Wireless Flashing Experiment

I have got a new wireless flash device in this summer, which is Phottix Strato II. I love some product photograph with a pure white background, so I tried to take some pictures like that with my little gundam model using my flash device.

I have already had a very cheap wireless trigger made by Yongnuo, which is super unstable, It sometime works, sometime does not, so annoying. Choosing Phottix Strato II was because it work is fine and is much cheaper than the wireless trigger made by Canon. Although I have not had another receiver to play the multiple group flash, after I used for a night, I think it is so much batter than the cheap Yongnuo device.

I do not have a big white fabric, so I use my circle reflector as the background and my gundam models were put on it. A flashgun was put under the reflector. I was also holding another little flashgun which can be triggered by other flash to light the models' front.

After taking a lot of pictures, I finally got one that I am happy with. Most of the fails were over exposure or the background not white enough. The one at below is just right. The background is what I wanted. The shadow of the model highlights the shape of the structure. And the reflection from the eye brings the spirit to the gundam model.

Landscape in New Zealand

I went to New Zealand in the last summer with my dad to visit my cousin, Andy and his family. I was quite looking forward to be there to experience New Zealanders' living style or the difference between them and English in the UK. However, I was a bit disappointed to see lots of Chinese in the capital, Auckland where I lived in New Zealand. That made me completely out of motivation to take pictures.

However, in the trip to South Island of New Zealand, my motivation of taking pictures was back. I smiled the fresh air and it is totally different to the air on North Island. South Island seems a place where has not been polluted yet and I really love this place.

Dunedin Railway Station
A panoramic shot taken on Canon 5D Mark II and Composed on Photoshop

Goat Island, ND filer fail

When I received my ND filter, I thought it was a powerful equipment to block the sunlight to help me to get a flowing water effect in images. I used the filter in the trip to Goat Island, where is a lovely seaside. During I tried to capture the flowing water on the beach, I found out that the filter did not help me to stop down the shutter speed so much and also gave me a cross right in the middle of the image. After I got home, I searched for information about ND filters. I realised that the cross always appears when you try to use the filter on a ultra wide lens a

nd take the fade too far. And also, my ND filter can only take 8 stop operating range, so it does not help me to get a very slow shutter speed without over exposure under the sunlight.

Moeraki Boulder

The shot of Moeraki Boulder is my favourite photo from the whole trip and It was probably my first success using the ND filter. Since I found the interest of this traditional photographic technique of long exposure, I started to look for "water" in the trip.

iPhone Wedding

People can record 720HD videos with an iPhone4 or even 1080 full HD videos with the latest iPhone4s. With such high technology of recording, iPhone becomes the camera the most people use in the world is reasonable. However, have you seen a pro photographer using iPhone to record a wedding? Here is the one.

In this video from Channel Ten, we can see the quality of those footage is decent, might be excellent for most people, at least more than enough to watch on Youtube. This is a very attractive point for those people who have not got iPhones.

Nevertheless, we should not miss the point, that in video making, the recording device is only a small part. We also need the steadicam, tripod, computers for editing, all these things including the photographer's technique of cinematography and editing come together, than to make a good quality video.

Sometimes, I think many people own pro DSLRs now, will this make those wedding photographers less job opportunities? Maybe a little bit but it is because people getting easier to enter this career, not because the newly-wed only ask their friends of families to photograph for them. Photographers' technique are wroth to pay.

Moving Photographs?

"New York City-based fashion photographer Jamie Beck, in collaboration with Kevin Burg, a web designer with a background in video and motion graphics, has created a series of gorgeous animated GIFs she calls “cinemagraphs".

See Amusing Planet: Jamie Beck’s Animated GIF Photography, Jamie Beck's website

I had never thought about combining photographs to make a Gifs files like them. I am just so impressive to see those surrealistic "images". Gotta give it a try!