OCF Day (I have no idea) - Ghetto High Speed Flash Photography – Take 1

First off, my apologies for being away for so long.  I just haven’t been as diligent with this project.  Trying to get back on track.  I have a list of excuses, but I’ll spare you from listening to me whine.

So, I was talking with my buddy Myron about different images we’d like to capture.  Partially inspired by a Chase Jarvis video(as seen HERE), I had an image I wanted to capture of splashing water on my face and freezing water droplets as they splashed on me and on their way to the ground.  Even though it was FREEZING this past Tuesday night, Myron, Jason, and I decided to just go for it.  Here’s what we did:

1. Timing - We waited ‘til after the sunset for the shoot, but setup our lights prior.  This way, we kept the ambient light to a bare minimum and freeze the action with our strobes.
2. Location – OUTSIDE.  Which was why we waited ‘til after the sun set.  Also, we wanted to keep the water outside.
3. Lighting – Myron picked up a HUGE Avenger (combi)stand which he attached a boom(it’s actually a reflector holder), superclamp, cold-shoe, and an SB-24(at 1/16^th power).  We used this for a hairlight directly overhead.  Two lightstands on either side(SB-24’s at 1/8^th power with a 35mm spread) of the subject(me) slightly behind pointed at the water(and for a little rim lighting).  We also used our own DIY gobo’s attached to prevent flaring into the camera.  And finally, to get just a hint of light in on my face we put a white diffuser panel in front.
4. Cameras settings  - Tripod mounted 5DMk2 with 70-200mm at ISO800, f/9 or 10-ish, 1/250.  D300 with 70-200mm.  5DMk2 with 17-40mm.

We started at 9pm and ended around 12:30am.  I lost track of how many takes we did, it was fun tho.  Ridiculously fun.  Towards the end we experimented with putting on some red and blue gels to see what kind of look we’d get.  But the batteries were giving out on us and we were getting tired, it was a school night after all.  Here’s my favorite one.  Pretty much straight out of camera with a little sharpening in Aperture:

(Photo taken by Myron) - See the full rez image HERE or its actually kinda cool lookin' on black HERE(Zoom in on the water droplets – I still squeal a little when I look at this).

I’ve never done anything like this before and this 3 hour exercise was fantastic.  Can’t wait to see what else we can do with this technique.  Lesson’s learned with a behind the scene images and video coming soon!

Special thanks to Myron Yeung and Jason Ku for bringing all this into reality.