Thanks a lot for the kind and constructive comments. I'm absolutely delighted with my top ten finish, especially in the face of such "fiery" competition.
A few mentioned that they would like to know how I did this shot.
Well, here goes…..First of all, if any of you have checked my pbase site you’ll know that high speed photography is a great passion of mine. A perfect synchronization between the moving object and the actual taking of the photograph is required. We talk about highspeed photography when we can’t see the fast movement with our eyes.
In my case, no laser module/sound trigger is used. I stand in my kitchen for hours on end dripping liquids from a syringe (without the needle) into other liquids….that’s it. I started experimenting with high speed photography about six months ago and seem to have developed a very good eye/shutter finger coordination.
For this challenge I started off by using warm coffee and cold milk to get the splashes. It had worked like a charm for me before and did again this time. The shots were great, lighting good, splashes good. Took about 3 hours. After viewing them on my laptop I realized that they did not meet the challenge (convey heat in your photograph)! The dreaded “DNMC”. There was no “heat” to be seen!
Started another series the next day with boiling hot coffee this time. Got some good milk splashes but, with needing a lot of light to capture the splashes, the steam became practically invisible. Aarghhh.
What to do? Luckily I had some incense sticks left over from my “smoke” series. I lay incense sticks around the cup and did some more experimenting. The effect was better but the smoke changed the surface tension of the coffee and I had to place the 2 flashes in different positions to catch the splashes. Because of this, the lighting on the cup just got worse and worse.
My husband eventually took pity on me and held the joss sticks close to the cup for a couple of hours which helped enormously.
After checking the images (hundreds!) I ended up choosing the one which looked the “hottest” and hoped no one would notice the catastrophic lighting on the cup itself too much.
Adjusted the contrast/cropped/resized in ACDSee 6.0. Cloned out some unsightly blotches in the background in Photoshop. Noise Ninja.
I’ll be putting some outtakes onto my pbase site within the next few days if anyone wants to check the “good” ones I managed to get ;-)
Statistics
Place: 8 out of 158 Avg (all users): 6.7814 Avg (commenters): 8.3043 Avg (participants): 6.7424 Avg (non-participants): 6.8034 Views since voting: 23479 Views during voting: 401 Votes: 183 Comments: 38 Favorites: 6 (view)
Hello! from the Critique Club, I'm Jon Rowe and i will be looking at your image today :)
Composition: I believe that you have this one spot on. I love the DOF you have used here, and the fast caught motion, but still being able to get such detail on the steam is amazing. only gripe is i would have cropped a little wider, and allowed the top of the steam to show, but that's just personal preference
Background: i think this really works well, it emphasizes the midtones from the splash.
Overall this is a great image, with a wonderful score. and i've always been fascinated with your work. keep up the great job.
Another Irene special - what a delight! Congrats on the score and position - and thanks for the info: could have sworn you used a laser trip to make the shots work! You have some hand/eye coordination: remind me not to challenge you at tennis or even cricket...
Mindblowing... The lighting is my gripe, but there ain't much you could have done about it without going with a black BG.... That would have changed the early morning feel of the coffee cup with the soft grey setting IMHO...
This is a fantastic shot without the details, but even more so after reading about it... talk about patience! :)
Excellent capture, especially like the steam in there too! (Of course, without that the whole "heat" theme would not have played out so well.)
Well done! On my short list at the top!
The capture of the milk drop is super and I love the red cup. If I have one gripe about this it's that the crop is rather tight - emphasised by the fact that the steam goes out of the image. Still, one of the better shots in this challenge and I hope it does well for you.
Fantastic little splashroom. Oft repeated yet this one carries off a unique perspective with the cup edge and steam. Well lit, focused, timed and planned. I would say more, but.. I feel lilke a cup of coffee now.
Add photograph to your favorites
Add photographer to your favorites
Photographer found comment helpful.
