John R Jennings

[SinglePic not found]These colliding drops created an inviting water-slide.

Today I worked on capturing colliding water drops. The first water drop is formed from a rebounding column of water, then image is captured the moment the second water drop collides with the first. Much of the process I gathered from Martin Waugh a leader in designing water drop sculptures. You can see his work at www.liquidsculpture.com. He also did a cool show on discovery called “Time Warp” where they captured colliding water-drops on high speed video.

In case your wondering, I am still doing liquid drops. This one I took last Sunday. Unfortunately, the weather didn’t feel as cool as this drop of water and about 6 o’clock I had to call it quits as the studio was over 90 degrees.

For the past year I have been working on a time lapse project at my work. It is the new construction of our Arts & Allied Health Building at Pierce College Puyallup. You can see the whole project at: http://picasaweb.google.com/jrjenningsphoto
For this image I decided to try my hand at High Dynamic Range(HDR). I followed the directions of Matt Kloskowski‘s article in the July/August Issue of Photoshop User. I used Lightroom and the Photomatrix plugin for Lightroom to combine 3 images at different exposures.

For the past few weeks I have been working with this Calla Lily. This exotic South African lily has been a popularized by the works of painters like Georgia O’Keeffe, and Photographers Imogen Cunningham, Man Ray, and Edward Weston.

I used two Vivitar 283 speed lights. I set up the main flash with a radio controlled trigger and the other an optical slave. I replaced the optical sensor on both flashes with variable resistors (Vivitar VP-1) with the power set at 1/64th. I set my camera at ISO 100 f:11 and 1/250 sec. (the fastest flash sync speed for this camera).

Henri Cartier-Bresson strived to capture the “decisive moment”. A moment that lasts only a fraction of a second but leaves a message that speaks volumes. While Cartier-Bresson was very good at anticipating and capturing unique events, they were still events that could be perceived by the human eye. In this project, I will be capturing events that happen so quickly; the only way to see them is through high-speed photography.
While I don’t expect anyone to write volumes about this project, I do hope that you will learn something from this article and enjoy the images that passed through the lens of my camera.

For my first experiment I wanted it to be as simple and economical as possible. I just wanted to find out if I could do it. While you could use any liquid for the subject, I chose to use milk as the medium for my first experiment. I poured some milk in an old developing tray on the table to catch the drops and hung a container of milk from the ceiling. I ran one end of a piece of vinyl tubing into the container to siphon the milk out and small pair of vice grips that pinched the tubing to regulate the flow of milk coming from the tubing. One major drawback of this setup was that I had to wait for the hanging contraption to stop swinging before I could start taking pictures.

Stopping Action with a fast shutter speed
To begin with I started using halogen floods for lighting. A main and a fill with the main light having one stop brighter than the fill. I set the camera settings at ISO 800 and shutter speed of 1/1250 sec. to stop the action of the drops.

I had my camera setup with an infrared remote shutter release and I would trigger it when I thought the drip was about it hit the milk in the pan. Unfortunately, I was stuck to about f/5.6 and the limited depth of field that goes with it. This problem is not so obvious with the image on the left but in this image on the right there is not enough depth of field to have the near and far sides of the corona in focus. The next step was to move to a high-speed flash to stop the action and have enough light to extend the depth of field…

After a week of photographing at the ocean I am compelled to build on what I have worked on while I was there. My favorite subject was the patterns created in the sand by the wind and I am tempted to continue with this as a “patterns in nature” theme for this project.
This image Sandwaves is a straight print on Ilford Warmtone Glossy paper that I have toned first with selenium 1:30 for 5 min. and Kodak brown toner 1:33 for 10 min. I like the warm feeling but the tone is too red for my taste.

Form and Content
Some other ideas for subject matter for this project include: chambered nautilus, spiders web, flower, water ripples and Cloud formations. This list I expect will grow as this project continues. These images will be the form for the project; however, I still need content. While this could be presentation for purely asthetics, I feel that that I would be missing an opportunity to share…

Corny Post
Although “Cornrows” may appear to be up-side-down it acually the way the picture was taken. I had the cob laying on a bench and the sun was comming through the glass door at a low angle. Although I am not completely happy with these three images, I feel that they are much closer to my vision of this project.

These next two images may appear to be negative and positive, they are really original prints, same object, but just a different background. The patterned background comes from a the backdrop that was a quilted paper towel.

Ferns
I worked with these ferns with the purpose of showing the patterns within them.

When taking this picture I was interested in out of focus lines at the top.

I spent a few hours working with a fond. I was trying to capture the spiral pattern of the leaves as they unravel. Most of the exposures were around 1/30th of a second or more so there was a lot of waiting for the wind to stop blowing the plant around. I chose a white background to contrast with the darker edges of the plant.

Final Selection
As with all classes, you have to turn in some work. Although I am pleased with my final selections, I would like to complete this project with images that show patterns in nature from different elements. Air, water, earth, plant, animal etc; while my unlimate goal has yet to be completed I did settle on the following images for this project.