Levitation Photography and working with Textures

Die Fliegende Französin: The Midnight Craving

Last weekend I convinced a good friend of mine, Tess, to do a levitation for me. What a great sport! I really need to get a large stool or step ladder to do more of these, but she said she'd have some around the house.

I got there and she said, "how about this one or how about this or this?" I might have been pushing it a little, but she knows I'm looking out for her safety and said, "how about this one on top of that one?"

Next thing I knew she was teetering on a laundry hamper on a stepping stool. Awesome....

Workshop with Zack Arias!

See setup shot below

The CreativeLive workshop with Zack Arias last week was absolutely worth the 3-day commitment. We just had the chance to get out there and give some of it a try.

I've been scouting for a location for a project next weekend and came across the vacant lot you see above. I asked Cristy if she would come out and model with a prop. She chose the accordion - awesome choice....

Screwhead Gets a Tune-Up: Creative Fun

Photo Manipulation:
It's fun to think up silly, ridiculous and otherwise impossible situations, don't cha think? We, of course, had to do something with the moustache just before shaving it off - and what better way to create ridiculous hilarity than with a trailer park/trailer trash 'stache and a vintage Herb Tarlek suit to get the mood just right?!

Strawberry Splash - High Speed Photography with simple gear

f/8, ISO 100, shutter speed: 2 seconds (click the picture to see it larger)

I recently came across some of Pascal Bovet's images on Flickr and found that he'd linked a lot of his stuff to his website with many of his behind the scenes tricks - and of course I had to try this one out!

Initially I set everything up as he described with one light on my background and one light for the scene pointing down from above (see setup image below).

The basic idea is that you typically hit a ceiling with your flash sync speed somewhere around 1/250 sec. which is fast enough to capture many things, but...not fast enough to capture others.

One way of getting around this is to leave your shutter open longer in a dark environment and trigger your lights manually. A flash burst from your speedlight is a lot faster than 1/250 sec. Using my Nikon SB-24 to light the glass and the strawberry, for example, at 1/16th power gives me a flash duration of around 1/11000th of a second!

Matrix Restrung - Tutorial

Matrix Restrung on deviantART

For those who have asked for it - here are the basics, which can be applied to a hundred million different situations. Now...let's see if I can get the basic idea out without drawing too much attention to the flaws....