Lps 11

LiquidAir

Pulse

Edit: Latest version



Orginal Post:





I shot a couple hundred of these last night. There are couple things I'd like to do differently, but with my schedule over the next couple weeks I may or may not get a chance to reshoot.

pyroPrints.com

I like both. First one has better collor, second better smoke. I think you may need to straighten them out.

Travis

Dayum Ken, you just made every idea that I had shrivel up and run away to die somewhere. I'll agree with Pyro and say I like #1 the best (because of the added fog) but both of them are great. Oh, back to the drawing board.

Dee

ha, ha, great concept. I like the first one, appears more dramatic.

Greensquared

Great concept! I prefer the first one.

I am immediately trying to figure out what is in the blender and am at a total loss with the first image (is that good or bad?) The second image it looks like strawberries and with the smoke encompassing it more fully, I am instantly reminded of the two blenders I burned up while trying to make smoothies.

Emily
PS. Wanna borrow some frogs?

fashiznitsngrins

I prefer the angle and dramatic effect better of the first one but also was confused as to what is in the blender. It looks like there are strawberries in the second one (?) but in the first one it looks like maybe a cell phone???

Love the concept and look - very cool!!

Pat664422

I was just thinking of showing a blender in action as well, but I had envisioned nothing this cool (pun, I think).

I think I like the chilled smoke effect in #2 more than #1. It looks like in #1 you've got a warp core breach in effect. But I don't really like seeing the solid object in a blender - it begs to be shredded!

And as to what you actually have there in the blender in #1, I was thinking it was a sandwhich at first, but then someone mentioned an electrical device and now it looks like an old pda of some kind?

quark

Will it blend?

(ok, you all probably saw these but someone had to do it).

PS - excellent photo!

fashiznitsngrins

quark wrote:

Will it blend?

(ok, you all probably saw these but someone had to do it).

PS - excellent photo!

Never saw that before... so is that an Ipod in #1?

LiquidAir

Thanks all for your comments. A few answers...

What is in the blender? Water, food coloring, and dry ice. The blender wan't actually on (or even plugged in) while I was shooting; all the bubbles were created by the dry ice. The toughest part of this image is acutally the base which is polished chrome and reflects everything in the room. There was some headscrathing involved in lighting it. I have had several people comment that the bottom looks like white plastic rather than chrome in the image which is a by product of the strategy I used to diffuse the light. I do have some ideas for how to make the it look more like chrome.

As for that big block of dry ice, I can easily remove it. I have lots of shots of the blender from the same tripod location and am sure I have several that are nice and bubbly but with no visible ice. I'll just borrow some bits and pieces from a different shot.

On the tilt: the image has some horizontal keystoning because I didn't get the camera perfectly aligned with the blender. I shot this at 17mm on a 5D which is wiiiide and small alingnment errors are exaggerated. I am going to try some geometric corrections on it to see if I can square the whole thing up.

Hmmmm. A frog you say?

LiquidAir

I plan to take another shot at the blender; probably tomorrow night if all goes well. I did manage to capture this shot over the weekend which amused me and is at least vaguely in theme:

After Hours at the Pedal Pool

indiegirl

at first I thought this might be some sort of weird sea monster! Cool scene but I think the blender shots are stronger...

Nikolai

Ken,

LiquidAir wrote:

Pulse

I'd say #2 is more about the machine, while #1 more about the smoke. Since the theme is machine, I vote for #2.
Awesome job, as always!

Nikolai

LiquidAir wrote:

I plan to take another shot at the blender; probably tomorrow night if all goes well. I did manage to capture this shot over the weekend which amused me and is at least vaguely in theme:

After Hours at the Pedal Pool

Nah, too vague..
Nice shot, though

LiquidAir

indiegirl wrote:

at first I thought this might be some sort of weird sea monster! Cool scene but I think the blender shots are stronger...

Yep. That was my conclusion too. I find Pedal Pool interesting because it conciously breaks the convention of landscape photography to hide (or remove) all signs of modernity, but its story and connection to the theme are a tad oblique. So, I went back to shooting blenders last night and I got several that I like. I processed, uploaded and entered this one one I felt was the best fit for the theme. Luckily it came out of the camera looking pretty close to this so not much work was required. I may get the chance tonight to process a few more.

Pulse

LiquidAir

Nikolai wrote:

I'd say #2 is more about the machine, while #1 more about the smoke. Since the theme is machine, I vote for #2.
Awesome job, as always!

Thanks! I found it trickier than I expected to get a shot of the blender that was really focused on the theme. Most of my favorites have elements in them which dilute the message. Shooting last night I think I finally hit on a compromise that I am reasonably happy with.

Dee

I've seen several photographers use dry ice. Really dumb question -- where and how does one get dry ice and how much does it cost. How long will it "smoke." Can you keep it once you open it? Or once opened, that's it?

LiquidAir

Dee wrote:

I've seen several photographers use dry ice. Really dumb question -- where and how does one get dry ice and how much does it cost. How long will it "smoke." Can you keep it once you open it? Or once opened, that's it?

I got mine at Safeway for about $1 a pound. They keep it locked up so you have to ask someone on staff to get it for you. I used about 2 pounds each night of shooting. I broke off small pieces (dry ice breaks much more easily than water ice) and dropped them in the blender; each small piece was good for maybe 5-10 minutes of smoke depending on the size. When the water in the blender got too cold, I would pour a little boiling water in to warm it back up again. Make sure to use gloves when working with dry ice as it can burn bare skin. As for keeping it, the leftover from each night had sublimated by the next day, so I had to buy a new block for each night of shooting.

LiquidAir

I took a lot of pictures of that blender. Here's another from last night's shoot:

Nikolai

LiquidAir wrote:

I took a lot of pictures of that blender. Here's another from last night's shoot

With the exception of the keystoning - awesome!

LiquidAir

Nikolai wrote:

With the exception of the keystoning - awesome!

Not fully corrected, but better:

shatch

By the time you get this entry finalized, you will have learned a ton, and won the round. Great work!!

Nikolai

shatch wrote:

By the time you get this entry finalized, you will have learned a ton, and won the round. Great work!!

Dee

Safeway? Who would have thought? Thanks for the information... I'll keep that in mind. The photographer I was thinking of used his with watermelon, really added to the shot. Another used dry ice to simulate fog in a miniature landscape. I see one has to work fast with dry ice though.

Travis

We used to put in people's drinks during hall crawls in college. I wonder how much damage we ended up doing? It probably explains why I now have this wierd, nervous facial tick and sixth finger......

LiquidAir

shatch wrote:

By the time you get this entry finalized, you will have learned a ton, and won the round. Great work!!

Thanks! I have over 300 blender shots on my computer and less than 24 hours before I get on a plane to go on vacation for 5 days. I am going to have to call this entry done long before I am done processing all I have much less fully explored the subject.

Currently my inclination is to stick with Pulse as my entry because I think it has a stronger theme related story. When I get back, plan to reprocess Blended with DxO optics to see if I can straighten out a few more of the kinks in the perspective and I have a few more ideas of blender related shots that I'd like to work through before I tear down the setup.