Today, I took a different approach to a challenge that was posted the Photowalk:Michigan facebook page. The theme was water, so instead of you typical old shoots of what I already did with beaches, lakes, and rivers. I decided to do something different.

What I decided to do was, try my hand at capturing splashes. As this was my first time attempting this as I seen maybe two videos last year and they had more lights than I did. For the setup I used an Alien Bee AB800 and a Yungnuo 480 speedlight. Both lights had a grid on them the alien bee had a 10 degree and the speedlight had an 30 degree grid I believe.

Without any true direction, I used an orange to help create the splashes. I tried to use different positions with the camera. Two positions was in front of the tank and one was directly above the tank. At that position there was a lot water splashes that went directly towards the lens. In the end I was happy with the outcome of the end results.

Shot directly from above - orange is visible in shot

Just like any first attempt at doing something for the first time, there is always a trail and error phase. With this there was plenty of it, as I had to position and balance out the lights as they were two different sources. Just trying to find the right angles. One last thing that I have to remember because I am working with water because I was working right next to an outlet things could have gotten disastrous. Next time I know to move the tank away from the wall and all outlets. I can't wait to try this again on a larger scale or with color water or paint.

Sunday I was invite by Janita of Del Reo Imaging to her shoot baby shoot then lead into her shoot with her cousin Jazz, who is aspiring to be a model. After the baby shoot it was time to work with Jazz. As Jazz has never really modeled before, she needed a lot of direction. I don't mind at all because it also helped me with giving direction. It was a fun shoot. Jazz came with a variety of clothes so we had different looks happen.

After a while we took it outside to the streets, in the first location it didn't like the lighting. I was using the street light, but the street light was not providing the look I was going for. Eventually, I decided to use the flood light of the house which fair a tab bit better, but I still was not liking the situation. So the last spot we moved to was the Purple Rose right across the street from us. This actually a very cool spot with the purple wall, it stood out and added something different to the shots.

Although this was a fun shoot, I only liked 10-15% of the final images. There were some unforeseen elements that ruined the shoots and a few out of focus shots that were actually my faves. With that, I would definitely want to do a redo of this shoot. I was not satisfied with this shoot.