Something To Celebrate

In one of the last few days of Dec 2014, I was able to do one last product shot that I can say is one of my best creative product shots. Shown on the left is a teaser photo that I posted sometime January 2015 that can also be seen in this link.

When my wife bought and surprised me with this beer, I was very happy and I remember having this smile in my face I can't wipe off. This is because I have something to photograph and I have something to drink after -- Cheers!

Every time there's something new around is always a good opportunity to get some product shots. First, they're somewhat at their "best" look and if it's beer and liquor it's best while it has still contents.

Going back to the image, it took me several days to think about how to photograph this beer bottle. Since it was the holidays and the spirit of celebration was in the air, I was aiming to have something to get that feeling in the photo at the end.

The teaser image on it's own is good in my opinion and can be used as is. It's simple but I wasn't getting the celebratory feeling in this image so I had to slowly build on it.

Creative Bokeh

I have tried doing some creative bokeh as I have shared in the following posts:

• Bokeh - Out Of Focus (DIY)
• White Hearts

Against The Sun

What kind of photos usually appear when you have your subject in front of a light source, for example the sun? More than usual it would be a black subject (silhouette) and a bright background.

Here's a little practical application of working against the sun in order to expose for the subject -- use fill-in flash. Yes, flash in daylight again just like my previous exercise: Cosmos Plants Exercise. In that exercise, the sun was at my back and now it's in front of me.

The little trick here is to know how much fill-in flash to use. It was trial and error for me. Here's the result of this morning's encounter with my cosmos flowers.

One thing to remember though, be careful when working against the sun as this can be harmful to both your eyes and camera's sensor.

This morning's recipe:
  1000D/XS + kit lens at 55mm, f/16, 1/50 secs, ISO 100, FEC (Flash Exposure Compensation): 0

Another note: I just noticed today that the bokeh on the kit lens (18-55mm f/3.5-5.6) are hexagonal when I thought that they were circular. Time to check the technicals of the kit lens. :)

White Hearts

So, I was in experiment mode again but not a totally new experiment as I have done this before in my previous entry: Bokeh - Out Of Focus (DIY). I just wanted to perform this experiment again with Canon's EF 50mm f/1.8 II or the so-called nifty-fifty.

I'm sure this is nice to use for this experiment as this lens has a large aperture.

Here are some white hearts for the month of February.

And here's more of it: (Just Bokeh)

Just Bokeh

 

By the way, those lights are LED lights. It's actually, a little USB desk lamp.

Happy Or Sad?

The title might be a little misleading but in anyway, I guess I have to say that I am very happy with the presents that I was able to receive from very good friends abroad. I have now a battery grip for my Canon Rebel DSLR and now I feel the camera fits my hand better -- better ergonomics and grip. I was also blessed with what most photographers call as nifty-fifty. Yes, I was able to get a Canon EF 50mm f/1.8.

Of course, news toys means new things to tinker with. Alright, I'm now armed with my new toys, here are some of the shots I was able to make with the short time I had with it.

Here's my wife and daughters' shitzu -- "Chewy". I guess she's feeling sad about her haircut. (Only color saturation was edited here).

 

 This was her a few months ago... taken with my kit lens Canon EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 IS. (Sharpness and saturation were edited here)

 

Are they the same dog? Oh well, I guess that was the sad part.

Moreover, I just started my bokeh project recently and I tested the bokeh of the new lens and was after the pentagonal bokeh of this lens. Out of curiosity here's what I mean by the pentagonal bokeh.

As you will see the out-of-focus points of light in the above photo is pentagonal in shape rather than the simple circular bokeh. I guess that's the trademark of the Canon EF 50mm f/1.8.

I'm out to explore the possible uses of this nifty-fifty on my gear.

Bokeh - Out Of Focus (DIY)

So, what is Bokeh? Bokeh in photography as defined by Wikipedia is the blur, or the aesthetic quality of the blur, in out-of-focus areas of an image, or "the way the lens renders out-of-focus points of light".

I created something similar to what is found in the Internet to create artistic bokeh or bokeh with different shapes aside from the common circular, pentagonal, octagonal shape of bokeh. By the way, I also read from the Internet that the bokeh is also affected by the number of aperture blades the camera lens has but I can't recall where I have read it exactly from.

Anyway, back to creating different bokeh shapes was something interesting and I tried it myself on my kit lens. Basically, it's like overriding the default bokeh shape of the lens. With the Christmas season, I took the chance to create and experiment on this one as there's a bountiful resource of light points from Christmas lights.

Here's my best photos:

Straight Curls

Circular Curls

Circular Triangles

 Here's my do-it-yourself interchangeable bokeh accessory that yielded the above photos:

Here's a link for my inspiration to create myself a bokeh accesory: DIYPhotography. Thers's more DIYs in there to try as well.