Jelly shots for the New Year

WHAT

A shot of the inside of my fridge which, at the moment, is home to dozens of vodka jelly shots in preparation for my New Year's Eve party.

The green ones are lime, the blue are 'berry blue' flavour (they taste a bit like 'Demazin' cold medicine) and the red ones are raspberry flavour. I also have another tray of 'creaming soda' flavoured shots on another shelf.

The recipe for making these shots is at the bottom of this post

WHY

I took this photo mainly to document the jelly shots as part of my NYE party. I've never made jelly shots before and was quite pleased with the results - let's hope the party guests like them too!

I also liked how the light from inside the fridge lit the shots and made some of them appear to glow. Plus, it's not everyday that the inside of the fridge becomes a worthy photographic subject :)

HOW

I hand-held my camera as close to the tray of jelly shots as I could (but still allowing proper focus to be made) so as to avoid other fridge items creeping into the scene as much as possible.

Because it was relatively dark in the fridge and I wanted a fairly shallow depth of field, I opened up the aperture to f/4. This wider aperture allowed more light in to the camera's sensor which meant I could increase the shutter speed (1/13s) to get the hand-held shot without the need for a tripod.

I focused on the centre row of jelly shots (third row from the front).

POST-PRODUCTION

In photoshop, I increased the clarity, black point and vibrance to really make the jelly colours stand out. These alterations also made the rim of the plastic shot glasses brighter and highlighted the white 'reflection' on the tops of the four blue shots at the front.

I also cropped the shot to remove the milk bottle and other assorted fridge items that had snuck in at the sides.

Recipe:

I used 'Aeoroplane' jelly crystals

Place jelly crystals in a bowl.

Pour 1 cup of boiling water over crystals and stir very well to dissolve.

Add 150ml vodka

Add 50ml cold water

Stir again

Pour mixture into shot glasses

Refrigerate for approximately 4 hours.

NB. If you add too much vodka, the shots will not set properly. Also, to remove the shot from the glass, you may need to run a cake tester or teaspoon around the sides of the glass. Alternatively, you can place a small amount of oil inside the shot glass before making the jelly - I haven't tried this but I've read about other people who did this. I didn't know if the oil would affect the taste or not.

Some Christmas cheer

WHAT

This shot was taken on Christmas day at my mum's house where my family had Christmas dinner together. It depicts some of the table settings and decorations my mum had laid out.

I took a bunch of photos that day of the family and other objects in the room but I felt this one turned out the best.

WHY

I've mentioned in a previous blog post: http://kylietphotography.blogspot.com/2010/12/race-day.html the importance of capturing the little things that really MAKE a special day what it is- things such as table decorations, food, table settings and the little touches people have added. Hence why I opted to take this photo.

There were other table settings available to use for this shot, but because this one was on a corner it meant I could easily move around the table till I found an angle I was happy with. I also liked how the golden bon bons in the background were arranged at right angles to each other from this position.

As it turned out, I ended up sitting at this very table setting later on for our big meal!

HOW

Because I was indoors and there was very little ambient light coming in from the windows (it was a miserable rainy day outside), I used a tripod for this shot. Using a tripod was another reason I selected this particular place setting to shoot- it meant I could actually fit the tripod in without having to move too much furniture. A tripod also ensured I could keep the ISO down low (200) to avoid a grainy shot.

I shot in manual mode and adjusted the shutter speed until it was at an apprpriate speed as determined by the camera's light metre. This turned out to be 1/5s.

I used a short aperture of f/5 to make the items beyond my main subject blurry to really focus on santa - otherwise I risked losing him amongst all the other stuff on the table. Plus I like the blurry background effect.

POST-PRODUCTION

In photoshop I increased the clarity, adjusted the black levels, and increased the highlights.

Why it's important to continually check camera settings

A few days ago I went to the Springbrook National Park which is a beautiful rainforest filled with wildlife and waterfalls located in the hinterland of the Gold Coast, Queensland, Australia.

As I was taking photo after photo of what I hoped would be great waterfall shots, I happened to glance at the ISO setting and saw that it was set to 1600 – far and above my intended setting of ISO 200! I had no idea for how long it had been set to 1600 or how many of my shots were now going to appear slightly grainy due to the high ISO.

I definitely didn’t deliberately set the camera to ISO 1600. I’m assuming it happened with an accidental press of the ISO button prior to winding one of the dials with the intent of adjusting the shutter speed or aperture. Therefore, while I thought I was changing one thing, I was actually cranking up the ISO. Curses!

Incidents like the one above have reminded me how important it is to check and re-check the camera settings throughout the day/session.


Here’s a list of the things I’ll be checking and re-checking from now on:

•The mode I’m shooting in – is it manual, aperture priority or shutter priority? This of course depends on what is important in each shot – depth of field or capturing motion (frozen vs fluid). I’m often switching between modes during my photography outings depending on the subject I’m shooting so it’s good to always be aware of what the camera is set to each time.

•ISO setting. To prevent a repeat of the above!

•Cleanliness of the lens. At another waterfall photography outing, I was shooting from inside a dark cavern/cave and failed to notice the misty spray accumulating on my lens during some long exposures. This resulted in many of the shots from that day being utterly useless.

•Aperture. As stated above- if I’ve decided that depth of field is important, I have to decide HOW MUCH depth I want. It’s much easier to blur the background (by increasing the size of the aperture) at the time of taking the photo than to do so in post-production. Similarly, if I want all of that lovely landscape shot to be in focus, it pays to check I have selected the correct aperture.

•Exposure level (ie shutter speed). If I’m capturing the motion of a scene such as a waterfall or a bunch of passing cyclists, I have to decide if I want it sharp (fast shutter) or blurry (slow shutter). The available light usually also plays a part in what shutter speed is used.

Attempt to capture lightning

WHAT

This is a series of lightning strikes from a recent thunderstorm taken from the safety of my carport. I'm not saying this photograph is spectacular example by any means, but it was my first attempt at capturing lightning with a camera.

WHY

If I had a 'bucket list' describing all the photographs I someday want to take, a lightning strike would definitely be on that list. I had always assumed lightning would be a difficult subject to capture and have always admired photographs of storms and mad weather. Therefore, when I heard the thunder rolling around my house last night, I ducked outside and saw a chance to capture some of the light show.

HOW

I set up my tripod at the edge of my carport with the camera facing the general direction I had seen the lightning coming from. I was careful to ensure that if it started to rain the lens would still have sufficient cover from the roof of the carport.

I then set my camera to 'Manual' mode and spun the dial through all the various shutter speeds until it displayed 'BULB'.

(The bulb setting basically means you have total control over how long the shutter remains open. The longest shutter speed available on my camera is 30 seconds which isn't very long when you're trying to capture the smallest flicker of light in a pitch black sky).

I used an aperture of f/22 and a remote cable release to prevent me having to hold down the shutter release during the entire exposure.

Initially I had the camera pointed directly at the sky where the storm was occurring, however the camera wasn't able to focus on anything because it was so black. I tried switching to manual focus mode to save the camera trying to focus lock onto something that wasn't there but because it was so dark through the viewfinder, I found I wasn't really sure I was going to be focused correctly should any lightning grace me with its presence.

To counter the focus problem, I switched back to auto-focus and then tilted my camera down so that some trees across the road from my house were now in the lower part of the frame, giving the camera a target to focus on.

I then pressed the button and waited for a bunch of lightning to come. This image was a 43 second exposure - don't ask me why 43 seconds, it just seemed long enough as I had seen a few 'episodes' of lightning during that time in the general area my camera was pointing at.

Because this shot was taken in suburbia and there was some ambient street light, I didn't want to overexpose the image by leaving the shutter open for too long. Most of the shots I took that night were exposed for about 1 minute.

POST PRODUCTION

In photoshop, I opened the image as a RAW file and increased the following:

contrast, fill light, clarity and increased the 'lights/highlights' to make the lightning itself stand out more.

Dog tired

WHAT

This is my dog, Nelson, having a lie down in his kennel. He's a 7 year old labradoodle and the first dog I've ever owned.

WHY

Why else do people take photos of their pets? Because they love them and want to capture their personality and antics. Plus, I'd recently been asked to photograph the pets of some friends and I wasn't 100% happy with the results, so I thought I'd practice.

HOW

Before venturing anywhere near Nelson, I had the camera already set to what I'd anticipated would work for the outside lighting conditions. This was on manual mode, aperture of 8 and a shutter speed of 1/13s (gauged from using the camera's light meter). This ensured that should he decide to suddenly move and ruin the cute pose, at least I'd have a fleeting chance of getting 1 or 2 quick shots in.

This shot was taken from just outside the back door to our house which is where Nelson's kennel is located. I had to move very slowly out the door with the camera in order to capture him lying down like this because usually as soon as I even look like going outside, Nelson comes flying out of his kennel excited and thinking he's going to get walked, fed or patted (or all three).

I focused on his eyes and got down very low so that I was at his level. I also used the side and floor of his kennel to frame the image.

I used aperture f/8 because this usually produces a good focal length and ensures most things are sharp and in focus. I've encounted problems previously using larger apertures (eg. f/6 and below) when photographing friend's pets with long noses - when you focus on the eyes at these larger apertures, the nose and mouth become soft/blurred and can ruin the shot as you're often trying to capture a dog's smiling mouth at the same sharpness as his eyes.

In the image above, Nelson's nose isn't 100% sharp, however I wasn't worried about that in this instance.

Because it was a very dull/rainy day, there wasn't much light available to produce a fast enough shutter speed for my liking. Therefore I increased the ISO to 320.

POST PRODUCTION

The image was firstly converted to greyscale in photoshop. I then made slight adjustments to the contrast, black point and clarity of the image.

Race Day

WHAT
Table decorations, wine glass, sweepstakes ticket and a betting receipt on a table at a Melbourne Cup luncheon. The 'Melbourne Cup' is perhaps Australia's best known horse race and is billed as 'The race that stops the nation.' The race is held annually on the first Tuesday of November and is widely celebrated at racecourses, pubs, clubs, schools and workplaces around the nation.

WHY
I took my camera along to this luncheon intending to get some action shots of the crowd as they watched the race being broadcast on the big screen. However, because we were indoors in a dimly lit location, the photos I'd taken of the people were quite dark, even with the ISO cranked up and shutter speed slowed down.

Therefore in order to remember this day, I tried a different tactic:
I've always liked photographs taken at table height of glasswhere, confetti, cutlery etc so I constructed my own scene to commemorate my Melbourne Cup lunch. In my opinion, when people attend family celebrations such as birthdays, weddings (or a luncheon such as this) they forget to take photos of the details. By that I mean the little things that make the day what it is.

As if to demonstrate my point, I remember hearing my sister-in-law commenting as I was taking this shot "I wouldn't even think to take a photo of that!"

HOW
I selected a few items that, to me, are intrinsically 'Melbourne Cup' - a betting slip, a wine glass, and a sweepstakes ticket. I played around with the positioning of these items until I was happy with the composition of the scene. The miniature 'confetti horses' were a nice touch placed on each table by the establishment hosting the lunch. .

Due to the low lighting, I increased the ISO to 800 in order to provide a bright enough image. In manual mode, I used f/6.3 and shutter speed 1/5s.

POST PRODUCTION
In photoshop, I increased the clarity and vibrance slightly.

Sunrise at the beach

WHAT

Sunrise at the public swimming pool at King's Beach, Caloundra. Caloundra is a beautiful sea-side town situated on the Sunshine Coast, Queensland and is about 1 hour north of Brisbane.

WHY

King's Beach has been a favourite holiday destination of my family's for over 20 years. I love going up there at this time of the year (or any time of year for that matter) and was on a recent 'weekend getaway' with my husband. I realised that in all my trips to this beautiful location, I'd never once seen the sun rise there. Of course, I had to make ammends by capturing it with my camera!

Prior to the sun rising on this day, I'd been at the other end of King's Beach attempting to get a nice sea-scape shot of the water flowing over the rocks at low-tide. This proved fairly unsuccessful due to the large amount of cloud around at the time.

After the sun had risen, I wandered up the beach to the location seen in the image above and loved the way the umbrellas were silhouetted in the sunlight. I then spotted the boat on the horizon.

HOW

I positioned myself so that the shade structure on the left would block out the intense, glaring white ball that was the sun and then waited for the boat to sail along until it was between 2 of the umbrellas.

I think I used a tripod for this one as I had intended to make an HDR image using 3 different exposure values and therefore needed the 3 shots to be identical. However, I decided that the HDR version of this shot didn't look very good so I opted for this exposure (the '0' EV) instead.

I used the aperture priority setting, set to f/16 with a shutter speed of 1/160s.

POST PRODUCTION

I used photoshop to shift the tint of this shot slightly towards the purple end of the spectrum to give the sky a nice colour.