Sugar please !

Last week I tried to recreate a shot that I saw on one of the website. With the use of 2 external flashes and a white board reflector I could able to get the below shot, however not totally satisfied.

Aperture f16, shutter 1/250th, 1st flash 1/8th power hand held about 3 ft away from the cup, 2nd flash 1/16th power  to the left pointing to white board from the bottom.

The 2nd flash was intended to highlight the sugar, but I am not satisfied with the result as I was expecting the sugar to be more sparkled than it really came out......I would give more try to get the shot I am expecting.

Cool Drops (CD) with two light techniques..

Winter is almost started in Green Bay and shooting table top shot is best idea when you don't find more opportunities to shoot outdoor. So this weekend I tried to shoot water drops on the CD/DVD.

I used two different lighting techniques to get the exposures and both have different results. The first one I used a slow a shutter speed and did a light painting to shoot the drops. Its simple, easy and fun to try the various lighting angles to paint the water drops. I used LED flash light in a dark room with a shutter speed of 10-15 sec. 

Set up is very simple, you need:

• Tripod to avoid camera shake  
• A flash light   a dropper/syringe to put the water drops on CD/DVD   
• CD/DVD - I found DVD gives better results as the light reflected from DVD surface is more dense and cool than CD surface.  
• Use self timer so as to avoid shake due to shutter release pressure.

For below shots I used my Vivitar flash (Vivitar DF383) with 1/16th power and a shutter speed between 1/160-1/200sec. I wanted to get the bouncing water drop but it was not as simple as I thought because on DVD surface water do not bounce it just splash. In this case, I used shutter release cable to avoid camera shake. Hope you enjoyed the pics.

Here is the setup shot:

Fire is life !

Its been for a while I took these pictures but didn't get good time to post on the blog...so lets start with this nice quote...


A house is not a home unless it contains food and fire for the mind as well as the body.-Benjamin Franklin

Ok let me admit here, its not my own idea, I see this on the net and inspired to try it myself. Its good exploring what other photographers do since it helps me to learn more more and more........

I used Lighter Fuel to get the flames on the glass top. As usual the complex part was achieving "correct" exposures. I started with 'Program' (P) mode to understand what camera thinks about shutter/aperture/ISO to get the correct exposures, obviously the 'correct' was not so correct since it was little overexpose due to low light, but at least I got some reference to start with. After some more attempts I settle down at f/11 at speed between 1/10 to 1/30 and ISO 200 to give me the so called correct exposures.


After the some plain flames shots I tried playing with different objects, the natural choice was Ice but an Egg also came into the frame which I theft from kitchen as my wife was about to prepare egg omelet for my daughter.... needless to say I end up eating this half boiled egg to avoid any further consequences ;)

Cannon T1i with 18-55mm kit lens on tripod

Harley Davidson....get macho !!

Well before the summer starts in Green Bay, people comes out with their Harley Davidson  on the road.... its one of my dreams to ride this bike before I leave US. Whenever I see someone riding the bike I miss my Royal Enfield Electra... I don't know how long I will miss it..well..

     So I thought instead of creeping I should at least photograph a bike (die cast model) which I bought from Harley Davidson museum at Milwaukee. I photographed this bike previously on a seamless white background with CFL continuous light bulbs, this time I have experimented it with couple of flashes with Grids made out from drinking straws.....after lot of experiments I got few good exposures, here they are.....

Here is the set up: I have used 2 strobes with grids. One of that is covered with blue gel paper which has projected blue spot behind and another on the right to highlight bike details. Also couple of foam boards are used to give direction to the light. The set up shot is very poor and you would hardly see the flashes but it may give you some idea behind the shot.

Happy Holi....

Happy Holi to all of you.... this is my 3rd holi which I am missing being outside of India :( . So this time I thought lets celebrate it with some food colours ....

Exif: Canon T1i f/11, 1/60 ISO 200
Flash - Vivitar DF383

The set up- though the flash is not visible, it was directed from above towards background to get the reflected light through the water.

The Smoke....

I had fun taking these incense stick smoke photographs ....there are tons pictures of such smoke photographs on the net so I wanted to try it myself. I have used slim box to direct the flash light on the smoke and avoid it spilling over the black background. It is interesting to see how many nice smoke formations comes out of that little incense stick which we don't observe otherwise....

Here is the set up

Water Drops.....

2 days back I bought Vivitar DF 383 flash which is a budget flash; my dream came true. After an exhaustive review around the budget speedlites I decided to go with Vivitar although Yongnuo YN-560 is also a good flash (may be that will be my next flash). 

So the first experiment I wanted to do was to capture the water droplets as many of the photo enthusiast does. I am happy with my Canon T1i & its kit lens (18-55mm) which gave me these satisfactory results which I am happy to share with you. To be honest I don't know what difference it would have made if I had a macro lens..

The set up was quite simple, but since it was related to water my daugter Urvi was very much interested to help me in everything by playing in it....she wanted to almost swim in that cake pan filled with water. Finally she was successfull to splash water on the camera and flash unit....and got a 'fatka' as a reward :)

I used the gift bag & a gift wrap paper as background, the colours of droplets are reflected from these backgrounds.

And here is the setup..

The Glass

It was my long time wish to photograph a glassware and today I gave a shot to utilize a reflection of light to capture some pics. I have used white cardboard sheet & 2 CFL 100w equivalent lights. It would have been great if I had a good strobe unit to for richer reflection. To get more light I have used +2 exposure compensation keeping the ISO100 to avoid any noise.

Product Photographs

Adding couple of more photos on product photography tryouts. All these pictures taken on a white background with contiguous light focus. CFL lights are good and cheap to try out this lighting set ups, though I wish to have a flash (Speedlight) which will give me more flexibility to tryout creative lighting setup


This is a Harley Davidson 1:18 die-cast replica I bought from HD museum at Milwaukee with the intention to photograph it. With 18-55mm lense I still find it challenging to get closeup and tryout different angles to minute details. This picture is captured at 55mm zoomout position on tripod.

f14 0.8'' ISO100 Exposure comp+1.3 steps

This is my daughter's (Urvi's) first tooth brush we bought from Walmart - when I was shooting above bike picutres she was plyaing with this brush, so I just thought it could be a good prodcut to photograph...and here it is ....

f14 1/8 ISO100 33mm

Cello Tape Dispenser

   I am always fascinated with the product photography. Whenever I see the product catalogs of  popular retailer shops like Kohl's, Bed Bath & Beyond I feel like buying the products just looking at the pictures. I am giving my try to capture some product photographs on my table top studio...this is one of them..

Canon T1i 

f36 - 1/3 - ISO100 @55mm on Tripod