Tag Archives: creative

04/3/14

Making of "Drowning"

To create this photo, I used my computer screen again as a softbox. I wanted to get the silhouette of the glass so I didn’t need a flash, and using a tripod I could choose the dof I wanted and then the necessary exposure time to get a white background.
I placed the razor blade very carefully before filling the glass until it held in the position I wanted, and then I started to fill the glass with water using a dropper, and also doing some photos of the composition while I was filling it, just in case the razor blade changed its position, in which case I could loose the shot.

Also, in the first attempts I noticed that the edges of the glass weren’t as defined as I wanted due to unwanted light coming from the screen, so I placed a couple of books as flags to reduce the amount of light on the sides of the glass to get a more defined silhouette.

Finally, I used photoshop to create the silhouette of a face and then its symmetry with a copy of the layer.

Before:

 20140216_190456

After:

04/1/14

Making of "Pens and Swords"

Today I’m going to start a little project about how I make some of my photos or build my light tools, usually using materials that can be found at home, because sometimes there’s no need to have an amazing studio to create decent photos. I won’t describe the details in each case, and the making of photos will probably be made with the smartphone, but feel free to ask if you have any doubts 😉

The idea was suggested by my friend and photographer Xavier Carol, check his blog if you want: lalquimista.com

For this first photo, I used a feather I found on the street. With a cutter, I carefully cutted the feather to the point I wanted, and then I placed a decoration sword I had at home inside the feather. I wanted a dark background but also emphasize the details of the sword and feather, so I used my computer screen and a polarizing filter in the lens, rotating the filter to a point where I saw a black background.

With some exposure time, I could illuminate the objects and also keeping a dark background. Also, although I knew the final capture would be vertical, it was much easier to make the photo horizontally due to the working area of my “soft box”.

Before:

20121124_220459

 
After:
 

 

 

02/13/13

Light Painting Wireframing tool

The idea:

Create a tool that projects a laser net to combine with the Light Painting photography technique, so that when projecting this net over a scene, it “seems” to be a wireframing view of a 3D modeled scene.

Solution:

Using only one laser pointer, create a set of horizontal and vertical lines that combined with the photo long exposure will result in a laser net. The laser pointer is moved by two RC servos controlled with a PWM signal generated by a 16F876A PIC microcontroller.
Once the circuit is done, the program can be configured to change laser speed, offset between lines and net size.

For the video I used a 7.4V LiPo battery, the voltage is regulated by a 7805, and the laser pointer uses one of the PIC 5V outputs with a 25 Ohms resistor.

Demonstration video with photo samples: