For this week’s 52Frames, the theme was Silhouette, with an extra credit for “Use Studio Lighting”. Since it was studio, it felt “right” to try to find something in my house to photograph and, lo and behold, I have LEGO!
I setup things on the balcony last night after sunset. The light is a couple of Lume cubes, one with a red filter and one with a yellow filter, reflecting light on the white wall of the balcony. The edit was a bit of a pain, because my balcony wall is not smooth and had a line in the middle – the edit is not perfect (I still see shadows of the line), but I’m still happy with it. I’m particularly happy with the light tones, I must say 🙂
The 35th Scavenger Hunt had a very colorful theme, because there’s all colors of the rainbow in it, and then some. It took me a while to manage to find a way to get a set of pictures that would look like a proper set. My first idea was to try to do something around food photography; some of the colors dissuaded me. I finally landed on the idea of doing something I had wanted to do for a long time: playing with water and oil and soap to make BUBBLES. Not all the pictures have all these components, but I tried to keep a uniting “bubbles/droplets” theme while trying to provide some variation on the technique to get cohesive, but different images.
For White, I went for bubbles, but not the oil-in-water kind. I recently bought a new coffee machine that also has a milk system; for this picture, I used that to get a white foam! I lit it from below, and my camera thought it was far more yellow than it actually was, but I still liked the bubble structure very much, so that’s what I ended up editing and submitting.
Camera
Pentax K-1 II
Lens
smc PENTAX-D FA MACRO 100mm F2.8 WR
Focal length
100 mm
F-Number
F/7.1
Exposure time
1/100
ISO
100
The complete Scavenger album is available here: the White album.
The 35th Scavenger Hunt had a very colorful theme, because there’s all colors of the rainbow in it, and then some. It took me a while to manage to find a way to get a set of pictures that would look like a proper set. My first idea was to try to do something around food photography; some of the colors dissuaded me. I finally landed on the idea of doing something I had wanted to do for a long time: playing with water and oil and soap to make BUBBLES. Not all the pictures have all these components, but I tried to keep a uniting “bubbles/droplets” theme while trying to provide some variation on the technique to get cohesive, but different images.
For Black, I deviated a bit from my initial concept – I wanted to have drops of water on a black background. Turns out that getting clean drops of water does not work on any surface! And the best thing I got was… the screen of my tablet. I painstakingly added my drops of water one by one with a small pipette, and started taking some pictures. You may have seen another one of these in another post – I figured the images were different enough to submit to both 52Frames and the Hunt from the same set. I really liked this one – the reflection of the window at the bottom was a happy accident that gives more volume – they kind of look like they each have their own socle! And they kind of look like astronaut helmets too.
Camera
Pentax K-1 II
Lens
smc PENTAX-D FA MACRO 100mm F2.8 WR
Focal length
100 mm
F-Number
F/10
Exposure time
1/50
ISO
800
The complete Scavenger album is available here: the Black album.
The 35th Scavenger Hunt had a very colorful theme, because there’s all colors of the rainbow in it, and then some. It took me a while to manage to find a way to get a set of pictures that would look like a proper set. My first idea was to try to do something around food photography; some of the colors dissuaded me. I finally landed on the idea of doing something I had wanted to do for a long time: playing with water and oil and soap to make BUBBLES. Not all the pictures have all these components, but I tried to keep a uniting “bubbles/droplets” theme while trying to provide some variation on the technique to get cohesive, but different images.
Violet did not start well. It’s the last picture I shot (before the “bonus” picture), and I felt I was getting at the end of what I could achieve on my theme. And…. it turns out that it’s my favorite for this round. I started by searching ideas for violet things on Google, and saw “amethyst” very early on. And hey, amethyst is significantly overrepresented in my tiny rock collection! So I started playing with my amethyst in various containers, moving water back and forth and being generally tired. I remember snapping this one because the lines of bubbles was uncommon – I still have no idea how that one happened, I thought there was a hair, but there wasn’t. I think that at that time there was mostly water, and the oil was mostly leftovers from surfaces and not really added per se. When I came back to my computer, I was very happy with what I was seeing – and particularly the fact that it was indeed sharp enough to use. I love how this looks like a starry night and/or a nebula, and I’m incredibly happy with this picture. The original image gives a better idea of the amethyst at the bottom!
Camera
Pentax K-1 II
Lens
smc PENTAX-D FA MACRO 100mm F2.8 WR
Focal length
100 mm
F-Number
F/8
Exposure time
1/125
ISO
800
The complete Scavenger album is available here: the Violet album.
The 35th Scavenger Hunt had a very colorful theme, because there’s all colors of the rainbow in it, and then some. It took me a while to manage to find a way to get a set of pictures that would look like a proper set. My first idea was to try to do something around food photography; some of the colors dissuaded me. I finally landed on the idea of doing something I had wanted to do for a long time: playing with water and oil and soap to make BUBBLES. Not all the pictures have all these components, but I tried to keep a uniting “bubbles/droplets” theme while trying to provide some variation on the technique to get cohesive, but different images.
Coming up with Indigo took me a long while, mostly because I’m not even entirely sure how to DEFINE indigo (And, apparently, I’m not the only one: Indigo#Classification as a spectral color.) The color definition seems to vary between “dark blue” and “blue with purplish hues”, and then whatever is dyed with indigo dye can also end up in various shades of blue. I’m pretty sure this is a word I never use spontaneously when talking about colors. I did want to go vaguely in the direction of “between dark blue and purple”, but I also didn’t want to do something that would be confused for purple. All in all, this means that the “indigo” picture was one that I left for the end of this Hunt.
It also meant that I needed to find something in the correct hue for the pictures, and that was not obvious either. I finally noticed that our dinner trays are somewhat in the blue/purple/indigo shades, and that’s what I ended up using as a background. I used significantly more dish soap for this image than for the others, so the bubbles are very distinct; the sadder point is that there’s a few spots of larger visibly soapy bubbles, and I would have preferred the picture without them, I think. I still very much liked the effect, especially around the white border, that seem to give a lot of depth to the bubble; this made me keep more of the white background in the final image than I was initially planning to.
Camera
Pentax K-1 II
Lens
smc PENTAX-D FA MACRO 100mm F2.8 WR
Focal length
100 mm
F-Number
F/4.5
Exposure time
1/200
ISO
800
The complete Scavenger album is available here: the Indigo album.
The 35th Scavenger Hunt had a very colorful theme, because there’s all colors of the rainbow in it, and then some. It took me a while to manage to find a way to get a set of pictures that would look like a proper set. My first idea was to try to do something around food photography; some of the colors dissuaded me. I finally landed on the idea of doing something I had wanted to do for a long time: playing with water and oil and soap to make BUBBLES. Not all the pictures have all these components, but I tried to keep a uniting “bubbles/droplets” theme while trying to provide some variation on the technique to get cohesive, but different images.
“Blue” is the second image I shot for this set. I wanted a bit of texture, so I shot on top of blue, soft blanket. There’s not much water in this picture, because I wanted the blue texture to come forward; I had to shepherd the oil/soap bubbles together to get some structure. I’m very happy wit the shadows on this image – Lume cube to the rescue! When I first opened these, I fell for the top-left shadow globules, which I found so very cute. I picked the sharpest image I had in that set, and worked on it until I got the final version.
Camera
Pentax K-1 II
Lens
smc PENTAX-D FA MACRO 100mm F2.8 WR
Focal length
100 mm
F-Number
F/10
Exposure time
1/125
ISO
250
The complete Scavenger album is available here: the Blue album.
The 35th Scavenger Hunt had a very colorful theme, because there’s all colors of the rainbow in it, and then some. It took me a while to manage to find a way to get a set of pictures that would look like a proper set. My first idea was to try to do something around food photography; some of the colors dissuaded me. I finally landed on the idea of doing something I had wanted to do for a long time: playing with water and oil and soap to make BUBBLES. Not all the pictures have all these components, but I tried to keep a uniting “bubbles/droplets” theme while trying to provide some variation on the technique to get cohesive, but different images.
The “Green” image is one of my favorites for this set. I wanted to experiment with a background that would be recognizable, but that wouldn’t detract from my “abstract” theme. I went for a small walk gathering plane tree and poplar tree leaves, trying to find the most green and vibrant ones I could. I set them up in layers on the table, and put my usual mix of water and oil. For this one, I also wanted the larger bubble to be “softer”, so I didn’t add any dish soap to that picture. The water bowl was also pretty shallow, because I did want the leaves to be recognizable.
I wasn’t convinced I’d get anything until I opened this one, and exclaimed “THERE! THAT’S the look that I want!”. A bit of cropping and processing later, and tada, green was done!
Camera
Pentax K-1 II
Lens
smc PENTAX-D FA MACRO 100mm F2.8 WR
Focal length
100 mm
F-Number
F/7.1
Exposure time
1/80s
ISO
800
The complete Scavenger album is available here: the Green album.
The 35th Scavenger Hunt had a very colorful theme, because there’s all colors of the rainbow in it, and then some. It took me a while to manage to find a way to get a set of pictures that would look like a proper set. My first idea was to try to do something around food photography; some of the colors dissuaded me. I finally landed on the idea of doing something I had wanted to do for a long time: playing with water and oil and soap to make BUBBLES. Not all the pictures have all these components, but I tried to keep a uniting “bubbles/droplets” theme while trying to provide some variation on the technique to get cohesive, but different images.
Yellow is the first image that I shot. I wasn’t completely sure yet whether my idea would pan out, whether I’d manage to make anything more than a picture or two, but I made the leap, with a strong “I will at least submit one picture for this Hunt”. As first picture, I followed what the internets were saying for that kind of pictures: get a transparent dish, add some water, more or less depending on how much you want to see the texture of the glass and the background below it; add some oil and a bit of dish soap to make the bubbles mor crisp. For a first attempt, it worked beyond my expectations. I was initially playing with a fan of different yellow papers below the transparent dish, and I noticed that the best result was with the gold piece of paper I had there, so that’s the only one I kept. I took many pictures with different illuminations, and I liked the sharpness and shape of this one. Some editing later, I had my first Hunt picture for Yellow!
Camera
Pentax K-1 II
Lens
smc PENTAX-D FA MACRO 100mm F2.8 WR
Focal length
100 mm
F-Number
F/6.3
Exposure time
1/40
ISO
200
The complete Scavenger album is available here: the Yellow album.
The 35th Scavenger Hunt had a very colorful theme, because there’s all colors of the rainbow in it, and then some. It took me a while to manage to find a way to get a set of pictures that would look like a proper set. My first idea was to try to do something around food photography; some of the colors dissuaded me. I finally landed on the idea of doing something I had wanted to do for a long time: playing with water and oil and soap to make BUBBLES. Not all the pictures have all these components, but I tried to keep a uniting “bubbles/droplets” theme while trying to provide some variation on the technique to get cohesive, but different images.
Orange is one of the pictures where I deviated from the original concept: there’s no water, oil or soap in this picture. Instead, it’s simply orange juice, which I stirred with a small electric milk foamer and let sit until I got the adequate amount and texture of bubbles. Initially, I was a bit annoyed by the fact that I could see my reflection in all the bubbles; a posteriori, I think it adds a bit of texture and fun to them, and it’s not entirely obvious what that triangle is in the final picture. One of the challenges was to avoid for this picture to look a lot like another one in that set that I had shot previously; this was essentially a question of choosing the right setup of bubbles at a moment where they were set in a way that was different enough from the other picture.
Camera
Pentax K-1 II
Lens
smc PENTAX-D FA MACRO 100mm F2.8 WR
Focal length
100 mm
F-Number
F/7.1
Exposure time
1/160
ISO
800
The complete Scavenger album is available here: the Orange album.
The 35th Scavenger Hunt had a very colorful theme, because there’s all colors of the rainbow in it, and then some. It took me a while to manage to find a way to get a set of pictures that would look like a proper set. My first idea was to try to do something around food photography; some of the colors dissuaded me. I finally landed on the idea of doing something I had wanted to do for a long time: playing with water and oil and soap to make BUBBLES. Not all the pictures have all these components, but I tried to keep a uniting “bubbles/droplets” theme while trying to provide some variation on the technique to get cohesive, but different images.
For Red, I wanted to see if the color of the liquid made a difference, and what results I could get with a lot of water and no soap to break the oil puddles. I shot over a red t-shirt, and my water had some Campari in it. I don’t think that the color made much difference – if anything, mayyybe in the fact that the bubbles were also red instead of picking the light from the outside, but there’s, at best, weak evidence of that.
The bubbles I liked were very close to the border of the dish, which meant that my edits were somewhat heavy-handed; at the end of the day, I quite like the arc that I managed to get there, it helps selling a planet/sun/space feeling, which was what I was trying to go for with that edit. It still feels like one of the weakest shot of the series – but there had to be one!
Camera
Pentax K-1 II
Lens
smc PENTAX-D FA MACRO 100mm F2.8 WR
Focal length
100 mm
F-Number
F/4.5
Exposure time
1/200
ISO
800
The complete Scavenger album is available here: the Red album.
