Thursday, June 10, 2010

TRIUMF

Last week I visited TRIUMF, Canada's nuclear and particle physics research laboratory and the world's largest cyclotron particle accelerator.  This was part of Photoclub Vancouver's participation in TRIUMFs Artists in Residence program.

The tour went to 3 locations, stopping for 30 minutes at each.  It was like I had imagined, but way cooler: lots of really complicated looking equipment with exposed wires and metal.  I spent most of my time shooting details with a telephoto lens.  In the end, most of my favourite shots were not details.  Probably because I was running around like an idiot and didn't have the patience to experiment with composition (especially considering how awkward and time consuming it is with a tripod.)  I played around a bit with coloured flash, but found it impossible to use more than one colour: there was so much ambient light that the longest exposure I could muster was 2" (f/22).  Unfortunately, there weren't many people around.  I was expecting to get one or two shots of a guy in a white lab coat with exploding grey hair scurring about, but no such characters materialized.

Here's a sample (a more comprehensive set can be found on Flickr)

This is a tank being filled with liquid nitrogen.  I almost discarded it initially because it was significantly overexposed.  Turns out that after adjusting the exposure, it contains some lovely steam details.  Other shots of this tank render the steam as a fuzzy textureless gray mass.

This is a shot of someone working in a clean room.  I focused on the clear vinyl wall separating the room from the outside, which results in a neat texture.

Here's a hollywood shot of some shiny pipes.  I thought I would get many more like this.
Lastly, a detail shot of a frosty spigot.  This one was the result of a bit more persistence.  My first few shots weren't very interesting.  Eventually I noticed a tall blue concrete pylon in the background, and positioned myself so it would appear behind the spigot.

Thursday, June 3, 2010

Hollywood Flash

It's been a while.

Tomorrow I am visiting TRIUMF (a nuclear and particle physics lab) for the purpose of taking photographs.  And I haven't been practicing lately, let alone made any formal preparations for this particular task.

I have a few ideas though, and one of them is to snap some cool looking stainless scientific equipment using, in Joe McNally's terms "Hollywood Lighting".  I.e. colourful light.

So I dug around the house and found a blue plastic bag and a semi-translucent red pencil case to use as flash gels.  My test subject is a pewter sculpture of a cyclist.  My aim was to get one shot with a mix of blue and ambient light, and one shot with both blue and red.


First up, the blue.  I quickly tossed the idea of mixing ambient light and went all flash.  The ambient light dilutes the blue, and I find the mix of blue light and hard shadow (as opposed to blue light, and less blue light) to be much more interesting.  This, in my own fantasies, is how a nuclear and particle physics piece of scientific equipment should look.

Nothing fancy here.  Shot at f/10 and 1/400s, with flash about 1/4 (IIRC) so as to overpower the ambient light.  The flash spills onto the background and makes it all blue.  After opening it up on the computer it dawned on me that this could have easily been done with an un-gelled flash, by adding a blue tint digitally.  So, a waste of time.

The red/blue mix was both more difficult and looks way cooler.  Since I only have 1 speedlight, I used a 6-second exposure, which gave me enough time to flash it blue at camera right, scurry to the other side of the table, and flash it red.  f/18 was used to minimize ambient light.  I tried to aim the flash so that the blue would hit the backdrop too, although it doesn't look like I was very successful.  Hopefully I can pull something off during the real deal tomorrow.