water

No budget martini

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Taken in my back yard when I was a 17 year old kid in high school, year 2000See the before shots at http://www.kylefoto.com

In high school I had the absolute privilege of receiving a whopping 3 megapixel Olympus camera with a 16 megabyte memory card as a christmas gift. My parents saw that I loved photography and sprung for this little gem of a camera. Little did I know this little bundle of glass and circuitry would inspire and take me on such great journeys as it has.

Photographic Details: I didn’t have any fancy equipment so I did the very best with what I could. I knew I needed a black background for the look I wanted. I took one of my moms nice black jackets and set it up outside as the background and floor of the shoot.

I had no flashes, bounces, fancy lenses or anything else besides my camera. Instead of lights I used the bright overcast sky outside and a wide open aperture of f1.8. This let in enough light for me to shoot at the fastest shutter speed available on this camera, 1/800th of a second. I then poured water into the martini glass and shot as many photos as possible, freezing the action. In addition I took photos of a toothpick olive, and various streams of water.

After selecting my favourite photos of each stream of water I brought the images into paint shop pro. I don’t think it had any masking features but I used the eraser tool to delete the background. I then replaced the background with solid black and added a touch of highlights, combining each item on a layer to get the final image!

I want to prove to you that fancy equipment wasn’t necessary 11 years ago and isn’t now. Even though this image does have many flaws and isn’t fully up to my standards, my brother used the image in one of his marketing assignments and got an A!

#Foodfriday

Porcelain Adélie

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One sunny antarctic day was standing on a rock at the entrance to a penguin colony in Antarctica, watching them zip around underwater with joy. One of the coolest things is that they tend to jet out of the water onto land, but I don't think they look before they leap. Every so often one would fly out onto my rock only to be extremely surprised to see me standing there, immediately and frantically trying to back-flap their way into the water. This Adélie was particularly entertaining!