Splash Photography

Creating splash photographs can be a lot of fun and most of the time a messy project. If you are interested in giving this a try, here are some things you will want to prepare for.

First, you are going to want to figure out what you want to splash.  If it's a cube of fake ice in a cocktail glass like a above, you will want plenty of the liquid star and some towels to clean up with.  

Each time you drop the cube, a splash occurs and leaves fluid all over you background.  Take some time before you clean up to see how far away you should be, to be out of the frame, be accurate to hit the glass and to determine how large of a splash you are looking for. Once you get this all figured out, along with your exposure, you can clean up and start shooting for real.

To get a larger wave of a splash, the table was tilted and the camera was tilted at the same angle so when the cube was dropped there is more area for the wave of liquid to escape.

In this example, I placed the drinking glass on a piece of black plastic. I like to use a fairly thick piece of plexi so that it doesn't flex during the shoot. Black works great for creating a nice mirror reflection.   I also had a second sheet of plexi (this one was white translucent) suspended as the background a foot or so away from the glass to avoid having to clean this each time.

Once you get all your splashing techniques figured out, you will have to set the lights to get the perfect exposure.  If you are using continuous lights or shooting outdoors, then you need to get your camera shooting with the fastest shutter speed you can get. Most of today's cameras can shoot at 1/8000 of a second which is pretty fast but not as fast a strobe flash. However, to do that you will likely need a lot of light.  Another way of shooting this kind of thing is using strobe units to provide the light.

I used Profoto B1 portable strobe units.  When set up properly, their flash duration can be 1/19,000 of a second.  Keep in mind that the flash duration is directly correlated to the power of the flash.  The lowest power gives you the faster flash duration.  With that in mind, you will need to have your strobes fairly close to the subject since there is so little light being output.  Also, with every diffuser you put on your strobes, the less light you will get, you won’t get a faster duration, but less quantity of light.

While the Profoto B1 units are great, they are kind of expensive.  If you have the small portable strobes like the Nikon SB910 or Canon 580’sthese strobes can fire off at 1/35,000 of a second, (Canon) 1/38,000 (Nikon) when set at their lowest output.

While these flashes can certainly stop liquid when set on their lowest power, they don’t put out a lot of light at such a low power, so you may need more than one flash unit.  Adding more flash units, can boost your light quantity and not effect the flash duration. Give it a try!

Waterfalls in California

In spite of all the drought conditions that are very apparent every where you go in California, there is at least one place where the revitalizing feeling you get from gazing at a waterfall can still be had. Burney Falls, in northern California even in late July is still a  thriving waterfall scene. 

McArthur Burney Falls

It's official name is McArthur Burney Falls and is located just north of where Highway 299 and Highway 89 intersect.  From the Bay Area it will take you about 4.5 hours to drive there but there are many other activities to keep you busy for a couple of days in that part of the state.

The falls are fed by an underground spring that is in turn fed by high elevation snow melt. The underground spring, filters through the rocks in the face of the cliff and spouts out at many different spots, giving it a surreal effect of hundreds of waterfalls in one place.

If you go, and want to photograph it, bring a tripod with you.  Because the falls are so abundant you will want to slow your shutter speed down to capture that dreamy feel of water cascading down the cliff.  You may also want to try a Polarizing filter to cut down on the glare off the rocks and to help you reduce the light that is seen by you camera  sensor.  This might be just enough to let you shoot at a few seconds or slower for your shutter speed.

Most people would show up with a just a wide angle lens but a fellow photographer David Bozsik, alerted me to the prospect of using a 70-200 zoom to capture parts of the waterfall for some unique perspectives.  Another tip I got from David was to go early in the morning before the sunlight has a chance to create too much contrast in the trees and mountain side.  Also keep and eye out for Osprey as we saw a few nesting nearby.

Shooting Low

There are many options out there for support for your camera and not much can substitute for a good tripod. However, your day to day tripod may not work in every situation.  As is the case in shooting low to the ground. 

I use the Induro Hi-Hat tripod.  My short tripod  is fitted with a Really Right Stuff ball head, so that I can fit all my accessories with Arca Swiss attachments (camera plates).

What I like most about this little dude is that it's very sturdy and it can get me very close to the ground. The legs can splay all the way out to get shots only a few inches from the ground.  The bowl supports a 100mm bowl that quickly can get you square and with the bubble levels you can make sure everything is plumb.

With this trip to Moab, UT, I found myself one morning looking at small temporary, rain filled ponds that had formed on the rocks from the storm that just cleared before dawn.  This kind of subject matter can offer all kinds of opportunities to see your surroundings a little different.

Since these small ponds will be dry by about 11 am, you have to work fast and get the camera down low.  This is where the Induro is perfect for being able to shoot with a wide depth-of-field to capture not only the water but what's reflecting in the water.

Try getting your camera down low and see things in a whole new way.

Calling turkeys

This time of year there are many opportunities to photograph wild turkeys.

While they are normally very timid and avoid human contact, the male turkeys have only one thing on their mind in the springtime; female turkeys.  

As a photographer, you can use this season to your advantage and with a little practice you can get them to come right up to you. 

The first thing you will need is a Turkey call.  These can be found at Cabelas Sporting goods, among other hunting outlets.  There is quite a variety in turkey calls, since turkeys respond to different sounds.  This is depending on where you live, and what time of year you are trying to attract the wild turkeys. 

Luckily for me, my brother is an experienced turkey hunter and he had several different calls to choose from and is an expert at creating the precise sounds that get the turkey's motor running.  

The turkey call is in many cases a sounding plate that is scratched with a special wand to mimic the sound of an interested hen turkey. These are not tools that you can just pull out of the box and attract an interested Tom.  These take a little time getting the pressure just right.  However, when you do get the right sound, the turkeys will run right to you. 

I set up my Nikon D4 and 600mm lens along the side of the road, (since I didn't want to have to carry this rig too far.)   My brother started his calling and within seconds we could hear a couple of turkeys make the gobbling sound that there were interested.  A couple of minutes past with a back and forth conversation between the Turkey and the artificial hen call as the bird came closer and closer to check out the sound. 

I was fascinated by how much the color on the bird would change based on his mood.  The face would turn bright blue and his neck would get vibrant red.   In the sunlight the turkey will become an iridescent copper color that is quite magnificent. 

Also interesting was how the bird reacted to us.  Once he saw it was just a couple of dudes with a turkey call, he stopped running towards us, but he kept up the conversation. Shortly after that, the turkey started putting on his display.  Even though he was pretty certain we were weren't interested hens, he kept up the display for quite some time.  Probably just in case a hen happened by. 

Book Cover Photography

There is a place for professional photography that often goes unsolicited and that is book cover photography. You do have to be aware of the needs of your client and help them create a cover that will sell their book.  I believe that the book cover has one job, stop you and make you pick up the book. Or In the case of today's digital readers, the cover makes you stop scrolling and click on the book to find out more.

However, a dilemma can occur as writers are seasoned story tellers. A writer may want to use the cover to tell a story - where I believe , the cover is simply all about advertising.

If you think about it, how long does it take you to make a decision about a book while scrolling the archives of Amazon.com?  The writer doesn't have much time to grab the attention of the potential reader and show a cover so compelling it makes you click on it find out what the book is about.

In this instance, two ideas were talked about.  Using an existing image from India with some Photoshop work to include a subject and  a close up of a woman's eyes wrapped in a Sari.

We had a fantastic model in Alexa that posed for us.  She happened to be the girlfriend of the male model we were using, so we just met then at their home to make it easy on them and us.

For Alexa, we wrapped her up and had her stand against the wall while we used a five foot Profoto RFi 5 Foot Octa Softbox as our main light.  This is a huge light that is very soft and yields a beautiful quality to the light. We also used a couple of Lasolite Tri-Grip hand held reflectors for some fill light.

While the plain wall worked fine, I noticed they had a freshly painted red door that I wanted to use as a background and though it was a tight squeeze in-between the sofa and the five foot soft box we made a few more images. The green eyes of the model just popped against the red background.

Here is how the other cover was developed:  Since a fair amount of the book takes place in India, the writer wanted to create a feeling of what it was like being in India.  While doing research on the book, the author spent time traveling in India and while he was there, took some photographs. I highly encourage writers to do just that, take photographs while they travel on research.  The quality may not be cover material but if nothing else it could inspire your cover designer or you might do what  we did and use some parts of images to create a cover.

One of a couple of images the author supplied from his research trip.

Another image shot in India to be used as a book cover.

The author wanted a young man in the street so we photographed a friend in his home and then stripped away the background so we could fit him into the street scene.

 I knew from previewing the background scene the author supplied, that we wanted light coming at the man to give the same feeling as the light in the street.  So I used a Profoto RFi 1 x 3 strip light pointed right at the subject to provide the backlighting.

After many layers in Photoshop we finally constructed the two book covers. One more simple, just a woman in a Sari showing just the eyes.  The other one a more complex image telling the story of a man, alone in the streets of India.

Here are the final two covers:  To find out which cover the author went with, follow this link and check out  the new novel by Phil Ribera: Sadhana found on Amazon.com

If you have an opinion on which cover you like better,  I'd love to hear it.