Breaking the rules, eating dog food

Im not supposed to post on Sunday but I am so far behind I want to get this done!

A few years ago "eating our own dog food" was a hip business term.  It meant using your own products.  For me it means going out and shooting in the ways I talk about here.  So the other day I went out and unloaded my bag trying all my toys.  I took a LOT of bad pictures, partially because I had not used some of it in a bit.  Here are some of the good ones.

The black fabric trick is one of my favorites but by chance I didn't have mine.  But I was wearing a black coat, had my tripod and my remote.  As a result I was able to shoot this series:

this is a nice picture:

This is Dog Food!!

The ONLY difference between these pictures is the addition of a black pea coat behind the flower.  (**it was windy so the flower moved slightly between pictures)

Shortly after shooting this I decided to see just how far I could go with using steady hold and breathing to push my shutter speed down. Here is what I got at 1/6th of a second:

and here are the two pictures before and after:


Now this only works with stationary subjects or semi-stationary.  A great way to capture motion is to intentionally blur the subject while the background remains steady.  The key is keeping the background steady!  If you have to shoot 1/60 to do that, you are probably not going to get the blur you want.

Now here is where it gets sketchy.  I wanted to shoot with different white balance settings but I forgot to write down the settings!!  I think the first one is using fluorescent light.  The rest are tungsten:

Tungsten:


Normal:

Tungsten

Tungsten

I also used 10x filter on those.

Thats it for Sunday.  I am working on the DIY projects and remembering to take notes!