H A S H W I N Photography

Some pictures from the  Solai Andavar Temple situated near the village of Pallathur in Chettinad.

The first image is a panaroma of one section of the clay horses in the temple. It was manually stitched in Photoshop  from 6 or 7 images.

In this post i will add some collages from the photos taken at the “Mudras” program.

Click on the image for a larger version.

Here are some pictures taken at Mudras – Essence of Music Composers through Dance by Janani Narayanan & Srividhya Srinivasan.

I had half an hour to kill while i was in San Jose and glad i anticipated that. I had my camera with me.  Walked around the block between S.Almaden Ave, Post St, S. San Pedro St and W San Fernando St. Here are some shots from the short and quick photo walk.

parking meter

color coded pavements

parking meter

exit only - greyhound bus station

red wall

Last weekend it was another  outdoor portrait session with my usual adorable models.  Location: backyard.  The timing was also perfect, an hour before sunset. This gives the opportunity to use the flash while there is still enough light to shoot without one at a wide aperture (around f/2.8) . Well, you could do it during a bright midday too, at lower apertures, if the strobes are powerful enough. A couple of 600Ws novatrons could do the job i guess, but haven’t tried it.  For the evening, just 1 strobe was all i needed. (and one reflector for some shots)

Here’s how to set the exposure for the shot.

1. Set your camera to Av mode (aperture priority) and take a sample shot.  (f/2.8 – 3.5 gives a good bokeh).
2. Now dial down the exp by 1, 1.5 or 2 stops depending on how dark you like the background.
3. You can do step 2 by either going to manual (M mode)  and reducing the shutter speed or by staying in Av mode and using the exposure compensation dial.
4. Now, its time to adjust the flash settings. This may require a few trial and error shots unless you use a light meter. Once you are happy with the light on the subject, just shoot on..
5. You can also use a reflector to fill in. (For a reflector, the silver shades used for car dashboards work just as well as professional ones !)

Here are some sample images from yesterday.

The next shot is the same one as above, but i changed the grass color.

a few in monochrome,

This last shot, the exposure for the background was dialed down further…

here is a ’setup shot’

Here are some pictures from “Sri Vigneshware Vaibhavam”, a traditional kuchipudi dance drama directed by Smt. Himabindu Challa of Nrityananda School of Kuchipudi dance.  This event took place at the Smith Center, Ohlone college at Fremont, CA.

Again, the colors were amazing !

Here are some photos from the bharathanatyam arangetram of Priya Sohoni. The arangetram took place at the Cubberly theatre at Palo Alto.  In this post i’ve compiled some of the shots that are ’symmetrical’ or ’sequential’. This link (will post soon)  has some more photos from the beautiful event.

Photographing glass objects is pretty interesting. A major difference is you don’t have to focus the lights on the objects,  but at the background (this is with no liquids in the glass). Of course that is not a hard and fast rule. Like with any lighting setups, you can play with the positions, angles and intensities of the light to get different effects. All of these shots are right out of the camera with just a little bit of contrast processing.

The following were used for this setup:

• 2 flashes
• color gels
• black background
• white base
• cybersync remote trigger (can also use a wired remote…)

Here are some of the shots and their corresponding setup shots:

wine glass with blue and red gels

This is the setup for the above shot:

wine glass shot setup

The flash on the left has a red gel and the one on the right has a blue gel. The cybersync trigger is connected to the left flash and the right side flash is an optical slave.

A couple of  shots using the above setup but without the gels and the glass at the rear:

wine glass with white background

wine glass with white background

some more…

wine glass (blue gel in front of glass and red gel on background)

wine glass

and the setup for the above shots…

wine glass setup shot

the setup shot from another angle.

wine glass setup - from a different angle

more shots to follow…

here is one with water in the glass.

wine glass with water

Here are some pictures on how the photek softlighter looks mounted on a light stand with a hot shoe flash. There were some limitations because of the umbrella mount clamp.  I wasn’t able to align the flash head to lie parallel to the umbrella stem because of the orientation of one of the screws on the umbrella mount clamp.

flash head inside the photek softlighter

The image above shows the screw on the clamp that prevents the clamp from being tilted further.

flash head inside the photek softlighter

the softlighter mounted on a light stand and flash connected to the alienbees cybersync receiver

softlighter with the umbrella stem

One big plus is the ability to remove the umbrella stem. This allows for the light to be placed very close to the subject.

the softlighter with the umbrella stem removed

the complete setup

and finally here is the catchlight. the softlighter about 45 degrees camera right…

photek softlighter catchlight

btw, this umbrella has silver and gold reflectors that can be placed in the umbrella. dont have those pics yet.

This was something i did about 3-4 yrs back. Water drops on dvds and cd surfaces produced interesting patterns. What makes them more interesting is the different colors you get just by moving the camera a little to the right or left. The angle at which you view the drops dramatically changes the colors on them. and more so if you use a second dvd/cd to reflect some light on it.

The patters get more interesting when you crop the images further.  i spent quite a bit of time with the crop tool on these set of images!

Here is the setup shot. (canon 20 and canon 100mm f/2.8 macro lens mounted on a tripod and triggered either using a cable release or set on self timer).

Shot Setup diagram

and here are some shots from this setup:

UFOs

silkworm

trapped

disgusted

marching towards the prey

isolated - h1n1 ?

peacock feathers

In the ‘peacock feathers’ shot,  you can see the reflections of the second DVD that actually gives the peacock feather look.