The Munchkin's Notebook

I like doing water drop photos for four reasons: 1) it looks deceptively simple, 2) the challenge in capturing the moment of impact, 3) the surprising images you can capture, and 4) the fact there is no right way to do it.  For my most recent attempt at water drop photography, I light the drop from below, so the light would come up through the water.  This is different compared to other water drop photos where they light from the side or from above.  I feel lighting the drops from below give them more of a liquid glass appearance and an inner glow. Surprisingly, the set up for these photos was relatively simple.  I used the following items:          large edged baking sheet (to catch any overflow),          a bowl (to protect the flash equipment),          a flash with radio trigger,          an upside down aquarium (water drop platform),     ...

Last week I went to the DC Cosplay Photoshoots meetup at the Kennedy Center .  There was no theme for this meetup, so cosplayers could dress as whatever character they wished, which is, both a good and bad thing for photographers. It is good because provides diverse characters, however it is bad because makes it harder to plan for since the characters could widely vary across genres thus affecting photographic style.  Thus, a general meet up is  slightly harder to prepare for, compared to a themed shoot where you know the types of  characters and the tone the shoot.  However, the general meet-up is good practice for a convention where you must be able to switch gears quickly to accommodate your shoot schedule, and be able to shoot on the fly to capture hall shots and do mini shoots. Cosplay: Fox McCloud Cosplayer: Dragon the Keyblade Maker There were several great cosplays at the general meetup, so I’m not going to discuss them all.  I will discu...

I have always liked Lolita fashion because it is cute and whimsical. For those that do not know, Lolita fashion is a subculture originating in Japan based on Victorian and Edwardian clothing. The Lolita look is one of modesty with a silhouette featuring knee length skirt or dress with either a "cupcake" or "A-line" shape assisted by petticoats, it can also include items such as blouses, knee high socks, or stockings, and headdresses, which are usually elaborate bows.  Within the Lolita culture there are several types of subcultures ranging from classic, sweet, and gothic; however, the photoshoots do not appear to have the same range of looks.  A typical Lolita shoot usually has a garden, tea party, or fairytale theme.  I wanted to do something different, so I did Lolita in a playground, to capture the fun and sweet side of the Lolita culture. I was happy to work on this shoot with the lovely cosplayer Nerdenheim Jen , who is a lovely and fun person to work wi...

I had a brilliant idea to use dinoflagellates (bioluminescent plankton) for water droplet photography. The dinoflagellates glow when stimulated (i.e. shaken, dropped, impact each other), so I figured they could be used for a unique water drop photo.   However, there was a problem, while I could see the glow of the dinoflagellates; the camera senor even when cranked up to ISO 6400 could not detect the glow at a useful shutter speed to freeze the water drop.   Usually when I do water drop photography, I am somewhere between ISO 100 – 400 with an aperture of F4 - F8 and shutter speed of 1/250 or faster. When using the dinoflagellates I was at ISO 1000 – 3200, with an aperture of F2.8 and a shutter speed of 5 seconds or slower just capture the light the dinoflagellates produced.  Thus, I could not freeze any drops, and the resulting pictures look more like blurry atomic partial traces or abstract art.  Below are a few of the better images after they were edit...

Two weeks ago, I participated in the DC Cosplay Photo Shoots Group meet up at Pierce Mill Park in DC.  The theme for this cosplay meet up was horror; however, the meet up was in the middle of the day on a bright sunshiny day.  Even though the sky was not conducive to getting those dark, creepy shots; however, the cosplayers were great and I made the location work for me to get the shots. For this shoot, I was using a Cannon 70D with an 18-200 mm lens, and a 430EX II speedlight mounted on a painters poll triggered with a Young Nu radio trigger.  (Thank you to my husband who acted as my voice activated light stand) I did not use an umbrella, because I wanted hard, harsh light to get that creepy horror look.  Because it was such a bright day,  was using ISO 100,  and stopped down my aperture to F10, used varied my shutter speed based on the amount of light, and had my flash in high-speed sync mode.  I did vary my flash power, but was mostly ran it a...

View of the Golden Gate Bridge from parking area (Cell Phone) Today was our last day in California, we fly home tomorrow.  We left Visalia around 7:30 AM and got to our hotel outside the San Francisco Airport around 11:00 AM, where our room was ready for us to check into.  After we checked into the hotel we drove down the road to In-N-Out Burger for lunch, then headed into San Francisco for stops at Pier 39 and the Golden Gate Bridge.   We stopped at Pier 39 first, so I could see the seals and Jim could get a view of Alcatraz.  Pier 39 has turned very touristy compared to the last time I was there, which was about 10 years ago. We thought about taking a tour of Alcatraz, however, all the National Park Tours were booked. Yes, Alcatraz is now part of the National Park System.  After seeing the seals, we went to the aquarium, where I got a 50-percent discount on admission for being a National Zoo member. Which was a good thing since the aquarium is rath...

Today we got up around 6:30AM and were on the road to Sequoia NP by 8:00 AM.  The plan was to drive through Tunnel Log, see Moro Rock, and hike in Giant Forest along the Congress Trail, then drive up Generals Highway to Kings Canyon and do some hiking there.  It was a good plan till the weather, made other plans for us.   (See Map) Jim In Front of the Colonel Young Tree (Cell Phone) The drive into Sequoia NP from the Ash Mountain/Foothills entrance was good, we made decent time to the turn off for Tunnel Log and Moro Rock.  We stopped at the Auto Log, which is a fallen tree with a cut out that cars used to park on, to give people an ideal of how massive the trees are. They no longer allow people to park or drive on the log.  We also took a short walk from the Auto Log parking area to see the Colonel Young Tree.  I really want to know why some trees get names and others don’t, what merits a name?  After our short detour to the Auto Log we contin...