It’s that time again when I can update you all with another of my latest assignment. Martin Bailey Photography’s monthly assignment for January was titled ‘Frozen Motion.’ In Martin’s podcast he explained that maybe we could capture something that moved, using a high shutter speed to freeze the motion. Good idea I thought.
I’ve not really had a go at capturing sport, so sport photography was out of the question. Maybe a moving car. But I knew that I wouldn’t have been able to arrange something with anyone with a decent car (My car is a standard estate family car) I thought maybe I could capture a drip, mid air – How hard can it be?
Using my Speedlight, I thought that I could capture such event. Take after take, dropping small amounts of coloured water into a bowl I was able to capture everything but the drip. It turns out that I either couldn’t get it in focus, couldn’t get the drip sharp while it was traveling or missed the drip altogether. I abandoned this idea.
So on with the next idea. A little out of the box, and maybe a little of the same as last months Organic theme. The idea was to stick art and craft letters spelling ‘motion’ to the bottom of a glass bowl. Add a small layer of water, mixed with a little food colouring and carefully place in the freezer. Leave for 24 hours.
The next day, I took a look at the efforts so far. The food colouring however had such an effect that I couldn’t see the letters – it kind of ballooned or swelled in the bowl. But I turned the bowl over to see the letters ‘noitom’ That would be easy, reverse the image in Lightroom. I placed my SB700 speedlight under my glass table, under the up-side-down bowl and positioning my camera above the frozen item – giving me full-on back lighting.
With a white background, blue ice and the word ‘motion’ I had all the elements needed. Titled ‘Motion’ Frozen. Simple. But the voting photographers on the MBP members gallery didn’t give me a great score sadly. But as I’ve always say. It’s not the winning that counts – it’s the taking part.
