1st week of February – weekly 2

This past week I had the opportunity to see the beginning of the lush blooming mustard in the vineyards of Sonoma.  But the images I chose to share with you are from an in house set-up.  The photography group I belong to in San Francisco had a theme night.  Members of Photochrome were challenged to create images that fit this category – “Food and kitchen Stuff.”

Some folks comb through their arsenal of images to find something that fits the theme and other shoot specifically for the assignment .I often don’t participate in these assignments because I rather be outside seeking patterns in nature, migratory birds and vast seascapes on my day off.  see www.photochrome.org

But this is my attempt at “Food and Kitchen Goods.”  Both shots are of Macaroni in the shape of hearts placed on a spoon strainer under running water.  What I had in mind was to show one image with the water streaks become a silky splash over the macaroni and other shot with water drops frozen as they splashed off the macaroni.

For the first shot I used indirect natural light coming in the kitchen window and a little over head tungsten light.  This accounts for the yellowish tint which was my intent.  The spoon of macaroni is over a stainless steel sink. That color background for this shoot just wasn’t working.  So I put some brown paper towels in the sink.  With my camera mounted on a tripod I used a 1.5 second shutter speed.  I like this method for water falls, like the image I shared the fist week of January.

I arranged the macaroni until I got a composition that I liked.  The lighting provided a warm feel to the image.

Then I turned my attention on capturing the image in such a way that some of the water drops would be frozen.  For this I added a flash.  I set the aperture and shutter speed as in the first shot in order to capture a little bit of water flow and then add fill flash to freeze some of the water drops splashing off the macaroni and spilling out of the faucet.

In the second shot I also wanted a “cool” feel to it so I removed the paper towels from the sink and let the stainless steel color take on a blue cast as seen just below the spoon and through it’s holes.  Also I added a little more depth of field so that the range of the water drops would be covered.  Shot at f/16 at 1.5 seconds.  You can still see the flowing water – more like a halo.  The flash catches some of the water drops and the open shutter speed continues to capture the stream.

Wouldn’t it be fun to photograph something every day?  I know I can’t get to it, so a couple times a week with some intentionality is a good compromise.