Challenge: Balls & Spheres: Mine, Champagne Bubbles, where's yours!

[Winston Rockwell]

This post I have copied from an older thread, so it appears as the first on this new thread! however, I think the image fits well into the theme of the new thread and provides an excellent start! Asher


one more image... again, not particularly close (indeed, i took this shot from over 6 feet away) but there's precious little choice in terms of which discussion forum to post such things on, so here it is. it's a soap bubble, perched on a stalk of wild grass. a young girl was blowing bubbles as she walked through a park. i was walking some distance behind her, having come there to photograph birds, and had only my 80-400 lens on the camera. most of the bubbles popped or drifted off, but this one lit on the grass without bursting, so i thought i'd try to get a photo. i hurried to as close as my lens would focus, composed the image to produce a nice, contrasting background (i had to crouch to get this angle; the dark area is actually blackberry bushes in shade about 15 feet behind the bubble), and snapped 3 shots before the bubble burst. 30D, 80-400 lens @ 350mm, 1/250 @ f5.6.

[Eric Hiss]

Hi All,

I'm Eric Hiss and I'm an artist working primarily with photography but also sculpture.

I love to explore the patterns in nature and the beauty of all things small, but I also like the technical bits that one must learn in order to get in so close. I have been told my images have a quality of scientific discovery, and that might be true.



© 2007 Eric Hiss Abstractions of the Mundane series - Champagne Bubbles

Please give me your impressions and show your own work with the round shapes as the key parts of an artistic photograph

Eric

[Asher Kelman]

Hi Eric,

This is a delightful picture. Very orginal and well executed. I like the out of focus flatter shapes in the background. This is like silver spheres flowating in the sky.

There's a sense of movement and travel. For that reason the picture is intriguing and open to repeated recruitment of our own imaginations and wonder about the future.

Kudos!

Asher

[Eric Hiss]

Hi Asher,
Thanks for your comments. This image was taken with my canon 90mm TS-E lens with extension tubes and a 2x converter attached. Hand held outside on a rare sunny summer day in San Francisco. I had the glass in one hand and the camera in the other. This makes a great 18x24 inch print and at that size you can see in the reflections of the bubbles the garden and the outlines of myself, wife and friends in lawn chairs.

Cheers!
Eric

[Asher Kelman]

Originally Posted by Eric Hiss

Hi Asher,
Thanks for your comments. This image was taken with my canon 90mm TS-E lens with extension tubes and a 2x converter attached. Hand held outside on a rare sunny summer day in San Francisco. I had the glass in one hand and the camera in the other. This makes a great 18x24 inch print and at that size you can see in the reflections of the bubbles the garden and the outlines of myself, wife and friends in lawn chairs.

How far away and on earth did you get focus? Did you just move in and out until the green light went on or do you have a split field in the viewfinder?

You should have had your wife take a picture of your setup! Maybe you could open another bottle of Don Perignon and restage the shoot so we can see how you did it?

But you didn't use an tilt or shift, or did you?

Asher

[janet Smith]

Well, actually rusty old buoys, these were taken at Achiltibuie, NW Scotland with Canon 5D & 24mm lens, I was drawn to the contrast between the natural wild beauty of the area and the rusty old remnants of man, yet they looked completely right there, like alternative huge boulders, and yes they are as huge as they look being about a metre tall.



1/800 f3.2 handheld, too windy for a tripod, it was my intention to throw the background out of focus so the buoys were the centre of attention.


1/2000 f3.2 handheld, too windy for a tripod


1/50 f13, pushing my luck hand holding this, but it's just aboutOK

[Angelica Oung]

Hope this isn't pushing the theme too far...a crop of an image I did earlier with a street performer.



@Eric: What a shimmering, elegant image. The shallow depth of field really messes with your sense of scale...

[Nill Toulme]

I have lots of shots with balls. ;-) Here's an old favorite:

Nill
~~
www.toulme.net

[Asher Kelman]

Hi Nill,

Interesting that this picture is about balance.

The ball is balanced against the chest, at least for the moment,

The roundness of the ball is repeated in the head and both are partially scene but these are familar so our completion of both shapes and objects are a symmetry of mental effort on out part.

This is a simple and pleasing composiition and original too; one to put on the desk or wall in the office.

Asher

[nyschulte]

Only one drop visible, but the effects of many more show nicely

It was raining into a rusty flat form.



Nicolas

[Asher Kelman]

Nicolas,

Your picture is an illustration of diffraction effects if you cxould see them.

I like the pattern and the color. I keep a library of textures and one like this would be perfect. Take an image some thing pale like William's portrait of a girl with a MUA and blend with this.

Asher

[Tom Robbins]

Just for fun -



Dew takes a couple hours to dry on a muggy morning.

Tom


Copied this from Tom's original thread!

[Dawid Loubser]

The area I live in is called the Highveld, as it is the more northern dry (grassland) part of South Africa, very high above sea-level. To my knowledge, Johannesburg is the only city of it's size in the world to be found at this high elevation.

The entire Johannesburg metropolitan area is (very typical for a third-world country experiencing an economic boom) vastly over-built, ......................Yet, within these vast seas of concrete depression, there are outcrops ("koppies" in Afrikaans) which reflect the true spirit of the highveld - a dry grassland with rocky outcrops populated by hardy trees and shrubs.

This weekend, as the sun was setting opposite a koppie, the moon was rising (in direct opposition to it). The turbulence of the air being heated by the sun's last rays falling on the rocks can clearly be seen, and the combination of colours are, to me, very typical of this place. No vibrant hues, just the colours left to us by the sun. I wish I could have been part of the great trek of my ancestors, just to have seen the highveld when everything looked like this.

"Highveld moonrise"



Technical comments:

EOS 1D MkIIN @ ISO800, Tokina 800mm f/8 @ f/16, 1/1600s, lens mounted on monopod...........

Of course, at this range and at sunset, the scene was very hazy, so I substantially increased the contrast of the image when I processed the RAW. At this stage terrified of camera shake with this monster lens (I've now confirmed that it is bigger - well, at least longer - than a EF 600L) I used ISO800, and in the rush of the moment it didn't occur to me that this was overkill.

The purple haze to the right is the effect of the setting sun and the pollution - I didn't want to mess with the sensitive colours in this image too much, but I am considering changing the hue of the haze to be more blue, as I find it a bit distracting - a good idea?

Copied this from Dawid's original thread!