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Strawberries and Cream

With a little bit of relaxing time over the Christmas period, I decided to have a go at “Splash Photography.”  However, I wanted to try something a bit different from water droplet shots. So, with the help of my friend Paulo Viegas, we set about having some fun with these three strawberries and yoghurt.

We used three off camera flash guns with the power settings set quite low so as to provide us with a very short flash duration of about 1/10,000th of a second.  The secret is to fire the flash, via a radio trigger, at just the right time.  Paulo threw the yoghurt and I fired the flash guns.  It took about 50 attempts to get this one image.

Sometimes an image just seems to have all the elements required for something a little special.  It is not often that one of my images brings that extra special feeling of satisfaction to me.  With this image, I have tried to create what I wanted to show.  That is a “magical” almost “mystical” scene from my original image.  I see nothing wrong with manipulating or, as I like to put it, editing an image to create the effect you are looking for.  My good friend and wonderful photographer, Alain Briot, spends many hours, in fact weeks sometimes, going over an image to produce his amazing photographs.  He taught me not to be put off by what other people think of your images or how you produced them but to create images that you are happy and proud of.  This is one of them.  I hope you enjoy too and, please, do leave a comment.

In my last blog you will see one of my images from Lower Antelope Canyon.  Upper Antelope Canyon is approximately a quarter of a mile away and is another “slot” canyon.  However, this canyon was entered after a four wheeled drive through the sandy river bed to the small entrance slot.  It was very dusty inside the canyon with minute particles of sand always giving me concern when taking off my lens cap or changing a lens.

Once again the reflected light entering the canyon produced some wonderful tones of color throughout the canyon.  I am not certain whether these fallen branches were by nature or placed there for us photographers!

Fallen Branches

It is not often you get the chance to meet two great American presidents in one day.  As you can see, I was in “canyon country” and heading down to Monument Valley.  I stopped to take what I thought were some interesting shots when three very nice Irish ladies drove up and got out of their car.  As often happens, I had all my gear set up on my triopd and must have looked as though I was “doing the business”. They asked me to take some shots of them with their cameras and we were all chatting about our trips and things in general when up drove a large truck and out got a genuine Navajao Indian with a great grin over his face.  He introduced himself and told us that his grandparents owned all the land both sides of the road.

“Have you seen George Washington and Abraham Lincoln?” he asked.  We all said, “No”.  ”Turn around then” he said.  And there was the image we had all missed.

I learnt a very valuable thing that day – look behind you there may be an amazing shot to be had.

I am thrilled to have been invited to exhibit at a small gallery in Fuzeta (near Olhao).  It opens tomorrow, 29th June 2011 at 8pm, for a couple of months.  The Gallery Ladora is in Rua Tenente 14 and there are five photographers with some very lovely images.  Do try to make it if you can soon and give Doris, the owner, your support.  Thanks