Technique
6. Mix oil and water In clear glass bowl filled with water, pour in cooking oil (sunflower was used here) and place the container over something colourful like Christmas wrap. For lighting, two Profoto B10 heads fitted with softboxes were placed either side of bowl, allowing a lens aperture of f/16 at ISO 100. Another option is to place your container on a tablet with some bright colours on show – just make sure you protect your device with food wrap or clear plastic sheeting. In this case, the lighting levels are much lower so shutter speeds are longer, whichmeans you can’t gently swirl the oil/water around as you can with flash, and youmight need a tripod. You will need to focus quite close, so youmight need a macro lens, or a lens with an extension tube or close-up lens fitted. See this month’s Buyers’ guide for some close-up kit. Experiment with the amount of oil and try gently stirring oil and water to get some lovely, ever-changing patterns. After a short while, the oil and water separate out, so will need another stir. Patterns change all the time and every one is unique – so shoot quickly! You canmake oil bubbles smaller by mixing in a few drops of washing-up liquid. profoto.com
7. Shoot food colouring Raid the larder for food colouring dyes – or check out the baking section of the supermarket. There are two ways of doing this, so it depends what you have and what you prefer, but both are fun. Shoot from the side and you can go for patterns as a drop of food dye enters the water and spreads out. Effects vary, so try dropping fromdifferent heights – different colours react differently as they splash into the water, too. Or use the method featured here and shoot from above. Pour clean water into a glass dish, add drops of different colours starting with the lighter hues and gently disturb the water – use a chopstick – to produce lovely patterns as colours merge and coalesce. In this instance, a Nikon D850 with a 105mmmacro lens was used and lighting provided by an Hähnel Modus 600RT flashgun. The technique was nominated by PN ’s editorWill Cheung in the first Photography News Podcast as his method to explore during lockdown. The podcast, which featuresWill along with PN colleagues Roger Payne and Kingsley Singleton talking photography, is free to enjoy online. photographynews.co.uk/podcast-library hahnel.ie nikon.co.uk
8. Gomonochrome We went black & white for our image using Affinity Photo, the software we featured in tip number 2. A selection of presets gets you going, and then you can fine-tune the result from there with an extensive range of adjustment tools. Most of the tools in the adjustment palette have presets, so you can produce great mono conversions with a just a fewmouse clicks and let the software do the heavy lifting to start. Then you can refine and tweak to your taste later. affinity.serif.com
9. Shoot skyscapes Take your camera with you when you go for a walk and photograph skies or shoot from the garden or balcony.All but the blandest skies have photo potential, either as images in their own right, or for replacing dull skies in other images. Blue skies often benefit from the use of a polariser, with the neutral-looking filter cutting down polarised or scattered light within the scene, thus reducing glare and enriching colours. For scenics, the areas of most polarised light where a polariser has the greatest effect are 90° to the sun – not directly into or away from the sun, but to the left, right and above. Rotate the polariser and shoot when the effect looks best to you; it might not always be when the effect is strongest. Marumi offers a range of graduate and neutral density filters as well as a circular polariser for use with its filter holder. kenro.co.uk
10. Starry, starry night A tricky one, but achievable, even if you live in a town and you have to shoot through a window. If you have a garden and can find a spot away fromsecurity and street lighting, that’s a great option, but it means you have to stay outside with the camera.Whether you’re indoors or outside, the required kit and technique are the same, but check the weather – you don’t want any cloud cover.Many cameras have an intervalometer feature that lets you take a series of shots over a period of time so once you set off the camera, you can let it do its thing. If not, your remote releasemight have the feature. Failing that, you’ll have to fire each shot manually (which is rather tedious). Rather than doing one very long exposure, it’s best to do a series of much shorter ones that can be stacked together using StarStaX, a freemulti-platformstacking software. Start by doing a test shot with a wide-angle lens. Point the camera skywards and use live view and manual focus to focus – don’t assume setting infinity focus will work. Next,make an exposure (start with 10- 20secs at f/4 at ISO 1600) and carefully check the result bymagnifying the image to check that those tiny pinpoints of light are sharp. If not, refocus and try again. Once you have exposure and focus sorted, set the intervalometer to give 100 or more shots. with a couple of seconds between each, and set off the camera. When the shots are done, process them to taste and export as JPEGs to stack in StarStarX. markus-enzweiler.de/software/starstax
11. Try a new printing paper If you already print at home, you probably have a few old favourites that you’ve grown to love, but times and tastes change so now is a good time to check out what other surfaces are on offer. Permajet has an extensive and impressive range of inkjet media and it has recently launched TitaniumGloss 300, a lovely metallic finish paper, and an updated version of its very popular FB Gold Silk 315. Check out the First Tests in this issue for a test of the former, while FB Gold Silk 315 will be tested for the next issue. permajet.com
Issue 76 | Photography News 13
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