup group.

The challenge is to start at the beginning of the alphabet and capture a thing, action or emotion that starts with the given letter. Since I didn’t get started until now, D was my first letter. After much thought, and going back to something I thought would be interesting to try a few years ago, I set up the shot in my car. I took more than 400 photos (436 to be exact) and ended up with this one being the best.

I have three others that I thought turned out great, so the set is posted in Flickr if you want to check them out. But here are the details on these shots.

The weight of the camera would toss the tripod to and fro during the trip, so I ended up sticking one of the legs into the back pocket of the seat, which provided the stability I needed. Before attaching the camera, I set it to TV (shutter speed) priority for a three-second exposure. I attached a shutter release button and then attached the camera to the tripod.

During my 45 minute commute, I started snapping photos. I had to remain completely still during each shot so that nothing in the car was blurred, which was not always easy to do to avoid drifting out of my lane, but I let safety trump my desire for a non-blurry shot. I also tried to match the speed to the person in front of me, while waiting for someone in the lanes around me to speed by, thus giving a sense of motion with the blurred vehicle.

Bumpy roads also made this a challenge. Overpasses were the worst, because if the car bumped, so did the camera, making the shot worthless. If I had to turn the steering wheel, or even my hand, it was blurry, too.

All of these factors are what made it a real photo challenge, but if you don’t try, you don’t know. I’ve noticed a few things in the photo that I would want to change to try and enhance it, so I’m glad for the letter D photo challenge this week, and I’m ready to move on to E. Hmmm. What will I capture for next week?

~signed, Carltonaut

January 24, 2012Black & White, Just for fun

Capturing the drip

Carltonautaperture, black and white, canon, canon digital, canon digital rebel, canon digital rebel xt, cold, icicle, melting, nice photos, photo, photography, picture, shutter speed, water droplets, winter 4 Comments

I have always loved the close-up photos of water droplets, either from a splash or a drip. So when I finally decided that I wanted to try taking a photo of a droplet, I set to work in my backyard. And to be honest, I had to do a little jimmy-rigging to create the set up of water dripping off an icicle. Let me explain.

I found an icicle hanging from my roof and broke it off. Using rubber bands and some clips, I hooked it in a tree that was eye level to me and the upper heights of my tripod. Since it was still a rather cold day, it was obvious that the icicle wasn’t going to drip by itself, so I had to help it along.

No, that didn’t mean bringing out a blow torch or blow dryer to melt it. Instead, I took a syringe used for taking medications orally and filled it with water. I then squeezed the syringe, squirting water onto the upper heights of the icicle and letting the water run down it and off the tip. I then snapped countless shots, hoping to get one that looked just right.

I didn’t want the trees in the background to distract from the droplet or icicle, so I went to AV priority and opened the aperture as large as I could without washing out the subject. Although I don’t recall the shutter speed or ISO on my Canon Digital Rebel XT, I am confident in saying that I went with a higher (more sensitive) ISO and a fast shutter speed to stop the drop in motion.

I ended up with a couple of nice photos of this same icicle, but with different variations of the drip; however, I’ll have to share those another time… that is if people are still interested after I revealed my secret to setting the stage for these photos!

~signed, Carltonaut

Carltonaut

Photos of (and out of) this world

Tag Archives: picture

Capturing Ice and Fire in Photographs

Jumping the Baseball Ladder

Weekly Photo Challenge: Wrong

Go Red for Women Day

Starbursts on the chandelier

Weekly Challenge – D is for Driving

Capturing the drip

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