165. Hot - August 7-13, 2016
Jerry-
My Hot photo idea came about by watching some hot flames from a fire pit at a nearby restaurant (Pinstripes) where I was attending a groom's dinner for my daughter's fiance. I had the trusty old D5200 with 16-85 zoom along and was taking photos of the festivities when I was distracted by the fire pit. I cranked the ISO up to 6400, set it to aperture priority f8, and the camera was picking fast shutter speeds, in this case 1/4000. You can see the faces of at least two unhappy faces which I teased a little bit in Photoshop.
PS: Did any of you Google "Hot"?
My Hot photo idea came about by watching some hot flames from a fire pit at a nearby restaurant (Pinstripes) where I was attending a groom's dinner for my daughter's fiance. I had the trusty old D5200 with 16-85 zoom along and was taking photos of the festivities when I was distracted by the fire pit. I cranked the ISO up to 6400, set it to aperture priority f8, and the camera was picking fast shutter speeds, in this case 1/4000. You can see the faces of at least two unhappy faces which I teased a little bit in Photoshop.
PS: Did any of you Google "Hot"?
Don-
Below is my Hot choice, a jar of habanero jelly.
Lens is 24 to 70mm. Focal length is 60mm
Exposure is 1/8000 sec; f/8; ISO 3200; in Aperture Priority
Below is my Hot choice, a jar of habanero jelly.
Lens is 24 to 70mm. Focal length is 60mm
Exposure is 1/8000 sec; f/8; ISO 3200; in Aperture Priority
Byron-
2 items I've worked with in the last 2 weeks are an aluminum bar and a propane torch. I thought that for "Hot" I would bring the 2 together. I shot this in my garage where it was hot and humid. The bar is held in place by my vice (I won't tell you what my vice is), the propane torch is held in place by my Black & Decker Workmate. I knew I would use it someday. What makes me happy about this shot is that I remembered to let everything cool off before putting it away. No burned hands for me!
ISO200, 200mm, f5.6, 30th sec. A flash set to 1/4 power the fill light on the bar.
2 items I've worked with in the last 2 weeks are an aluminum bar and a propane torch. I thought that for "Hot" I would bring the 2 together. I shot this in my garage where it was hot and humid. The bar is held in place by my vice (I won't tell you what my vice is), the propane torch is held in place by my Black & Decker Workmate. I knew I would use it someday. What makes me happy about this shot is that I remembered to let everything cool off before putting it away. No burned hands for me!
ISO200, 200mm, f5.6, 30th sec. A flash set to 1/4 power the fill light on the bar.
Kevin-
I admit that I struggled with this theme. First because it was a very busy week. Second because in spite of a lot of searching, I didn’t latch on to a good way to express “Hot” photographically. It’s not like it wasn’t hot outside (and humid too). It’s that photographically I wasn’t creative enough to show the difference between a nice 75 degree day, and a day in the high 90s. And while flames are hot, I had already captured a photo of a flame back in WPOTM - Week 124 when the theme was “Burn” So I settled on photographing a hot looking model. But with the studio mostly booked by other photographers and with everything that I had to do, there was no time that worked. But I did finally find one hot looking model, available for an outdoor shoot. Her name was Barbie. I thought that a swimsuit would be hot looking, but Barbie forgot to bring her swimsuits along. Unfortunately models can be like that. The best of them get used to having hair stylists, wardrobe consultants, makeup artists and costumers all around them. But simple shoots have nothing like that. Fortunately Barbie agreed to pose without any wardrobe at all, as long as her hair was positioned in a way that would keep her pose from being too revealing. I agreed.
This photo involved some work that I learned in the Joe McNally class earlier this year. I set the camera to -1 EV to darken and saturate the trees in the background. Then I used two Nikon flash units. The main light for Barbie’s face was set to -.7 EV and bounced off of a sheet of white foam core.The hair light was set to -3 EV and aimed directly. at Barbie. TTL metering was used on aperture priority and I selected an aperture that even in a close macro focus setting threw the background and part of Barbies overly red hair out of focus, and then made certain the focus point was set to her near eye. Nikon D4s, tripod mounted, 105mm f/2.8 Micro-Nikkor lens, ISO 100, f/7.1 @ 1/50th of a second.
Is Barbie a Hot looking model? Perhaps. But as with the last model that I photographed, she does need to put on a little bit of weight.
I admit that I struggled with this theme. First because it was a very busy week. Second because in spite of a lot of searching, I didn’t latch on to a good way to express “Hot” photographically. It’s not like it wasn’t hot outside (and humid too). It’s that photographically I wasn’t creative enough to show the difference between a nice 75 degree day, and a day in the high 90s. And while flames are hot, I had already captured a photo of a flame back in WPOTM - Week 124 when the theme was “Burn” So I settled on photographing a hot looking model. But with the studio mostly booked by other photographers and with everything that I had to do, there was no time that worked. But I did finally find one hot looking model, available for an outdoor shoot. Her name was Barbie. I thought that a swimsuit would be hot looking, but Barbie forgot to bring her swimsuits along. Unfortunately models can be like that. The best of them get used to having hair stylists, wardrobe consultants, makeup artists and costumers all around them. But simple shoots have nothing like that. Fortunately Barbie agreed to pose without any wardrobe at all, as long as her hair was positioned in a way that would keep her pose from being too revealing. I agreed.
This photo involved some work that I learned in the Joe McNally class earlier this year. I set the camera to -1 EV to darken and saturate the trees in the background. Then I used two Nikon flash units. The main light for Barbie’s face was set to -.7 EV and bounced off of a sheet of white foam core.The hair light was set to -3 EV and aimed directly. at Barbie. TTL metering was used on aperture priority and I selected an aperture that even in a close macro focus setting threw the background and part of Barbies overly red hair out of focus, and then made certain the focus point was set to her near eye. Nikon D4s, tripod mounted, 105mm f/2.8 Micro-Nikkor lens, ISO 100, f/7.1 @ 1/50th of a second.
Is Barbie a Hot looking model? Perhaps. But as with the last model that I photographed, she does need to put on a little bit of weight.
Paul-
Kids, don’t try this anywhere, okay?
Sometimes I bring water and electricity into safe (read: reckless) proximity of each other in some of my photographs. This week it was open flame, isopropyl alcohol, candles, and thread. It really never occurred to me to have a wet towel or the small fire extinguisher on-hand in my nano-studio during this shoot. This is why I should probably hold off renting studio space with anyone. Anyway, here we go…
A neighbor happened to bring over several home-grown Jalapeños about the same time the theme was announced. “Boy howdy,” said I, rubbing my hands together (without the peppers between them) and decided to try and capture the inherent heat in one these bad boys. Now, from a capsaicin point of view, Jalapeños are relatively tame. It’s a 70-pound weakling other peppers kick sand on out at the beach. But you work with what you’ve got.
I hung from my copystand a funky-looking piece of cloth that had been stiffened with a stiffening agent called called…really, “Stiffy.” This was the backdrop through which I poked a small hole and threaded an alligator clip attached to a plastic-covered cable. I then stiffened (there’s that word again) the cable by winding it with duct tape so it would hold the pepper from behind and out of the view of the camera.
Plan A: Put on plastic gloves. Liberally impregnate—sorry, I’ve never had an occasion to insert this word into my writing and I wasn’t going to pass it up for something like “soak”—the stem with 70% isopropyl alcohol. Cut a small slit into the back of the pepper, push the alligator clip into it, light the stem, and voila, nifty effect! Except it wasn’t. I got about one second of burn time, and only if the alcohol didn’t evaporate first.
Plan B: Which I thought was just shy of ingenious because I knew it would work until it didn’t. I took a long length of green thread, wrapped the stem with it, and then impregn…soaked that in the alcohol for a while. On with the gloves again. The thread lit up just fine, but the resulting flame was very small and short-lived. [In the 1960’s tome written by radical Abby Hoffman’s, “Steal This Book,” I seem to recall he provided instructions on how to use handy household products to get a really aggressive flame dependably and destructively going. Maybe another experiment for another time. Like never.] On to…
Plan C: Don the gloves. I used an X-Acto knife to cut a hole in the back of a pepper, directly behind the stem, and inserted a small, whittled down birthday candle. I reasoned (poorly) that eventually the stem would catch flame and I’d have the shot I was looking for. Nope. All I got was a very nice back-lit stem.
Plan D: On Jalapeño #4 I had to compromise a bit. I cut off most of the stem, drilled a hole through what remained, and stuck another slimmed down candle. It wasn’t exactly what I was trying for, but it worked in its own way. In editing, I used Lightroom to give the wick a greenish color to suggest it was actually part of the vegetable
Emergency Plan D Protocol (not needed): Find a kid on the block who has some sparklers left over from the 4th of July—almost every neighborhood has a kid or father who does—and use that in the place of a candle.
Is it hot in here, or is it me? : 18-55mm lens at 55mm; aperture priority; center weighted metering; 3-shoot exposure bracketing at .3 increments, ISO 1000; 1/10 sec. at f/9.5. I attached a ring light to my tripod, just below my camera, dimmed the output slightly. And only used on side of the LEDs. Another light was about shoulder level and set back from the copy stand on the left-hand side. I used a piece of foamcore on the right to serve as a nearly useless reflector. Post-processing was done in Lightroom 4 as well as in Nikon’s Color Efex Pro 4 software (the latter to do a bit more with the background). As mentioned, a tripod was used.
Kids, don’t try this anywhere, okay?
Sometimes I bring water and electricity into safe (read: reckless) proximity of each other in some of my photographs. This week it was open flame, isopropyl alcohol, candles, and thread. It really never occurred to me to have a wet towel or the small fire extinguisher on-hand in my nano-studio during this shoot. This is why I should probably hold off renting studio space with anyone. Anyway, here we go…
A neighbor happened to bring over several home-grown Jalapeños about the same time the theme was announced. “Boy howdy,” said I, rubbing my hands together (without the peppers between them) and decided to try and capture the inherent heat in one these bad boys. Now, from a capsaicin point of view, Jalapeños are relatively tame. It’s a 70-pound weakling other peppers kick sand on out at the beach. But you work with what you’ve got.
I hung from my copystand a funky-looking piece of cloth that had been stiffened with a stiffening agent called called…really, “Stiffy.” This was the backdrop through which I poked a small hole and threaded an alligator clip attached to a plastic-covered cable. I then stiffened (there’s that word again) the cable by winding it with duct tape so it would hold the pepper from behind and out of the view of the camera.
Plan A: Put on plastic gloves. Liberally impregnate—sorry, I’ve never had an occasion to insert this word into my writing and I wasn’t going to pass it up for something like “soak”—the stem with 70% isopropyl alcohol. Cut a small slit into the back of the pepper, push the alligator clip into it, light the stem, and voila, nifty effect! Except it wasn’t. I got about one second of burn time, and only if the alcohol didn’t evaporate first.
Plan B: Which I thought was just shy of ingenious because I knew it would work until it didn’t. I took a long length of green thread, wrapped the stem with it, and then impregn…soaked that in the alcohol for a while. On with the gloves again. The thread lit up just fine, but the resulting flame was very small and short-lived. [In the 1960’s tome written by radical Abby Hoffman’s, “Steal This Book,” I seem to recall he provided instructions on how to use handy household products to get a really aggressive flame dependably and destructively going. Maybe another experiment for another time. Like never.] On to…
Plan C: Don the gloves. I used an X-Acto knife to cut a hole in the back of a pepper, directly behind the stem, and inserted a small, whittled down birthday candle. I reasoned (poorly) that eventually the stem would catch flame and I’d have the shot I was looking for. Nope. All I got was a very nice back-lit stem.
Plan D: On Jalapeño #4 I had to compromise a bit. I cut off most of the stem, drilled a hole through what remained, and stuck another slimmed down candle. It wasn’t exactly what I was trying for, but it worked in its own way. In editing, I used Lightroom to give the wick a greenish color to suggest it was actually part of the vegetable
Emergency Plan D Protocol (not needed): Find a kid on the block who has some sparklers left over from the 4th of July—almost every neighborhood has a kid or father who does—and use that in the place of a candle.
Is it hot in here, or is it me? : 18-55mm lens at 55mm; aperture priority; center weighted metering; 3-shoot exposure bracketing at .3 increments, ISO 1000; 1/10 sec. at f/9.5. I attached a ring light to my tripod, just below my camera, dimmed the output slightly. And only used on side of the LEDs. Another light was about shoulder level and set back from the copy stand on the left-hand side. I used a piece of foamcore on the right to serve as a nearly useless reflector. Post-processing was done in Lightroom 4 as well as in Nikon’s Color Efex Pro 4 software (the latter to do a bit more with the background). As mentioned, a tripod was used.