Tag Archives: stop-motion

Just for fun

Jumping the Baseball Ladder

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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.

081712 Baseball Ladder

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

Alphabet Photo Challenge

CTE Weekly Photo Challenge: O is for Overflow

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My mind was drawing a blank earlier in the week for this week’s letter – O. I just couldn’t think of anything, so I whipped out the Thesaurus on Tuesday night, searching for ideas. When I saw my word, I began envisioning how I would accomplish this. My end result is pretty close to what I envisioned, but with less Oreo showing.

041212 Overflow r1

Canon 60D | 18-135mm lens | 1/250 | f/5.6 | ISO 400 | Speedlite 430EX II 

I set my cup on a baking sheet so I didn’t make as big of a mess on my kitchen counter. I also placed a black cloth over the oven and cupboards because I didn’t want too much additional noise in the background. I mounted the camera to the tripod, added my Canon Speedlite430EX II flash.

Using my shutter release cable, I stood ready, Oreo positioned above the cup filled with milk… ready to drop. My timing was a little off on some of the shots, so I had a good variety of splashes. You can check out my photo outtakes in my Facebook photo album.

And if you must know… I did eat an Oreo or two after I had used it for it’s intended purpose. I even drank a little milk from the cup before cleaning splashed milk up a five-foot diameter area of our kitchen (floor, counters and cupboards).

~signed, Carltonaut

WordPress Photo Challenge

Weekly Photo Challenge: Arranged

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The weekly photo challenge – arranged – offers itself to so many possibilities. At first, I arranged some empty Jones soda bottles and took a dozen photos of them. But when my kids decided they wanted to pull out the game Perfection, I thought that is exactly what I wanted to shoot.

All the pieces, neatly arranged in their respective boxes.

040212 UnPopped_Perfection

The countdown begins. 10…9…8…7…6…5…4…3…2…1…POP!

040212 Popped_Perfection

Canon 60D | 18-135 mm lens | 1/250 | f/16 | ISO 6400 | Speedlite 430EX II

Now, let me share some of the challenges I had in taking the shot.

First, I didn’t have a super-bright area to take the photos, which was necessary to use a fast shutter speed to stop the unarranged pieces without any blur. I mounted my flash for the extra light, but none of the auto settings on my Canon 60D would work well, so I had to switch to manual mode.

I used a small white table pushed up against the white wall so I could bounce the flash off the wall to eliminate the shadows from a head-on approach with the flash. It seemed to work well at eliminating the shadows, so the next challenge – timing.

I tried to snap just one photo when it popped, but my timing wasn’t the greatest. I went to more of an automated approach, and when I thought the pop was coming, I held down the button, snapping roughly a dozen photos before the pop. I did this about three times before I felt like I had the photo I wanted.

And, as a photographer’s note, I think that the number of times it took me to snap the right photo, having to reset the pieces each time, I could probably beat the game and place each piece before the 10-second timer would pop them up. After all, that is the name of the game, right?

~signed, Carltonaut

Just for fun

3…2…1…Blast-off!

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I became a counselor for the Space Exploration merit badge about two weeks ago. Last week, we talked about Newton’s Laws and made these Estes Model Rockets. Tonight, we launched them at a local park. The weather couldn’t have been better – no wind. no rain. no problem.

I grabbed a few shots of the rockets launching. I missed the rockets about half the time, either getting it motionless on the pad, or out of the frame. But here is one I caught just after ignition.

Caught at Lift-off

Canon 60D | 50mm lens | 1/8000 | f2.2 | ISO 2000

I went with a fast shutter speed to capture it motionless in flight, because the first photo I shot had a slower speed (1/100) and came out like this:

Space Exploration Merit Badge

Canon 60D | 18-135mm lens | 1/100 | f6.3 | ISO 100

You can check out some of the other outtakes on my Facebook page, as well as a photo of the rocket that didn’t deploy and slammed into the ground with such force, its nose cone required some digging to recover. Scary part was, my son was standing 10 feet from the impact zone when it happened.

~signed, Carltonaut

Just for fun

Capturing the splash

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I’ve seen a lot of photos of water splashes and thought, “why don’t I try?” So, here is one of the shots I ended up with after about two hours of setup and shooting.

Water drop

If you’ve ever wanted to try, here is how I set this up and the things I would change if I were to do this again… which I will do… eventually.

I found a clear, glass bowl and filled it with water. I wanted to have something cool appear in the splash, so I made a checkerboard pattern large enough to fill the whole frame using four 8.5″ x 11″ sheets of paper taped together and matching up with the pattern.

I focused my camera on the center of the bowl, set my aperture to 1.8, using my 50mm lens, and hooked up a shutter release cable to my Canon Digital Rebel (I don’t recall the final shutter-speed or ISO, but I imaging a fast speed and sensitive ISO in order to stop the motion). In order to give myself the best lighting, since I only had an on-camera flash, I did this outside in my backyard.

The challenging part was figuring out timing. I dropped a marble into the water and pushed the shutter-release cable when the marble hit the water. Many were too early, most were too late. But about a dozen came out like that one, with different shapes, lengths, ripples and size.

Once I brought the camera inside to see what I had captured on the larger monitor, I cropped in a little closer on the splashes and got what I deemed a decent finished product. However, I am open to any pointers or best practices on how to capture this better, or create other effects of water splashes for the next time I give this a go.

~signed, Carltonaut

Travel

Wet Waterfall in Waterton, Eh?

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A few summers ago (which now seems like forever ago), my family went to Waterton Lakes National Park, Canada, with some friends for a week of hiking and kayaking on the glacier-made lakes. It was not only a fun trip for the family, but I found myself taking photos around every bend.

Even though there was a drizzle in the air 90% of the time, it was a fantastic trip. I especially enjoyed this photo of a waterfall we had hiked to one morning.

Waterton Waterfall

I carried my cumbersome tripod with me on all the hikes, along with my 3-year-old daughter or one-year-old son in the carrier backpack – plus the camera bag (I was pretty much weighed down with stuff). I unloaded everything and hiked off the trail a bit to get the right angle. When I took the shot, I went for as slow of a shutter speed as I could with my camera and lens to try to blur motion the water without overexposing. It took me a bit, but I think I got the best photo I could with the equipment I had.

After getting some feedback of the photo at the Davis County Fair the following summer, I was told the shutter speed should have been slower, offering a more fluid and stream-like feature to the water; whereas in its current state, there was still too much stop-motion to the water.

I value the feedback and would like to get others takes on this photo. Too much stop-motion of the water, or just right to not appear unrealistic? Thanks for any feedback.

~signed, Carltonaut