Double exposure fun

I first read about how to use lighting with double exposures in Joe McNally's excellent book, The Hot Shoe Diaries, and had been wanting to try something out ever since. Unfortunately, my D40X doesn't have the function -- only models D90 and above have it.

Fortunately, Joan has a D90, and one day in August, we decided to just try the function. Here's a test shot.

Ok don't puke, it was just for fun. © Lin Zhaowei, 2009.

So a couple of weeks ago, when Joan had some good friends over for a sushi dinner, we thought it might be fun to try it out with everyone. Here are a couple of the pictures we managed to take, using just one SB800 as lighting.

Love rectangle. © Lin Zhaowei, 2009.


Give me the money... © Lin Zhaowei, 2009.

When Joan's friend Daniel suggested doing a "family portrait", I realised my folly of not bringing my SB900. But well, we always do our best and the end result wasn't too bad! But I had to cheat here -- as I wasn't behind the camera, it wasn't possible to do a double exposure and prevent any overlapping. So two exposures were taken and layered in GIMP. (I can't afford Photoshop)

We had 12 guests and two hosts at the party. © Lin Zhaowei, 2009.

Anyway I think GIMP is quite feature-packed, though it would take quite a bit of getting used to for the Photoshop user. Took me a while to figure out how to do masking, which was needed to black out some parts of the picture. But it works and it's free, and I'm really quite impressed. Just wondering why they don't have a "hand" function like PS tho... It's not that comfortable moving around the image using the scroll wheel...

******************************

Note: There is however, a very useful Image Overlay function in the D40X, which is found in all recent Nikon consumer DSLR models. It is a sort of built-in HDR function that lets you put two images over each other. It is how, for example, I created this following image a few weeks ago, when I was in Beijing:

Tiananmen at night. © Lin Zhaowei, 2009.

Those of you who have taken pictures of a scene with a moon will know that the moon is very bright -- on a camera sensor, at least -- so when you expose such a scene, the moon will always be blown out. Hence the workaround, and it works fabulously for me!

Skate-Scooting Strobist

I had been wanting to take part in the Strobist.com Boot Camp II, but the themes to the first three assignments weren't easy for me to do. So when the last assignment (ie. my last chance) came and the theme was declared to be transportation, boy was I excited! I mean, I can possibly come up with something...

So while stoning during one of my recent remedial training (RT) sessions, I decided to actually think about what to shoot (instead of what to buy) for once, and came up with a couple of rough ideas. A phone conversation with Joan that night yielded the final idea.

Location: concrete tubes found near her home.
Photographer: Joan.
Lighting man: Me.
Model: Me???

And the transportation? A skate-scooter! I'd always wanted to try riding on one when they were all the rage many years ago, but never did. Here's my chance! (Ok, the truth is, we don't have a car, truck, bike, or any other mode of transport between us. Heck, even the skate-scooter was borrowed from a primary school student learning the piano from Joan)

Pondering over how to pose for the shoot... © Lin Zhaowei, 2009.

Anyway the day of the shoot-- Sep 20 -- finally came. It was fortunate that RT was cancelled on this day, due to the Hari Raya holidays. And when night fell, we moved out from our HQ (Joan's place) to the location.

The tubes, which were lying on a grass patch next to a canal for reasons unknown, made for a superb location, esp. with the right lighting. © Lin Zhaowei, 2009.

We have two lights between us: an SB900 and an SB800. Since the SB800 is more powerful, I used it as the light in the distant set at full power (manual). This serves to create a sense of depth in the photo. The SB900, mounted on my Gorillapod on a metal beam that ran across the opening of the tube, behind the camera, bounced off the ceiling of the tube with the built-in bounce card up to illuminate the model (me). I used TTL for convenience.

Setting up the light. © Lin Zhaowei, 2009.

We used Joan's D90, and originally planned to use the Tokina 12-24 f4. However, turned out that it wasn't wide enough, and thank goodness I'd brought the 10.5mm fisheye along! The shot was taken from a very low angle. And we used a very high ISO (3200 to 6400) so as to make the distant light brighter.

The first variation, with the SB800 closer to me. © Lin Zhaowei, 2009.


The final shot from the second variation, with the SB800 further away. I submitted this to the Strobist pool. © Lin Zhaowei, 2009.

As you can see I had a lot of fun with the shoot. Haha! And I am quite happy with the final product too.

Don't think I stand a good chance of winning, but I guess I can always hope for an honourary mention on the strobist blog...

Edit: Just an extra note, this was another instance when the fisheye saved the day... It's seldom used (maybe once in a month at best) but there are situations when nothing else can do the job, simply because it's so darn wide.

I think I will never think of selling it again to fund my impending camera body upgrade!

Boy in Deyang

I was in Deyang city, Sichuan Province to report on a school expansion project partially sponsored by Nanyang Technological University's alumni network in China about a week back. After the ceremony at the school (pictures to come), my group went to a streetside market to buy fruits back as souvenirs.

As the professors were busy stimulating the local economy, I spotted a cute little boy at one of the many fruit stalls lining the street.

My gosh! Such a cute little boy. He was apparently with his father, who was also busy buying fruits. And he didn't seem to mind the camera at all! So I continued taking a few shots of him.

That's him hugging his father's leg.

What's fascinating him to his right?

But my favourite shot was my last, after his father peeled an orange and gave it to him. Actually, it is my favourite shot for the entire trip, I think!

© Lin Zhaowei, 2009.

That was the last part of my trip. Soon after, we left on our minibus for the airport, where I filed my story for the day and took the flight home after a long trip. More to come...