67. Green - September 21-27, 2014
Jerry-
What fun to see all your "green" photos! It looks like everyone enjoyed the process as evidenced by the results. What made me think "green" was a little green squirt gun that was sitting next to my pc (ready at a moment's notice to protect me from whomever) when my turn for a subject came up. I tried a couple of poses with it but they just didn't do much for me. So I tried working with a dollar bill and an old penny. I screwed on a +4 close up lens to my trusty 16-85 zoom and took the attached photo. Light came from a SB700 flash in the bounce mode. Some angles really lit up the penny and some kind of diminished it. One of Paul's photos from several weeks back (magnifying glass and backside of a dollar) intrigued me and thats the reason for the new world order pyramid being featured. Close up lenses on a zoom lens leave something to be desired, yesterday I was photographing leaves at a local park with an old Nikon 55mm micro lens - those were really sharp and I probably should have used it for my dollar/penny photo.
D5200, 16-85mm zoomed to 85mm, +4 close up lens, SB700 flash. 1/200 @ f22, iso 800.
What fun to see all your "green" photos! It looks like everyone enjoyed the process as evidenced by the results. What made me think "green" was a little green squirt gun that was sitting next to my pc (ready at a moment's notice to protect me from whomever) when my turn for a subject came up. I tried a couple of poses with it but they just didn't do much for me. So I tried working with a dollar bill and an old penny. I screwed on a +4 close up lens to my trusty 16-85 zoom and took the attached photo. Light came from a SB700 flash in the bounce mode. Some angles really lit up the penny and some kind of diminished it. One of Paul's photos from several weeks back (magnifying glass and backside of a dollar) intrigued me and thats the reason for the new world order pyramid being featured. Close up lenses on a zoom lens leave something to be desired, yesterday I was photographing leaves at a local park with an old Nikon 55mm micro lens - those were really sharp and I probably should have used it for my dollar/penny photo.
D5200, 16-85mm zoomed to 85mm, +4 close up lens, SB700 flash. 1/200 @ f22, iso 800.
Kevin-
When the “Green” theme for the WPOTM was announced people asked it I would shoot photos of grass or lawns. “No" I replied. What about trees or leaves people asked, "No way" I said. Perhaps the duckweed covered pond behind our house? “Don’t be silly” left my mouth. Oh, they thought, you want to photograph giant stacks of money! I simply shook my head.
I already knew what I wanted to shoot. Pencils, all in various shades of green. Pencils?
Mostly it was a good excuse to practice producing a product-type shot with my Nikon flash units. Nikon D4s, tripod mounted, 105mm f/2.8 Micro-Nikkor (macro) lens. ISO 1000. Flash sync speed of 1/250th of a second. Aperture was f/32. One flash unit in a small softbox on the left providing front light. A direct flash unit behind on the left providing a little bit of rim light.
I should note that photography is really the only artistic talent that I really have. Seriously. I can’t sculpt, paint, play music, sing, dance. I can’t even draw good stick figures, which makes these many shades of green artist pencils pretty useless now that the photo is done. But I can press a shutter button and make an exposure! Click.
When the “Green” theme for the WPOTM was announced people asked it I would shoot photos of grass or lawns. “No" I replied. What about trees or leaves people asked, "No way" I said. Perhaps the duckweed covered pond behind our house? “Don’t be silly” left my mouth. Oh, they thought, you want to photograph giant stacks of money! I simply shook my head.
I already knew what I wanted to shoot. Pencils, all in various shades of green. Pencils?
Mostly it was a good excuse to practice producing a product-type shot with my Nikon flash units. Nikon D4s, tripod mounted, 105mm f/2.8 Micro-Nikkor (macro) lens. ISO 1000. Flash sync speed of 1/250th of a second. Aperture was f/32. One flash unit in a small softbox on the left providing front light. A direct flash unit behind on the left providing a little bit of rim light.
I should note that photography is really the only artistic talent that I really have. Seriously. I can’t sculpt, paint, play music, sing, dance. I can’t even draw good stick figures, which makes these many shades of green artist pencils pretty useless now that the photo is done. But I can press a shutter button and make an exposure! Click.
Byron-
You wouldn't believe how many bags of M&M's I had to buy to get this many green ones. That's actually not true. I planned to use regular M&M's and when I got to the store I saw the bags of mint M&M's. They are all green. Some light some dark. When I got home I spread the M&M's on a tray and photographed them. I saved that image to a usb thumbdrive and plugged it in to my TV. That became the background. I then placed the dispenser in the middle of the M&M's and positioned it in front of the TV. I used my softbox on the right and my homemade reflector on the left.
ISO 200, f6.3, 1 second
You wouldn't believe how many bags of M&M's I had to buy to get this many green ones. That's actually not true. I planned to use regular M&M's and when I got to the store I saw the bags of mint M&M's. They are all green. Some light some dark. When I got home I spread the M&M's on a tray and photographed them. I saved that image to a usb thumbdrive and plugged it in to my TV. That became the background. I then placed the dispenser in the middle of the M&M's and positioned it in front of the TV. I used my softbox on the right and my homemade reflector on the left.
ISO 200, f6.3, 1 second
Deron-
*See Week 21 (Bright) for description.
Shot by laying my "green" lightbulb on the screen of my iPad, while running the Softbox app, set to green. No flash. Opened the shutter a little bit.
*See Week 21 (Bright) for description.
Shot by laying my "green" lightbulb on the screen of my iPad, while running the Softbox app, set to green. No flash. Opened the shutter a little bit.
Paul-
This was pretty much the second idea popped into my mind when I heard the theme was “Green.” Yeah, it would have been fun to take a lush outdoor shot—no, I didn’t want to take a shot of a lush staggering around outdoors—but decided on a different take. The great thing about fabric shops is that the bolts are arranged by color and patterns. The fat quarters (look it up) are, too. I was fortunate in that this store near my house had a few shelves with green fabrics of different hues and textures. I opted for this one. The woman behind the desk said I could full out as many bolts as I wanted and arrange them, but I liked them just like this…as if you were scanning an unusual bookshelf for a color that piqued your interest. I also tried a series of shots (pointing up from the floor) of a long vertical display of spools of green thread, but I couldn’t nail the depth of field and/or exposure to get the image I wanted.
Our story so far…
As Maestro Hans Frieberg deftly whipped his musicians into an impassioned and frenetic interpretation of the allegro molto vivace movement of Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 6 in B minor—one that a music critic of the Minneapolis Star Tribune would later call “positively stunning in its execution, visceral punch, and technical virtuosity”—the conductor could not help but think how much he would rather turn, jump down into the audience, and plunge his baton into the chest of the rube from Nebraska who had the audacity to be taking flash pictures (with an Olympus E-500 and a 14-45mm zoom lens shot at 18mm; 1/100 sec. at f5; and ISO 1250).
This was pretty much the second idea popped into my mind when I heard the theme was “Green.” Yeah, it would have been fun to take a lush outdoor shot—no, I didn’t want to take a shot of a lush staggering around outdoors—but decided on a different take. The great thing about fabric shops is that the bolts are arranged by color and patterns. The fat quarters (look it up) are, too. I was fortunate in that this store near my house had a few shelves with green fabrics of different hues and textures. I opted for this one. The woman behind the desk said I could full out as many bolts as I wanted and arrange them, but I liked them just like this…as if you were scanning an unusual bookshelf for a color that piqued your interest. I also tried a series of shots (pointing up from the floor) of a long vertical display of spools of green thread, but I couldn’t nail the depth of field and/or exposure to get the image I wanted.
Our story so far…
As Maestro Hans Frieberg deftly whipped his musicians into an impassioned and frenetic interpretation of the allegro molto vivace movement of Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 6 in B minor—one that a music critic of the Minneapolis Star Tribune would later call “positively stunning in its execution, visceral punch, and technical virtuosity”—the conductor could not help but think how much he would rather turn, jump down into the audience, and plunge his baton into the chest of the rube from Nebraska who had the audacity to be taking flash pictures (with an Olympus E-500 and a 14-45mm zoom lens shot at 18mm; 1/100 sec. at f5; and ISO 1250).