Waterfight shots!

Zaklander

I asked Zak to help me with another photo....
but of course it was impossible to get the photo I wanted before he threw in a Zaklander, "Blue Steel".

Whippersnipper Kid

Never too young to get them helping around the house!
If my nephew is going to stay with us, he is going to earn his keep!

Party Popper

Taken using trigger trap to fire the flash.

Evenly Matched.

Izak came up with this as something he thought was a good idea....
So here it is!

unclear...

The view from one of the lookouts I drive past every morning...

Not so much view this time.

Graphics not that great.

Xander

Flashback

A few older photos.
Ruth on the New Zealand Trip at Lake Tekapo, and the Church of the Good Shepard there.  Both playing with a flash.

And a photo of Zak from earlier this year.  He has grown up so much since then!

All the photos were grabbed from older shots because the topic of the month for Toowoomba Photographic Society is "Use of flash".

Carnival of flowers

Toowoomba Carnival of Flowers this weekend.
Toowoomba really is a beautiful place to live and the Carnival is a bit of a celebration of that.

Not that the photos here have too many flowers in them... mostly just stuff....

Hiding from myself

One I have been meaning to do for a while...
The topic for the photography competition this month at TPS is "Selfie"... so I thought, why not?!


Photogeeking:  This photo took several years of planning... 4 or 5 years ago, I started developing a clone of myself (he is the one in the red shirt)...  he is not much good for most things, but was useful for this.  He sees things fairly simply and spends a lot of time cranky, so convincing him to do this was not hard.  A flash through an umbrella was used for the blue me... a direct flash for the red me, with another one filling in some of the detail.

Found: Invisible Man photograph.

Going through a box of old photos that I found... and happened to come across this interesting one, the back has a signature something like "H.G.Wells"... I think that what other people considered to be a work of fiction, was more of a biography!

It was book week last week, so given that Zak has been doing a lot of classic science fiction lately, he decided on the invisible man.  This was the result.


Photogeeking:  4 exposures.  2 flashes.  One giving light to the room, the other lighting from the stove.  One exposure for the background, one for Zak, one for the saucepan (with the handle) and a last, unlit one for the flame of the gas burner... put together in photoshop with a Nik plugin to make it look like a wetplate camera.

Lake Tepako

There are  couple of nasty spots on my camera sensor that I will need to clean up when I work on the photos....

Laser Skirmish

A fun afternoon out in the bush playing laser Skirmish.
As you can tell from our Cammo gear - we all took it very seriously!

The Doctor

Near where we live there is (believe it or not) a Tardis!
The people who own it were kind enough to let us take a few photos with it this afternoon....

For a huge Doctor Who fan, this was a huge thing!

Photo Geeking:

Bright sunlight in the background.. still just before setting.  2 flashes, one held by my very own voice activated light stand, the other on the ground to the left of the shots.  Shutter speed high to darken the background.

The shot straight out of the camera is below... along with one showing a little more like what the scene looked like in real life... (along with the voice activated light stand!)

Shot in China

Blythe and Russell, shot while shooting in China.
The whole pool hall was stinking hot... people taking turns standing in front of the struggling airconditioner.

I did not see Fast Eddie the pool shark, anywhere!

Chinese BBQ

We set up a makeshift BBQ in the street over the weekend... all went very well... and very tasty.

One particular gentleman decided he wanted to stop and watch - which he did for a long time.  It was certainly long enough for me to walk up to him and take a photo anyway!

The setup is shown below... well.  missing me and with the camera in one hand and the flash in the other right up close to him!

Xan and the Storm

Incoming storm when I was home.  Taken between Christmas and New Year.

Windows to the soul

Filed under:  things you do when you are bored in your hotel room with 2 flashes, a camera and photoshop.

Yesterday's morning activities...

Here in Miluo,
out the back of my hotel...
after spending some time ferretting around randomly with my camera and flash...  I worked up the courage to ask the guy I wanted to photograph if I could shoot him while he was working....

He had no problems with it.... and this was the result.  He was shovelling coal from a big pile outside to a smaller pile inside and then from that pile into the boiler that was giving me hot water in my hotel - so I definitely appreciated his efforts!

My hands

Couple of photos from this week.
One - playing with a couple of flashes and a punching bag (and Xander - whose timing was impeccable on these shots!) 

Some of the outtakes from the bag punching shots will never see the light of day.... lets just say that skin is not meant to be seen at highspeed under impact.


Photogeeking: punching the bag.  A flash well behind the bag as a rim light (also gets my face), another at the bottom of the back pointing up where my arm will hit....  then I dipped my hand in some flour to get the dust.

Second one - flash on the table raking across my hands to get all sorts of texture, and a much less powerful one above spotlighting down on it...