Spy Journal 3.0 Filtering the web for you

Starting with what do people do all day? The New York Times has an interactive chart of what people do all day broken by various demographics. Very cool to view.

Change the world – start by changing your underpants. Pact is a lingerie company with some major differences. Check out their website.

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Miranda got given a camera for her birthday and has been learning some things from me. After reading this post about photographing with your child we went and did a photo shoot with Laurel Pearce. Today I decided to do water drop splash photography after reading this instruction article.

I set my room up as in the photo below. The two light stands supported a dowel (though these could be anything) from which I hung a bottle with string. I pierced a small hole in it and then twisted the cap to allow water to flow in short drops. I placed a low bucket on the table (on a towel) and an ice-cream container upside down in the bucket. On top of that I placed a black dessert bowl filled with water. The red bucket under the table is supporting a flash aimed at the whiteboard balanced on the chair. For the white background shots i ran this flash at half power. For the coloured shots i draped material, towels, blankets and a green shopping bag over the whiteboard and used full power. For the lighter colours I moved the chair away from the camera as more light was being reflected. The second off camera flash is on the green box to the right of the bowls. I also tried this on the left for the last few shots I took. This flash was on a low power setting with the diffuser over the flash. The camera was attached to the lens mounted on the tripod. IT is a Canon EOS 50D and the lens i was using is a Canon 70-200 IS USM 2.8 L Lens. I had ISO 125, Shutter 1/250 and the aperture varied from 3.5 for a couple of shots through to 16 to 20. Most shots were on 16 or 20. The different colours reflected light differently and I need better exposure on those shots – hence the experimentation with the aperture settings. I was zoomed right in at 200mm and the camera was as close to the subject as possible for focus. I turned off AF focus and using the manual focus focused on a piece of wood placed over the bowl right under the drips. I experimented with the height of the camera on the tripod also to get more or less of the water surface.

For the last few coloured shots I put some milk in the bowl (changed to a white bowl with a blue inside surface) and some milk in the bottle. Not pure – just mixed it in with the water. I was particularly please with the reflection of the background coloured light on the  milk along with the blue from the bowl interior.

All the good shots are up at Flickr in the Studio Shoots – Stills Set.

A selection are below.

We had an awesome day yesterday. Shannon Plummer who is a wildlife photographer of some repute came to our place to shoot our reptiles. She was kind enough to let me mimic her setup and get plenty of good shots. I didn’t get a picture of the whole setup unfortunately so I have added a drawing below.

The background is a white sheet lit from below the table with my flash on full power. She used two more flashes on stands over the table to left and right through umbrellas. I used a single flash higher up and pointing down from slightly behind and to the right of the camera.

The table top itself was covered in a white cloth and then a white sheet of perspex (acrylic) with a glossy surface placed on top.

Clearing the browser from all the links to cool tools and content for today.

Microsoft Stuff

• Windows Home Server Power Pack 3 BETA – Includes enhancements for Windows 7-based computers
• Seadragon.com – Convert Any Image On The Web Into A Deep Zoom Image
• Deep Zoom Composer Updated To Fix An Export Related Bug
• Streaming Media in Windows 7 – Streaming your collection over the Internet – unfortunately this doesn’t work if your Windows 7 machine is joined to a domain
• Sneak peek of what’s coming in Windows Live Movie Maker
• Live Video Streaming: Guide To The Best Broadcast Services To Stream Your Video In Real-Time
• What's new in Windows 7: Tour Windows 7
• Get a Live-Updating Bing Wallpaper Windows 7 Theme – i did this it worked really easily
• Megawoosh Slide for Microsoft Project – this is a funny little video that has gone viral in Europe. Heads up from Duncan’s blog.