Mirror Mirror on the.... Tree Stump? - Self Portrait

F-Stop: f/5.5

Shutter Speed: 1/60

ISO: 200

This photo I set up out in the woods behind my house. I positioned a group of circle mirrors on paper, taped them to cardboard square, and set them up on a tree stump in the woods. I focus in on my face in the mirror with a low depth of field, thus the stump is blurry. The mirrors did create an interesting factor of depth because I am in focus and so is the background with the canoe, because we were at relatively the same distance.

This shot was comprised of four separate photos. I posed looking at myself, or where I would edit myself in later on, so it creates and infinite circle of of movement in the picture. I got the help of my brother to pull the trigger after I had focus the camera and made sure the settings were right. I had about 30-60 shots of me in each of the 4 corners at the end of all my shooting so I was able to choose between which faces I liked the most.

I ran into a few problems when editing my face into each section of the mirror. Because of the wind outside, the mirror moved slightly between the four shots, so it was not a simple editing in of my face. I had to closely follow the side of my face on each picture because the background had changed enough that I could just use a giant circle to bring back a particular circular mirror.

Mason - Portrait of a Loved One

F-Stop: f/4.8

Shutter Speed: 1/320

ISO: 800

I took these portrait shots of my brother on the swing set. We hadn't gone over the dramatic lighting yet, so my ideas for portrait shots revolved around creative settings as opposed to creative lighting. There is still interesting shadows created but the effect is subtle because we were outside in even lighting. I focused my camera to where he would be when he swung infront of me.

I used a pretty face shutter speed so I could freeze my brother on the swing. I also used a very wide aperture so I could focus simply on my brother and nothing else. Both of the photos I took included a lot more in the picture but I cropped them both so I had a nice border along the static swing and tree. His body was cut off on the left side in both photos, because I wouldn't have intentionally cropped him in half. I know it goes against the general rule of not cropping off legs but I think given the action of being on a swing and how he is titled in turns out fine.

Glowing Sticks and Glowing People - Light Trails Night Photography

(For all above)

F-Stop: f/3.5

Shutter Speed: 10

ISO: 400

F-Stop: f/3.5

Shutter Speed: 10

ISO: 800

F-Stop: f/3.5

Shutter Speed: 15

ISO: 400

I accomplished these shots with the use of flashlights, glowsticks, and phone lights. I pre-focused in on the middle of the kitchen and then turned off all the lights. Keeping a dark environment allowed only the lights I was using to be picked up by the camera. Using different combinations of glowsticks tied together on strings, we swung them around in circles/ side to side or wound them up and dropped them. I played around a little with the ISO because some lights were brighter than others, but I kept a wide aperture of 3.5 and only changed my shutter speed if I needed more time for the motion of the lights. I overlaid two of of my photos to show my brother holding a rainbow in a vortex of purple and orange.

Another technique I used was reflecting a flash light off of my phone screen onto my friends Quinn's face. This additional light allowed his face to be seen in extra detail but did not make screw up the rest of the photo.

Twinkle Twinkle... - Star Trails Night Photography

F-Stop: f/3.5

Shutter Speed: 30.0

ISO: 1600

The above photos are a single frame and the finished product of my star trail shoot. To begin I set my camera up on a tripod and looked into the sky with a f-stop of 3.5, a shutter speed of 5 seconds, and a very high ISO. This allowed me to take test shots to get my focus perfect. After I had taken around 10 photos, slowly dialing in the focus, I started working on bringing the ISO down and and increasing the shutter speed while retaining an even exposure. Eventually I got an even exposure with a 30 second shutter speed at a 1600 ISO. I wanted to bring down the ISO as much as possible, so I could have the least amount of grain, but I still needed a relatively short shutter speed. If my shutter speed was longer than a minute the star would have moved a little bit by the time the picture had ended.

I set up my intervalometer to take a picture ever 30 seconds for half an hour. Theoretically I should have gotten 60 photos, but the camera had to process each photo after it took it. Thus I actually took 31 photos, because the processing time was roughly 30 seconds as well.

I then used Photoshop to layer all of the photos together and apply a blending mode of lighten to all but the bottom one. This allowed the star light of each photo to show through, which created the trails because the starts had moved a decent amount for the half an hour my camera was taking pictures.

Ghosts - Blog 12

F-Stop: f/3.5

Shutter Speed: 20.0

ISO: 200

F-Stop: f/3.5

Shutter Speed: 30.0

ISO: 400

I took these photos using the light painting technique. Using a long aperture and a dim cellphone light we timed our actions so certain versions of ourselves were more solid than others. I broke my actions into 8, 6, and 4 seconds, to equal 20, and Quinn broke his actions into 12, 10, and 8 seconds to equal the 30 seconds. This made a ghosting effect where some bodies were more transparent than others. This was my friends idea and he said he had tried photos like this in a class he had taken at his school.

Dip - Blog 11

F-Stop: f/3.5

Shutter Speed: 1/100

ISO: 800

This was a leftover action shot that I had from my shoot with my brother. I liked this photo because the fast shutter speed allowed me to capture the depression in the trampoline created by my brother back dropping onto it. It is slightly blurry and out of focus so I didn't include it as part of my project but I liked it enough that I wanted to upload it still. If I had pre focused on my brother laying down in that spot on the trampoline, I could have had a much more in focus shot. Also I would have liked it more if I could have seen my brothers facial expression as he was dropping, because that would have added an extra element to the photo.

Splash Splash Splash - Multiple Flash Shot

F-Stop: f/16.0

Shutter Speed: 10.0

ISO: 1600

These multiple flash photos were done in the style of Harold "Doc" Edgerton. Using a 10 second long shutter speed, I was able to drop the ball on the far left and flash to take a picture, then pick it up again and repeat the same process for the middle and far right of the tank. This allows me to freeze the action of the splash of three separate droppings of the ball, all in one picture. I had around 20 shots using this technique and I chose my three favorites. I tried to capture, sequentially, the ball entering the water. Thus there is a clearly shown progression of the splash. The only edits I applied were to crop out the light visible on the right side and to reduce some super bright areas caused by the light. These simple edits allowed the splashes to be seen much more clearly.

Up and Down - Vertical Pan Shot

F-Stop: f/14.0

Shutter Speed: 1/30

ISO: 800

This is a vertical pan shot that I took of my brother. I had already experimented with doing horizontal and rotational pan shots so I decided to try a third type. These pan shots were harder than the horizontal pan shots but easier to do then the rotational pan shots. Using burst mode I held down the trigger as I followed my brother jumping up and down with the camera. Because his vertical movement is minimal, the effect of the pan shot is minimal. There is still a background blur present to the picture and my brother is still in focus. These were interesting shots to try but I preferred the simplicity of the horizontal pan shots and the uniqueness of the rotational pan shots.

Overhead - Blog 10

F-Stop: f/6.3

Shutter Speed: 1/125

ISO: 800

This shot was too blurry to use for the actual project but I liked it enough to include it for a blog post. The idea of this shot was to capture my brother jumping over me on the trampoline. I was laying on my back looking up into the trees and Mason jumped over me. This didn't work for multiple reasons so we moved on to different angles. When I'm in the middle of the trampoline he physically can't jump as high so there is the danger of him kicking the camera or landing on top of me.

To have made this more successful I could have used a longer shutter speed. This would have removed some of the motion blur from him. The reason I didn't get to do this was our first shoot, as stated above, proved it was a bad idea so I got stuck with one set of burst fire pictures with a 1/125 shutter speed.

Drop - Vertical Sequence Shot

F-Stop: f/7.1

Shutter Speed: 1/500

ISO: 1600

This sequence shot captures the water drop move by my brother. These 3 pictures were not actually a sequence of the same jump so this movement is a bit synthetic but they do clearly show three different aspects of the movement. There is an odd sense of depth created when I overlapped the photos. The picture of my brother upright has a sense of depth to it because his arms are spread out towards and away from the camera. This depth is kind of an illusion though because that picture is layered infront of the other two pictures and technically they were all taken in the exact same spot.

Even though this shot is synthetic I still like the range of movement shown. I experimented with making  many different sequence shots out of movements that were not physically linked in time. but rather linked by the movement being created. I basically had three different still images of my brother doing the same movement three different times. I had one photo from each take and I spliced them all together in photo shop. This creates the illusion of the same fluid action even though it was three separate takes of the same action.

Arc - Horizontal Frozen Action

F-Stop: f/9.0

Shutter Speed: 1/500

ISO: 800

This shot is a simple frozen action shot of me midair doing a backflip. Before the shot I focused in on a broom that was held in midair by my brother. This was was to make sure that I would be in focus during the shot. Then I did many backflips while he pressed the shutter at the top of my jump. The normal backflips looked too plan so I intentionally kicked my legs apart to give my body more of an arcing shape. I almost am arcing around the sun in the background, which was unintentional, but the angle is a bit off. Because of the shinning sun I had to increase the exposure of the shot with the camera raw editor because the camera exposed for the direct sunlight and not the soft light I was in. 

Front Flip by Mason - Horizontal Sequence Shot

F-Stop: f/5.0

Shutter Speed: 1/500

ISO: 1600

This photo captures the form of my brother front flipping. There is a slight overlap in the two midair figures but the extra element of depth added by the hood benefits the picture. This sequence shot was especially hard to piece together due to the shift in the trampoline while my brother jumped. When he jumped and when he landed the trampoline shook so I effectively had 3 separate backgrounds, because the two in the air are the same. Because of this I had to be very careful when I was painting back in my brothers body. If I wasn't very up close to his edge the changed backgrounds showed through. This wouldn't have been a hug problem but I had problems like the blue noodle on the post not lining up when it reappeared on the other side of my brother. Because of this difficulty in bringing my brother in, some stages of his flip do look like they were copied and pasted in, especially the last landing shot.

Though it was technically harder to compose, I am happy that I put the effort into it. The final out come is a wonderful shot that shows the full form of my brother doing a flip. If I could go back I would try to get a sequence of 5 pictures. I'd like one picture a third of the way into the flip, one at the apex of his jump, and a third while he was coming out of the flip, in addition to the jumping and landing shots. My current sequence shot is excluding the super peek action shot and the two in-air shots are a little closer than I'd like.