Water, Water Everywhere and Not a Drop to Drink

So I wonder how many people can answer the question "What did you do at school today?" with "Popped water balloons and threw water over each other."? Did you ever do that while you were studying? It was all in the pursuit of practising photography skills. That it happened to be loads of fun was just a bonus!


It was all about freezing motion by using high shutter speeds. You need to balance your ISO, shutter speed and aperture. I found to get the best results I needed to under-expose the photos by about a stop and a half.


A few brave members of the class were willing to have buckets of water, cordial and milk (!!) thrown at them. Pretty pictures and sticky, smelly clothes ensued. A big thanks to Miss R and Miss D who happily took whatever we threw at them.


As you can see from the pictures there's a split second where the water stays in the balloon shape after it has been popped. It's kind of amazing to see it captured it a photo. It all happens so fast that the human eye just doesn't see it.



So what can I say? It's all in a days work. I'm so keen to capture a few more bursting water balloons! Any one want to be my assistant? There are so many more pictures to share but for the meantime I hope your weekend is going wonderfully!

A Little Bit of Light Painting...

Recently I have been experimenting with light painting a little more. If I do say so myself some of the photos turned out great. I do so love playing with long exposure photography! It's so much fun to paint with a touch and run around to the back of the camera to see what I've managed to get.


I am developing a little collection of vintage cameras (must admit I've got my eye on a few more!). The Nikkormat in the above photo is one of my dad's old cameras. I would dearly love to get it in proper working order again but unfortunately that is a little out of my budget at the moment.


I picked up the above camera on eBay for only $10! Unfortunately it doesn't work either but I still think its a total bargain if you ask me. I have a few interesting photoshoots planned with this pretty little camera.


Of course I couldn't pass up the opportunity to photograph my cute little d5000. And, boy, let me tell you it does seem little compared to my d7000. It's funny to think that this was my first ever dslr and that I've had it for almost 3 years. I don't think I could ever part with it... There's a little too much sentimental value attached to it!


Of course what light painting without a bit of good old-fashioned steel wool spinning? I decided to use my external flash (popped by a helpful friend) to make it into a self-portrait!


I decided to make a little video of my latest steel wool spinning adventure. One thing (well actually many things) became obvious - I need to get WAY better at editing if I'm planning to make any more videos!

It's kind of fun to watch the video of what I look like spinning the steel wool because when I'm spinning it is of course from a completely different perspective. I think I might try my hand at making a few more videos (if I can think of interesting subjects!) If you have the equipment why not give it a try? I'll always enjoy photography the most though.

I hope you had a fantastic week!

Lately...

Extremely long time no blog! My bad. Thanks for sticking around. Obviously downloading an app to make blogging easier didn't exactly work out as planned. Apparently I'm still trying to figure out and adjust to my new schedule. Here's hoping the adjustment period is almost over!

I thought I'd share a few photographs I've taken recently for one of my assignments for the course.


First I have to say a huge thank you to a few of my friends who let me photograph them for a few hours. You guys were fantastic models! It's been kind of fun practising and perfecting my portrait photography skills. I can see some definite improvement in my ability to get the photo I'm after.


It's incredibly gratifying to be able to have an idea - a concept - in mind and be able to execute it.


I have lots more photographs that I'm planning to share. But instead of photo-bombing you all with one extremely long post chock full of photos I think I'll spread them out over a few posts. Maybe that will encourage me to blog more. What do you think? I'd love to hear from you - what you think of the photos, ideas about what to photograph next or even just to stop by and say hello. In the meantime I hope you've had a wonderful weekend!