Photography Magazine

Now that you’ve learnt what sound photography is all about (PART I), you are ready to take your first few sound photographs. You will need -

1. A Camera with the capability of long exposures, preferably a T option.
2. 2. The sound switch mentioned in the first article in this series
3. A flash unit with connector cable
4. The props – in this case, a glass of water and a few ice cubes

The most important stage in all studio photographs is the initial set-up stage. You get the set-up wrong, and theres no chance you will get a decent photograph at the end of the day. To set up the sound trigerred splash photo, lets start with the lighting. Keep the glass of water stationary with a black background. Make sure there is enough distance between the glass and the background, to get a totally dark black background on your image.

Now, place a light behind the glass, in between the glass and background. Place it so that it is lower than the table on which you’ve kept the glass, to avoid lens flare. Focus the flash towards the glass so no light falls on the background, fire a test shot to see if the lighting is ok – and if it is, you are ready to go to the next step.

You will be dropping an ice cube into the water, to let off the sound switch with the ‘plonk’ sound made by the ice as it hits the water/glass edges. Since this really isn’t a loud sound, you will need to ensure the microphone gets all the sound it can from the glass. It is great to connect the mike to a longer cable, to the circuit. That way you can place it next to or even under the glass, if the glass doesn’t topple over…now the switch should get triggered by the slightest sound in the glass. Try it out by gently tapping the glass with a fork. If it fires, you are ready to roll. If it doesn’t, check the position of the microphone and all the connections (flash to circuit and mike to circuit). Make sure the flash is ON!

Next, we set the camera to time exposure, and use the same aperture that you had for the trial shot. Remember, the shutter speed wont matter since you are going to darken the room. Go ahead and darken the room now. Fire the shutter. Drop the ice cube in the water. The flash should fire with the sound of the ice striking the surface of water. Once this is done, close the shutter. Now, check out the results! You may need to shoot a few images before you get the right splash effect…

We’ve just learnt a technique that allows you to shoot splash images with a cost-effective set-up, without an expensive strobe unit..

When you think of panoramic photography, the image of a horizontally long photograph comes to mind. Panorama is nothing new to the world of photography. Its been around for almost as long as the art of photography itself, but it is also true that this form of photography has evolved just like everything else. Let us get into the basics of panoramic photography.

Panorama was earlier done using an extra long bit of sheet film and a lens with more than average field of view. If you do not really know what that means, dont worry about it. Today you can make panoramic images with any film or digital camera, and digital does make things easier where image stitching is concerned. On that note, let us learn a little about image stitching which is the basis of panoramic photography. Try this for a start - place your camera on a tripod and shoot your first photograph as you normally would. Then, rotate the tripod head to the right and frame your second shot making sure that the two photographs overlap each other to about 25% at least. You could shoot a third and a fourth image as well. The resulting images would look something like this…

It is easy to see now, that the 3 images can simply be combined to make one panoramic imahe. But how do you actually ’stitch’ the images together? We shall get to the stitching options later. For this introductory exercise, let us simply make 3 prints and paste them on a hardboard or something similar, so it is understood what is required. Do not be put off if your first attempt does not immediately provide good results. One thing you need to keep in mind is to make sure your tripod head is aligned well. For this purpose, a tripos head with a spirit level would work well. It is possible to shoot a series of overlapping images hand held, with care - but it would never be perfect shooting this way. In any case, if you stitch your 3 or 4 images together by sticking them side by side so that the overlapping areas create a panoramic effect, you would have something like this as a result -

 Do note that the images have been photographed vertically so that one has the maximum vertical field of view or coverage. We have the luxury to shoot as many images as needed to cover the horizontal axis, so let us always remember that the vertical axis is not being stitched, and so we shoot with the camera held (or mounted to the tripod) vertically. Go ahead and experiment with image stitching to get the feel of panoramic photography. Every photographer remembers the excitement on creating his or her first pano stitch. The images above have been photographed hand held. One can see where the stitch is not perfect, but this is probably what your first few stitches would turn out as. Try sticking your images on a black card to create exciting panoramic cityscapes and landscapes.