Keri's Photography

Keri’s Photography

Images taken by my daughter Keri for her A-level Photography in 2009

Theme – Water in Motion
Normally photographs are taken in automatic mode but by setting the camera to manual a whole new world of challenges is opened up. All of these images were taken using a Canon 40D mounted on a tripod and a cable release used to minimise any camera/lens movement.

Using extremely short exposures, less than 50 microseconds, allows us to see the water ‘frozen in time’ in a way that is not possible with the human eye. These images were taken using flashguns to give the very short exposure durations needed to capture the fast moving water droplets.

To look at how droplets are formed and to pick the right time to take images Keri produced a timed sequence of water droplets which can be seen here.

Striped Droplets

Blue Droplets

Turn that frown upside down

Coffee and Cream anyone?

Lighting setup
Bottles hanging from ceiling with water in them.
Red plastic tube comes down into the clamp so that the droplet falls through the IR trigger beam. Directly under the clamp is an IR trigger beam.
The Blue/Yellow acrylic sheets form the main background colours, a Red sheet in the water gives the pink colouration.
The flashgun on the right is illuminating the background and the one on the left illuminates the droplet. Both flashguns are triggered wirelessly.
In the foreground is a box of tricks that allows a time delay to be programmed between the IR trigger beam being broken and the flashguns being fired.

Normally the droplets are photographed in darkness but for this setup image a 0.5 second exposure was made so that the room was exposed correctly when the flashguns fired.

Bibury 11/09/09
Using long exposures, upto 30 seconds, water takes on a completely new, almost etheral quality which can take images to a new level. To get the long exposures required in strong daylight several neutral density and polarising filters were used.

Forest of Dean 30/08/09

Theme – The Sunny 16 Rule

In photography, the Sunny 16 rule (also known as the Sunny f/16 rule) is a method of estimating correct daylight exposures without a light meter. Apart from the obvious advantage of independence from a light meter, the Sunny 16 rule can also aid in achieving correct exposure of difficult subjects. As the rule is based on incident light, rather than reflected light as with most camera light meters, very bright or very dark subjects are compensated for. The rule serves as a mnemonic for the camera settings obtained on a sunny day using the exposure value (EV) system.

The basic rule is, “On a sunny day set aperture to f/16 and shutter speed to the reciprocal of the ISO film speed.”

For example:

On a sunny day and with ISO 100 film in the camera, one sets the aperture to f/16 and the shutter speed to 1/100 or 1/125 second (on most cameras 1/125 second is the available setting nearest to 1/100 second).

On a sunny day with ISO 200 film and aperture at f/16, set shutter speed to 1/200 or 1/250.

On a sunny day with ISO 400 film and aperture at f/16, set shutter speed to 1/400 or 1/500.

As with other light readings, shutter speed can be changed as long as the f-number is altered to compensate, e.g. 1/250 second at f/11 gives equivalent exposure to 1/125 second at f/16.

An elaborated form of the Sunny 16 rule is to set shutter speed nearest to the reciprocal of the ISO film speed and f-number according to this table:

Aperture	Lighting Conditions	Shadow Detail
f/16	Sunny	Distinct
f/11	Slight Overcast	Soft around edges
f/8	Overcast	Barely visible
f/5.6	Heavy Overcast	No shadows

Using the Sunny 16 Rule as an idea all of the following images in this theme have been taken using an aperture of F16 on a Canon 40D fitted with a 17mm lens.

Most of the time a 2 stop graduated neutral density filter has been used to balance the sky exposure to the foreground. A polarising filter has been used to reduce surface reflections and increase the colour saturation.