Playing with flash
Speedlites are pretty cool and it is interesting how they can change the way you photograph things. Normally when I am photographing things up close, I would use a wide open aperture, but when you have a speedlite, you can close that aperture down and get more depth of field in your shots making more of your subject in focus.
You can get some pretty cool shots when you have a lot more of your subject in focus when doing macrophotography. A soft focus is cool and all, but when you only have a sliver of your subject in focus, it doesn't always look cool.
I think I was stopped down to like f/11 or f/13 for these shots. Before I started using speedlites for macro photography, I had to choose which part of the dandelion would have to be in focus. Now I am able to get most of it looking sharp, while even being able to make the background a lot darker. Depending on the natural lighting conditions, you can even make the background totally black because the light it all being focused on the subject and the shutter speed is so fast that it doesn't capture anything beyond your subject.
Getting shots like this would be impossible without a flash mainly because of how close I had to get to be able to get the super tiny trichomes in focus.
These images are ones that I took of the bubblegum that I harvested today. I took these right after I got them out of the dark tent and you can see that there are so many more trichomes than there was prior to putting it in the tent. One thing that I didn't take into account was that while it was in the tent, it would be creating a bunch of brand new trichomes along with getting fatter buds, and in doing so, it didn't give the trichomes enough time to change from milky to amber.
I am hoping that most of the amber trichomes are inside the buds behind all of the new growth that occurred during the 36 hours it was in the dark. All I can say is that this bud is going to be fire.
Another thing I did with my speedlite was test it out on a wide angle lens. I was using my 24-105mm f/4 for the rest of these shots. I want to get more into shooting portraits up close using a wide angle lens because you can get some pretty cool perspective and distortion if done correctly.
This is an example of how using a speedlite can make the background go black while still illuminating your subject.
My wife was teasing the cats with a laser pointer and it made for some pretty funny pictures.
Dusty and Keiichi were really interested in the laser. Titus loves the laser as well and you can see him in the background waiting to pounce on it.
I have always wondered why animals are so interested in the laser spots. I have heard that it is because they don't see in color, but they are able to see the red in a laser and it confusing the shit out of them and draws them into it.
I am thinking that Franky might be colorblind even to laser though because he did not seem interested in it at all. He would just rather chill and let the others cats and dogs go crazy over it.
Anyways, those are just some of the random photos I took today while playing with my speedlite. I have some footage from today that I am going to be editing and I am hoping to get some more tomorrow so I can get my first vlog episode up. One thing I realized while recording was that I would much rather just write stuff out instead of speaking into the camera. As a photographer and videographer, I prefer to be behind the camera and not in front of it.