so may i introduce to you
Image by andrea joseph's illustrations
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inner cover of my travel Moleskine
thanks to flickr friends for the stamps.
blogged here;
andreajoseph24.blogspot.com/
My Lair
Image by crowolf
Where I work. Kinda scary and probably more revealing than holding a camera at arm's length aimed at my face.
The cross
Image by sunnyUK
Taken for the Active Assignment Weekly group. This week's assignment: Copycat
Assignment: Anyways, I have been looking on Explore a lot lately for inspiration. There are some amazing photos out there that give me ideas and techniques to work on. So...
For this weeks assignment I want you to find a picture on Explore and try to copy it or add your spin to it. You must add a link to the picture, or the picture itself in your description so we can compare and contrast.
I am really torn with this idea for a couple reasons:
1. I don't know if this is legal...this is why I need your opinions.
2. It seems anti-creative, but this is why I added that you can put your spin on the picture.
I am just so inspired by looking at other people's wonderful work I thought I should share the fun!
Restrictions: The picture must be found on Explore
Dare: No holiday themed photos (sorry to be a scrooge), this does not include "seasonal" (ie. winter, snowy) pictures
What it took & lighting info: I've been fascinated by water drop pictures since I became aware of them a couple of years ago through an article in a magazine. I've had a go in the past and realised that it needs the machine gun approach (shoot an awful lot, and you just might get lucky). The elusive drop-on-drop pictures seemed beyond even my patience, so I asked Santa for an IR beam trigger this year. It's basically a transmitter and a receiver with an invisible beam between (like the devices that makes urinals flush). When the beam is broken, a signal is sent to a small electronics box that can do things such as tripping the camera shutter or triggering a speedlight.
Despite the fancy electronic gadget (thank you, Santa!), my first attempt required quite a bit of ghetto construction: Water in a siphon hanging from my background support stand with a solenoid valve hanging in a string (left over from tying the turkey) below it, IR thingy on a copper pipe held in place with a C-clamp from my wood working toolbox, baking tray lined with a black bin bag to catch the drops and act as picture background, 6 feet of grease proof baking paper as diffuser behind the tray (stretched between the background stand uprights and held in place with clothespins), SB-800 flash with red gel standing on the table behind the diffuser (illuminating the top of the picture) and another flash with blue gel on a Gorilla-pod to raise it up so it could illuminate the bottom of the picture. Camera hooked up to computer via a freeware program called DCamCapture so I could see each picture on the big screen as soon as it was taken. Wires left, right and centre.
A couple of test-drops to establish where they landed and then manual focus on that spot. f/32 because with macro you need all the DoF you can get, even if diffraction is pain. The shutter time doesn't matter because everything is illuminated by the speedlight flash in around 1/10,000 - 1/15,000th second (flashes set to manual and varied between 1/32 power and 1/128 power).
With the setup all done, it was a matter of sitting down comfortably in front of the computer with a cup of coffee and press the button to release two drops and take a picture, review picture, press again, review again, experiment with differently coloured gels, etc, etc, for as long as it was fun (much to Mrs Sunny's dismay, it was fun all evening; she didn't particularly like the constant bright flashes interfering with her TV viewing pleasure!). My favourite from the evening is this one, as the 2nd drop has hit the rebound from the first and spread out so it looks like a cross seen from the camera's angle.
Post processing was mainly just a crop and a tweak of curves, clarity and saturation. I think the yellow haze is a hot-spot where the speedlight overexposed; the yellow colour must be from the grease proof paper. The cross extended slightly over the top of the frame, so to give it a little bit of "breathing space", I also cloned some background in over the top few pixels of it.
[365 Toy Project: 031/365] Batman: Scarlet Part 13
Image by nhussein
"Nothing clears up a case so much as stating it to another person." -- Sherlock Holmes
Barbara Gordon's Journal, April 13th 2019.
Harleen Quinzel's arrest has been all over the news. As I sat with my coffee on a Saturday morning, reading the paper, I must admit I was a little amused to see my own crime-fighting alias mentioned in the paper. Rumours say that "Oracle" tipped the police off. Hooray for Oracle.
The authorities have been alerted to the living conditions of Arkham Asylum, and hopefully they'll do something about it. Harleen Quinzel was a tragic woman, despite the appalling things she did. Betrayed, heartbroken and slipping into insanity, she stabbed Eugene Drepper and threw away her engagement ring. Rachel Ferrier was her second victim. And the grotesque make-up she had on, it was like she was becoming another Joker.
This city breeds criminals and insanity. No matter how many psychopaths and villains are put away, more seem to spring up. No rest for the weary.
However, despite the horrors of crime, there's this thrill that comes from hunting monsters. No doubt, Batman will need my help again, and I will be ready.
I'm officially in the loop.
_______
This picture is the last part of an ongoing story. Since it's for my toy 365 as well, there is a toy in it, the little car in the newspaper photo. It's not a huge part of the picture, but I needed to frame it that way to finish off the story.
Harley Quinn is played by Sakurawind in the photo. Awesome mugshot ;).
The picture of Bruce Wayne is an actual photo of Christian Bale taken by my friend Sillystix, who found him on a shooting location.
I've always planned the ending to be a coffee cup and a newspaper, and when I saw the FGR theme of the day, I Need A Drink, I couldn't pass it up. That's coffee in Barbara's mug, which I drank (sorry Barbara). I don't like it black, but I didn't want to waste it either. Big mistake. I am still feeling awful in my stomach. But hey, one needs to suffer for their art.
So this is it, this is the end of the story. Thanks so much to my actors and actresses and extra photographers and the folks that made their lovely backgrounds CC-licensed. It was supposed to be a Batman-themed adaptation of "A Study In Scarlet", but this was how it turned out. It still has themes of lost love and revenge, but I don't think it mapped pretty well. Anyway, Sherlock Holmes fans are probably furiously writing hate mail to me right now.
Read the beginning here. Go back to Part 12 here.
Ahoy, Matey!
Image by t.shirbert
Our downstairs neighbor's had a pirate themed birthday party for Adam (far left). He turned 4. Adam & Marcus's dad was trying to get them to pose together for a nice picture but Ace kept jumping into every frame like a total scalawag! The expression on his face in this one just cracks me up!
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