Thursday, I had a request from an upcoming wedding to do some cool photos using sparklers. I wanted to make sure I had ballpark camera settings ready, so I borrowed Nick for a quick test drive. It's hard to remain perfectly still and draw a heart in the air, so it isn't perfect, but it's still fun :)
Friday, I made a big mistake. I took a 30-min "nap" around 5pm. And that was it. I was out for the count until the next morning. Except for around 1:45 when I woke up, looked at the clock, and thought, "Oh no! my photo!". This is officially the first "make up" photo I've had to do so far. Missed it by just under 2 hours!
Saturday was day one of a multi-day wedding I was shooting. I found out last minute that I wouldn't be second shooting, but actually leading. I was a little nervous, but it was a TON of fun. I became good buddies with my second shooter and we've been texting all week about photo stuff.
It also helps that the bride was ridiculously pretty!
Monday I broke down (despite my firm affirmations at the beginning of the year that I would not!) and took an iPhone photo as my daily. I did go home afterwards and pull out my big camera, but the sky had already changed so much on the drive back from my students' that I just kept this one. I'm only slightly regretting caving.
Tuesday, Nick and I were missing each other as we've been on opposite weddings all weekend (and will be again this weekend) and keeping opposite schedules. We took a break from work around 8pm and just crashed together catching up internet browsing and watching some Netflix.
Wednesday, Nick got up and made us breakfast to go before we rushed off to work. It got a bit smokey as we were multitasking, but instead of being concerned it went a little something like this:
Nick: The house looks cool full of smoke!
Me (coming around the corner to see): Great, now I'm going to be late for work! (Goes off to fetch camera).
Tonight I have a bit of teaching (in 5 minutes so I better get off of here), and Nick's stuck in meetings until late. Later, I shall relax, work on my computer, and ice my poor, poor foot that is thinking about re-fracturing after being on it so much all last weekend. It must stay in one piece until AFTER this weekend's two-day wedding! It must!
love the sparkler photos - what settings did you use? I tried some last week as sparklers were brought out unexpectedly but they were terrible! My boys tried hearts and to write "love" - looks so easy when others do it but we ended up with sparkler spaghetti!
ReplyDeleteThanks! I don't have the settings on me for the living room heart, but I know I took them with me when I did the bride and groom, so they will be similar. I used ISO640, f4.0, and ss 12 seconds. Note, I didn't set my shutter for 12 seconds. I used a remote and bulb mode and just closed the shutter when we were done drawing in the air, and it just worked out to being 12 seconds exactly.
DeleteOther tips (besides bulb mode), would be to use a tripod. If you're holding it yourself, you'll add to the wiggly-ness. Also that heart wasn't perfect by any means with the bride and groom. The living room one we figured out on our own and I didn't have to correct it in PS (other than to erase ghost hands). But we only got the top half of the heart drawn with the wedding couple. I made the rest in PS ;)
thanks Laura thats a big help. I wasnt ready for the sparklers when I shot them (they suddenly apeared at a wedding) and we ended up with several incomplete hearts. My boys also tried writing LOVE which looks so simple in other photos but ended up looking like hyroglyphics!
ReplyDeleteWouldnt have known any PS magic had happened in your pics. Appreciate the help :)
No problem! I hate it when things suddenly appear out of no where at an event. I had fireworks at a wedding last month and I had literally less than 5 minutes notice and only an approximate location of where they were going to go off :P. I think writing with sparklers would be super hard for what it's worth. I bet a lot of photo-shopping goes on there ;)
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