Hippie milk

Saw this effect in a Flickr project and just had to try it! Milk, food colouring and drops of dish washing liquid.

Light Paintng

I want to do this soooooo much - I look at all the wonderful orbs others are creating and I am green with jealousy. One day I am going to do it. In the meantime I might start with this simple light painting, it seems simple enough to do: (this was posted by AccidntlTourist on flickr)

Light Painting



- pre-focused; manual
- set exposure for 30 seconds (f3.5)
- wide angle - 14mm
- laid camera on floor, lens facing up
- suspended a flashlight on a string above the camera and swung it in a circle while slowly pulling it up

1) - I turned out the lights.

2) - I stood on a chair above my camera and, as I recall (its been ten months), I began a wide circling with the suspended flashlight - pulling it upward as the circles, centrifically, became smaller and smaller. I think the flashlight moved slower as I raised it - so you see the beam brighter, yet narrower in width.

3) - Sorry, I don't remember - I think I pre-focused (manually) on something at a distance of about four feet.

Light painting is a lot of fun, I only dabbled in it for a short while (couple weeks).

Playing with light painting
www.youtube.com/watch?v=-uBhxec2sM0&NR=1
is only a "hop, skip and jump" away form learning a lot about light in regards to photography and some serious creativity (not like mine) - layering lighting treatments - painting (in another sense) with light:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=H8xgM3m44AU&context=C3269393A...

Triptych

Went to Makara Farm to try out the wide-angle lens and decided a triptych has to be created - saw this on a photography friend's Facebook the other day and quite liked the idea.

 

There is a tutorial available but you basically use layers in Photoshop to create a triptych. To summarise:
PHOTOSHOP users:
Same principles as above, except you will be doing the strokes as layer styles.
Double click on the thumbnail photo in a layer to bring up the layer style box:

Make sure that "stroke" is both checked and selected (i.e. highlighted). You can then set the width, position, and color of your stroke. Just so you can see the results better, I chose 25 pixels, center, and red.

Click OK, and then either repeat the process, or copy and paste the layer style by right-clicking in the layer.

When finished, you will merge the three layers and repeat the stroke—but on the inside—for an evenly framed triptych.


Variations
You can use the same principles for any photo that needs a border and for any kind of collage. Don't feel like you have to make the photos the same size. Experiment with proportion and with horizontal and vertical layout.

Using the scanner to take photos

Something I would love to try - but I don't have access to a scanner any more. Posting this tutorial so that I know where to find it when I have the opportunity to try this. Absolutely love the effect. (Thanks Bruce, for the link!)