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A Sprinkle Celebration
3rd PlaceA Sprinkle Celebration
yakatme


Photograph Information Photographer's Comments
Challenge: Granular II (Basic Editing)
Camera: Nikon D700
Lens: Nikon AF Nikkor 50mm f/1.8D
Location: Home
Date: Sep 6, 2011
Aperture: f/8
ISO: 200
Shutter: 1/200
Galleries: Advertisement, Food and Drink
Date Uploaded: Sep 6, 2011

 During the first week of WPL I felt really bad that, day after day, the sun hardly ever came out so that I couldn't get a Lens Flare challenge entry. So I said to my WPL team mates:

Originally posted by yakatme:
I'd like to enter but it doesn't look good at the moment as it hasn't all week. If I don't then I will place top ten in the Granular challenge!


Honestly, I don't really care much for this image. As MelonMusketeer mentioned, it's not my style. I created it with the sole purpose of scoring high for my team just like with my image for the Zen challenge during the last DPL.

This was almost a last minute entry. On the last day to enter this challenge I thought about doing something that would grab attention and that would be different than most anything else, at least that was my hope. The idea of sprinkles came to mind so I went to Google for ideas. I liked the idea of a face covered in them but the only person that I thought that I could ask at the last minute was my son and I'm sure that he would say "no way!" So I went with the ice cream idea. I emphasize idea because I knew right away that ice cream wouldn't work.

I do a bit of food photography for restaurants and, in researching it a long time ago, I had read somewhere that food stylists use shortening instead of ice cream. Well, I used shortening dyed with red food coloring and it still melted and fell off of the tilted cone. What a mess!

I looked it up and found that the missing ingredient was powdered sugar...LOTS OF IT!. My recipe for 'ice cream' ended up being about a cup of Crisco shortening, 3/4 pound of powdered sugar, and about a teaspoon of red food coloring.

I set up one flash with a paper plate for a reflector to freeze the dropping of the sprinkles and two flashes, one with a red gel and one with a purple gel to color the white background. The one with the purple gel was intermittent in firing so I ended up with just a pink background instead of the vertical striped pink and lavender that I wanted. That's why the background is uneven and a little gray in the bottom right corner....good catch lens_hood.

Another problem was that I couldn't completely freeze the motion of the sprinkles when I dropped them. Instead, I had to throw them up from beneath the cone and hit the shutter as they reached apogee. It was extremely difficult to toss them up so that they arced only as high as the ice cream and press the shutter at the same time. Every few takes I had to sweep up the sprinkles, put them back in the bowl and start over again. This was one of the few takes that worked out.

I had a fairly heavy workload ahead of me so I thought that I would take an hour of my time to pull this off. It ended up taking about five hours from shopping to shooting to cleanup.

Statistics
Place: 3 out of 128
Avg (all users): 6.5233
Avg (commenters): 8.2000
Avg (participants): 6.3621
Avg (non-participants): 6.6053
Views since voting: 17340
Views during voting: 299
Votes: 172
Comments: 19
Favorites: 4 (view)

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AuthorThread
Canon EOS-7D
 09/29/2011 03:18:02 AM
i just love this, great idea and beautifully done
  Photographer found comment helpful.
Canon EOS-5D Mark IV
Canon EF 16-35mm f/2.8 L USM III
 09/18/2011 01:37:33 PM
Congrats on the ribbon!
  Photographer found comment helpful.
Apple iPhone 15 Pro
 09/18/2011 08:57:05 AM
Congrats , good stuff.
  Photographer found comment helpful.
Canon EOS-5D Mark III
Canon EF 28-135mm f/3.5-5.6 IS USM
 09/16/2011 12:20:20 PM
well deserved ribbon, congrats
  Photographer found comment helpful.
Sony DSLR-A350
Sigma 70-300mm f/4-5.6 DG Macro Telephoto Zoom Lens for Canon
 09/15/2011 05:34:20 AM
thank you for sharing the whole making of and investigation on the icecream sub.....because I had trouble once taking pictures with real icecream and got a little frustrated, now I can't wait to re-shoot the original with this mix ;) Awesome shot! Time well spent in my eyes ;)
  Photographer found comment helpful.
Canon EOS-6D
Canon EF 100mm f/2.8 L Macro IS USM
 09/14/2011 07:49:15 PM
"Honestly, I don't really care much for this image. As MelonMusketeer mentioned, it's not my style. I created it with the sole purpose of scoring high for my team just like with my image for the Zen challenge during the last DPL. "

I don't mind if you don't want to score highly... but will you please tell me the secret!?

:D

Congrats! I love this! It's bright and cheery.
  Photographer found comment helpful.
Nikon D750
Nikon AF-S DX NIKKOR 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6G ED VR II
 09/14/2011 09:37:12 AM
What a fabulous job Robert...Love it!!! Congrats on your ribbon!!!
  Photographer found comment helpful.
Nikon D750
Nikon AF-S Nikkor 17-35mm f/2.8D IF-ED
 09/14/2011 01:58:29 AM
What a lot of effort. Kudos for taking one for the team. I'm most impressed that you are able to call where you'll finish! Congrats on the ribbon.
  Photographer found comment helpful.
Nikon D800
Sigma 120-300mm f/2.8 EX APO IF HSM for Nikon
 09/14/2011 01:47:55 AM
WD! Effort is rewarded.
  Photographer found comment helpful.
Sony Alpha a7R III
Sony FE 24-70mm f/2.8 GM
 09/14/2011 01:36:26 AM
GO YOU, YAK!
  Photographer found comment helpful.
Canon EOS-7D Mark II
Canon EF-S 15-85mm f/3.5-5.6 IS USM
09/14/2011 01:30:14 AM
There you are! A well-deserved ribbon.
  Photographer found comment helpful.
Nikon D7000
Nikon MF 50mm f/1.4
 09/14/2011 12:05:06 AM
Go Robert! It's not your usual outdoor shooting, but it's superb!
  Photographer found comment helpful.
Canon EOS-600D/T3i Rebel
Canon EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 USM II
 09/14/2011 12:01:25 AM
OMG - how awesome! You make us proud, Yak - great job on an awesome photo. Congratulations!!
  Photographer found comment helpful.
 Comments Made During the Challenge
Canon EOS-5D
Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 II
 09/13/2011 10:50:13 AM
I hope this is not from a compenting WPL-team :-)
because it's a really very good image, if not one of the best in challenge!
  Photographer found comment helpful.
Nikon D300
Nikon MF 24mm f/2.8 AIS
 09/10/2011 07:16:23 AM
this does not exude 'granular' to me, but this is one of the best shots in the challenge (that I have seen so far)
  Photographer found comment helpful.
Canon EOS-5D Mark III
Canon EF 24-105mm f/4.0 L IS
 09/09/2011 02:39:19 AM
Would have deserved a 10 if the background had been poperly done. Not only one can see some shadows but also it's not hte same pink and the lower right corner looks grey. 9 anyway, good shot.
  Photographer found comment helpful.
 09/08/2011 08:07:50 PM
wooww this is sooo sweet i love it yummmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm
  Photographer found comment helpful.
Canon EOS-5D Mark III
Canon EF 28-135mm f/3.5-5.6 IS USM
 09/08/2011 12:15:29 PM
so fun and colorful, great idea
  Photographer found comment helpful.
Nikon D90
Nikon AF-S DX Zoom Nikkor 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 ED
 09/07/2011 09:57:23 AM
This is awesome! If I owned an ice cream shop, I would want this picture in my window. This is my favorite picture in the entire challenge. 10!
  Photographer found comment helpful.
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