No ice, no lemon

I wanted to shoot a picture of a Scotch on the rocks, set up all the lighting with an empty glass, checked exposure F8, 1/200 second, iso 100 for a nice clean image, main light bounced off a white foam core background, 1 additional light directly above, camera spiked on a tripod nice and level, 90mm macro lens for a tight, compressed aspect and then realised... no Scotch and no ice (planning is everything right?) when I say no ice, I actually had some ice cubes but they were very old and cloudy, anyway I made some "Scotch" using cold tea and made some test shots with the cloudy ice cubes.
They were rubbish, so I went ahead and made some shots without ice, after some research I learnt most photographers for these type of images use acrylic plastic ice, why? because it doesn't melt and transmits light much more effectively so now I have a plan.... in the meantime here are the results from today. The last one is actually my favourite, I managed to fire the shutter with one hand whilst pouring in to the glass.

  

Cross but not-so-hot

It's Good Friday today and Easter time should be sunny but today it was not, it rained on/off so it was a staying-in day. Despite the weather I made the above shot look sunny by using a bare flash off camera way over to the right with a coloured gel called a 1/2 CTO (colour temperature orange) which makes the light look warm, and when you put it far from the subject you are shooting, it looks like sunshine streaming through the window.

Then as tradition has it on such days there were Hot cross buns to be made, I use a great recipe from THE BREAD BOOK by Linda Collister and Anthony Blake which is a brilliant book with many (over 130) different breads, buns, sweet, sour, savoury recipes and this particular recipe works every time. Actually I have made these buns the last 3 weeks on the trot, I just don't know where they go, sometimes I don't put the cross on the top. When they are fresh from the oven I brush them with a cold sugar syrup to make them sticky, look there's one missing already.....

Spring (ish)

The first picture here was taken in the garden last weekend, it felt spring-like, the clocks had been put forward the night before and it was sunny and warm.

Today on the beach it felt like winter, brisk, icy wind and harsh sunshine. So a good day to set up indoors and shoot some food, all back-lit slightly from the left (I have heard it said you should light pictures from left to right) and plenty of white reflectors to throw all that soft light in to the camera-side shadows, see how the light dances over the top of the peppers. The last picture I had all the peppers facing the same way with their stalks they look a bit like aliens.

Click on any image to see it larger.

My Nikon D70

This is my D70, it's a brilliant camera, I bought mine in 2004 (in digital terms that's now a dinosaur) that's the year they came out and like most new Nikon DSLR cameras, they were hard to get hold of because the demand was so great and Nikon can't seem to keep up. You can pick them up 2nd hand now for about 200 Euros thats a lot of camera for the money! There have been many cameras in the Nikon range since then but the D70 still cuts it.
A lot of people are obsessed about how many millions of pixels their camera has, in reality that is not so important anymore how many do you need? well most people only print the odd picture, most are put on the web on blogs like this or shared via Flickr, Facebook etc.
The D70 has 6.1 million pixels and at it's launch Nikon claimed it was good for prints up to 11 x 14 inches, with this camera a few years back I printed a poster sized 3ft by 2ft that was used for advertising a restaurant! One advantage of having less pixels is you get many many more pictures on your memory card.

Here's a beat up old Maglite torch and a watch I shot today with the D70 and a 90mm macro lens.
If I had to recommend a camera to someone starting out it would be the D70, it takes virtually every lens that Nikon ever made in that fit and even has a remote control to take pictures that costs less than 15 Euros!

Sunday afternoon

Frank says: "We love to sit on the furniture together but we don't always see eye to eye! Come on Maggie why the long face? I honestly think sometimes she's more interested in her teddy-bear than me".
(click on an image to see it larger)

The SAS

No not that SAS, these are the SAS shoe-makers who are in San Antonio, Texas and they produce THE most comfortable shoes ever, these are mine and I have had them for years now and before these I had some more, you would really get fed up with them before they wear out, they will not win any catwalk prizes for high-end fashion but boy are they nice to your feet. As you can see in the picture above the eyelets for the laces are wearing and there is now a split in one of the soles but I will wear them until they literally fall apart! look at the heels, hardly worn down what are they made of? I don't know but if I ever get to be on dessert island disc then SAS shoes will most likely be on my list of things to have.

What are your favourite shoes?  

Shiny things

I was presented with this interesting coffee/tea pot (not sure which) fresh from a second hand market in Copenhagen, shiny things present a particular set of challenges for the everyday photographer especially when using flash mainly due to the highly reflective surfaces, so, I set about shooting it with a number of different setups, all with flash ranging from a single on-camera flash and ending up with 3 off-camera. All were shot with the same exposure 1/250th @ F8 against the same grey card background and all have had the same very basic retouching.

1. Simple on-camera flash, note the harsh,
ugly shadows behind and bright reflection of the flash.

2. Flash still on camera but angled up and bounced off the ceiling,
 less shadow and  better rendition of the grey  background

3. Now the flash is off the camera and positioned on a stand  45 degrees to the right
and above, shadow now falls on the table and the pot has
more definition and less reflections but I still didn't like it.

4. A little more complex, 2 flashes 1 from either side through kitchen paper
to diffuse and one flash from camera right with a blue gel to accent the
grey background a little, also a white card directly above,
nice even reflections and good detail in the pot itself.