Here is my last idea in completing this series
Having myself standing by the door and have the light shine through the screen door.
I am going to create my own light using my speedlight
Author Archives: Saritkhun's Journeys
Common theme / Collection: Update 01
I’ve been working on some various alternative ideas about my tiny world and came up with the idea that this series should be narrative in some way. The idea was originally from when I looked at my photographs and some of them seem to connect to each other in some way. So I think why not give them a little story to them. I will upload my thoughts soon.
Here are some of my experiments of compositions, hence these are not my final selections yet:
Artist Research – Steve McCurry
Here is another inspired person of mine, which is Steve McCurry who is a photojournalist and photographer for national geographic magazine.
This series contains photographs that he took while he was traveling around the world including India, Afghanistan, Tibet, Ethiopia, Brazil, Burma, Cambodia and Thailand.
I find that this series is very interesting and it is what I personally want to do in the future, where I travel around the world and capture moments in different locations, meet new people and learn about other cultures.
The composition, colours as well as the subjects in his photographs looked extremely stunning to me. They look natural and realistic. India is the place that I wanted to go the most at the moment. It is going to be amazing if I get a chance to travel there one day.
Me: More stuff about speedlight
Here is the thing that I’ve been misunderstood for the whole time like GN or Guide Number on flash units (since I started picking up the first camera and speedlight). I was thinking that flash output value is using the same number as the guide number, but I was completely wrong as they’re not, but they’re related to each other though.
Also, as I’ve been wondering that it has gotto ba a way in getting a perfect flash exposure at the first time that you shoot without using a light metre. Perhaps this is my solution to get into all these, but it involves some calculations that I have to do manually and probably would get the results I was looking for eventually. But actually by making a few test shots would have been faster way to acheive the shots that I wanted like people to these days.
Lastly, I think these articles kind of answered my other questions, where it was about the zooming in the flash unit. I’ve been doubting for ages that when and why would you need to zoom the strobes. From these articles that I mentioned was telling me how to read the GN chart like the old fashion of estimating the flash exposures. My early understanding of zooming flash was it’s there for just to control the wideness and narrowness of the beam only. In fact, that wasn’t incorrect, but it was just one function of zooming ability. So zooming the flash unit is pretty much giving you more GN. The more GN, the longer distance you can fire the flash from to the subject at desired strength without losing the quality of the light.
Here was my attempt from calculating the flash output:
My camera settings were;
Aperture: f4, Shutter speed: 1/125th, ISO: 400, Distance: 1 metre (roughly)
Formula 1 -> GN(iso100) = (distance x f-number)
So, GN = 1 x 4 = 4 @ iso 100
Since ISO = 400,
then ISO factor = 2 (from the chart in the second article)
Formula 2 -> GN(iso400) = GN(iso100) x ISO factor
So, GN = 4 x 2 = 8 @ iso 400
I fixed my zoom flash @ 35mm as I did not think that I need a full power to shoot in the garage.
So I went on the GN chart of SB900 (found on the user manual page F-19) and came up with the nearest number of 1/16 flash exposure, with GN of 8.5, which is fairly close to 8.
This shot made by placing a SB900 flash with 45 degree grid on, positioned it off camera about 1 metre away from the subject and applied the settings calculated above to the camera and flash unit.
Equipment used: Fujifilm X100S, 2x SB900s
Here is the shot straight out of the camera, hence unedited:
and this is after edited:
Lastly, here is the shot that I did last week of myself, using testing shots method, where I had to start somewhere and adjust the power until I got the results that I wanted, hence unedited:
Me: Struggling with White Balance
Solution to my confusion about the White Balance
I always have the problem about the colour correction, which I don’t quite understand where and when to stop correcting it. This article seems to help me find the starting point of my white balance, which may or may not be applied to my future images, but it is the best way to start when thinking about the WB, hence using a white balance card.
Common theme / Collection Idea #4
I was thinking in making my own tiny world for some reason. My childhood just came up to my head. So for this series I want every image to look playful. The concept is to shrink or resize myself or possibly a model into a mini world of my imagination. The environment is going to be household, enlarging somewhere in my own house to make another environment.
I am going to need macro shots for the environment for the best results.
Here are some of my illustration of the possibilities;
This scenario is the model using their sunnies as a mirror looking at himself.
This one is going to be using a needle and some length of thread and having a model to hang down from the thread. Where the needle should attach on something like a pillow.
This environment is simply the key slot on the door and having a model standing in it.
This scene should be in the bathroom, where the soap shelf is. This idea came up when i was taking shower and i had a glance on this soap holder with some random water drops on it, which i really like.
This shot should be made using shoes as some kind of holes, where it has a subject emerge half way up in one side of the shoes.
This idea is using the towel to make it look like grass and have someone running on it.
A little guy lights up a match.
Since I found an old television in my shed a few days ago and I wanted to make a use of it. I personally like the old vintage stuff anyway. So This shot should have a model walking on the edge of the screen.
This one i want to be more playful to the shot so I want to hide some part of the model and the environment should be an electrical socket from some appliance.
Panorama / Combination Final Products
My first final image is ‘Sight’ is where it was supposed to be the close up shot of my eye to manipulate a panoramic image within the eyeball to show my vision. But I had some difficulty to take the photo of myself, it was too hard for my to focus and frame myself with the close up shot. So I decided to borrow my brother to be my model instead to make the flow a bit easier. Here is the final image that I made:
The images that I used:
Next, another final image is inspired from Joel Grimes as I described in my previous blog. Basically, I combined a few images to create this one single image. I wanted it to be narrative, so that I added a cigar as well as the smoke on the image as well. Here is one of the manipulation that i’ve done:
Photographs used:
Common theme / Collection: Idea #03
Since there have been a lot of constructions going on in the city. I was thinking that i might make some use of it for my third assignment!?!?!
Searching for locations #03
For manipulation idea i wanted to get some shot of Adelaide city, thinking to get some night life shot for my background. I want the lights on the buildings. I want some lights from cars. Unluckily, my common difficulty is that BLOOODY CONSTRUCTION once again. I am not sure why they have so many construction going on at the moment. I was thinking that only the weather that would stop me taking photographs, but yeah another enemy of mine is the road construction. Damn it.
Common theme / Collection: Ideas #02
I discovered other things that i should have earlier for my first idea of star trails and light painting, but i dont have time to go back and take the shots as the thing is dued this Monday booo. Also, i need to let the monks know in advance that i was gonna go there at night to take some photographs. But here is the thing i think it’d look good if i applied my first idea. I was an abandoned caravan parking dead in the middle of jungle.
Another thing that came up in my mind is the assignment 3!!! The temple occasionally has some event going on. There is going to be one event at the end of this month, which i think i could come and document what is going on on that day 😀
Saritkhun's Journeys 