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.

Great or Lucky?

After a couple of weeks without taking photos, I decided to take some tonight. I jumped out of bed and grabbed my usual gear. I setup my subject and gear and took some test shots. Eight clicks then it's a wrap! Batteries went empty. Both my batteries drained out of their power.

I reviewed the few test shots that I got. I was able to select two shots out of the eight as usable. One of them is shown below. You know which one is the other from the series of thumbnails above I guess.

Great or Lucky Shot?

I did great. I got lucky. What do you think?

Cheers!

P.S.
Get back to the basics -- check your gear! :)

Water Drops And Splashes

Recently, I followed Alex Koloskov at G+ and their site MasteringSplash. They've got truly inspiring photos on water splashes and I thought I should give it  a try. Before I went on splashes, I revisited some water drops and see what I can come up this time -- a 'Growling Bear'?

Growling Bear

Back To Stock

I've been out of the loop on stock photography for quite sometime as I have been preoccupied with portraiture. Here's an extra shot from the recent stock photo session I had. It's one of those shots not really for stock photos as this photo have identifiable marks as you can see below:

LV Bear Key Chain

So this was not submitted for review for my portfolio with Fotolia. I am currently waiting on my submitted stock photos' acceptance or rejection. I'm wondering how will I do this time? I submitted 15 new stock photos. Right now, since it's under review, it cannot be seen in my portfolio as accepted stock photos only appear in my portfolio. I hope all appears in my portfolio.

Cheers!

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* Update: I got 11/15 stock photos accepted. Here they are: © MrGreenBug - Fotolia. :) More to come!

Cheers!

Coffee Assignment

I am a part of a young and passionate photography club called Quezon City Photography Club (QCPC). It's a growing club in the city where I currently reside.

One of the club members wanted to start of with something like of a contest or some sort and we ended up having a monthly themed assignment. For the month of March, we have a coffee-based theme.

I joined this activity to push my creativity and as well as to develop more my photography skills. It's really a part of learning I guess. When this theme was announced, it came to my thought that for sure there'll be lots of coffee cups and saucer and teaspoons photos. I wanted to be different so I thought of using coffee beans. Using just coffee beans was too simple of a shot and I don't how to make it more interesting.

Then I remembered seeing an ad on the TV of coffee beans being roasted. I wanted to recreate this picture I have in mind.

So, I was able to loan a half-cup of coffee beans from a colleague of mine from work. Here's the result of my session with the loaned coffee beans.

Hot Beans

I wanted an effect that looked like that the coffee beans were recently roasted and are still venting off steam.

Hot Shot

Took a shot glass and I wanted the same effect as the one on top.

Spilled Beans

Tipped off the shot glass and still trying to get the effect on hot coffee beans.

Where did the smoke come from you might be asking. The smoke came from some incense and I waited for the smoke to be wafted towards the coffee beans for an effect the smoke comes from the coffee beans itself.

The one that I entered in our club's themed assignment is the 'Spilled Beans' as it has some other element in the photo which is the shot glass and making it not look too bare like on the first photo: 'Hot Beans'.

All photos were taken at 85mm, f/11.0, 1/200 sec, ISO 100, Off-cam flash with the setting below:

Black background and coffee beans were set on top of a glass table for the reflections on the beans. The snooted flash allowed the environment to be dark and only shed light onto the subject. The reflector bounced of some light from the snooted flash to fill-in some light on the right side of the photo where the shadow should have casted due to the position of the flash.

Position of the flash was considered for two things: 1) to get the texture of the coffee beans and 2) to shine light on the smoke just like the way I did on my smoke photography.

Cheers!

Happy New Year!!!

A Happy, Prosperous, and Wonderful New Year to all!!! 2010 was surely a challenging year and I'm sure that 2011 will be one too.

I just realized that I had no entry last December 2010. I did take lots of photos to share but I guess I was too much preoccupied with my beloved kit lens losing it's AF (Auto Focus) function in the middle of a birthday celebration. Oh well, it gave me a chance to take full control of my camera this time: I'm in Manual Settings plus in Manual Focus!

I guess it's not too late to share some of my favorite shots during the holidays:

Close Encounter with Exotic Birds at Residence Inn, Tagaytay

Santa Claus

Of course some Fireworks

  

And our very little own Firworks display in our front lawn the night of 1.1.11 for the kids

Again, Happy New Year to all!!!

Feline Encounter

This morning, when I woke up, I heard a tiny voice of a kitten in the garden. At first I didn't mind it at all. After breakfast I didn't hear it anymore and so I forgot all about it.

Sometime around before noon I heard it again. The tiny squeak of the kitten. My youngest daughter and I went to the garden and looked for it. Surely, there it was. As we are approaching, the kitten got spooked and goes snarling against us but still we looked at it.

Then it hit me! This is a good photo opportunity to try and get this snarling kitten's attitude. I quickly grabbed my camera. As I went out, I checked the current settings and change the necessary parameters and visualized what I wanted to get.

I'm quite happy as I hit the sweet spot of my settings even before I got to take photos. In the back of my mind, I was already considering the amount of light since it was near noontime with patchy clouds and so I dialed down my ISO to my lowest. Then I wanted shallow DOF and dialed aperture to low value. Since, it was a bright sunny/cloudy day and with low aperture value, I need a fairly fast shutter speed. Though I need to dial down mu shutter speed from my original settings as the kitten went out hiding under the tree.

This little fellow has a really nasty attitude and every time it snarls, my heart jumps a beat as I was also taking caution as this little fellow might come charging and I really don't want to get scratches.

Day 3: Signs Of Life

A few days ago, I tilled a small portion of the lawn and planted some flower seeds -- Mexican Sunflower and Cosmos. I really don't know much about gardening but just the basics. I love taking photos of flowers and I guess this is one way to take more photos of them.

Well, I read quite a few from the Internet about growing Mexican Sunflower and Cosmos. They say they're one of the most easiest flowers to grow even from seeds. They're able to tolerate the warm/hot climate and are not choosy on soil type. Once they have started growing, they need not much care. A little water here and there in awhile just to moisten up the soil and they'll thrive.

So, when I woke up this morning and checked the little lot of tilled soil and checked for signs of life from the seeds that I have sown. I found cracks on the top soil something similar to these.

I wondered if those cracks were made by the ants that were grazing over the top soil the other day. By looking closer into the cracks, there I found signs of life from the Cosmos seeds but none yet from the Mexican Sunflower (being optimistic that in a few days they will show some signs of life too). Here's a little closer view of one of the cracks:

Now, that's a very wonderful sight!

Goin' Bananas

Well, not really goin' bananas or crazy.. It's just that the cake/bread is made of bananas. My mom bakes banana cakes/breads very well as she makes them all-natural as much as possible. I believe there's no extenders or whatsoever. Her best banana cakes/bread are those made of cavendish bananas -- it's very tasteful and very aromatic. For new year, she baked us a loaf. Of course, I cannot resist again to experiment and explore more on the area of food photography. Much more I can't resist as I just made myself another lightbox. I had to try and use it. To cut the long story short and feast on the delicious banana cake/bread my dear mom baked. Too bad you're only gonna see some photos. I just do hope that the photos give justice to the cake/bread.

Thanks mom for the banana cake/bread!

Mini Cakes

My wife recently bought some mini cakes for gifts for friends. There were some leftovers and of course being so interested in food photography at the moment, I couldn't help and resist experimenting with it. Below are two photos of the same mini cake. Hmm.. I just had time to take photos of one (1) mini cake as I took these close to midnight () of December 18, 2009. Yes, I took these photos at night and not during the day.

Bon Appetit!