Life’s A Blur – Behind the Scenes – Part 3

About Life’s a Blur: A photography series that experiments with long exposures and motion blur. Every photo is a combination of movement mixed with a still subject. I’d like to think of each photo like a meditation: stillness in a sea of chaos.

These photos are also part of my Photo and 100 Words project. Since January 2014, I’ve been creating a new photo and writing about it every week. If you’re interested in finding out what prompted me to begin you can read the introduction over here.

(If you’re new to this photography series you might want to read how it all began in Part 1)

Is There a Plan B?

When I set out to photograph these flowers my initial ideas weren’t anything like the photos you’ll see below. I had visions of waterfalls and soft streams of water in my head, but the execution was not working. I bought a water filter for a fish tank as a way to recycle the water in my sink, but that’s as far as the good ideas got. I needed a way to spread the water out, and after building a strange-looking contraption made of plexi-glass, hot glue, and plastic straws, and then fiddling with it for far too long, I decided the waterfall idea might best be suited to photographing actual waterfalls.

I had two bouquets of flowers, a sink full of water, very little time, a bombed idea, and no inspiration. I wandered around my apartment, opening drawers of knick-knacks, and scanning my surroundings for other ideas. Eventually I ended up back in the kitchen, staring down into the sink. That’s when I realized I was staring natural water movement right in the face. All I had to do was unplug the drain and the water would swirl!

 

Love Spell

 Making these photos was a bit like Casting a Spell.

 

The Setup

There were a few challenges I faced while making this batch of photos. The first was the covering up of the puke yellow drain in the center of my clean white sink. The bottom side of a white plate was an obvious choice, but it took a bit of tweaking to level it out so it didn’t wobble. A mix of folded up wads of paper towels, and a silly-putty-like substance I call blue goo, did the trick… eventually.

After all that, there was no way I was draining anything. Not only would it be wasteful, it would be far too time consuming, and I couldn’t risk clogging my sink with flower petals. My solution was a rubber spatula to carefully swirl the water around each flower. Even after all my attempts to steady the plate, the vase with the flower in it might still rock a bit if I mixed the water too hard. I had to be careful or risk getting blurry flowers along with my blurry background!

 

 

Ariel Rose

I get a little weird in this post about Desperation, I mean weirder than usual =).

Adding a Bit of Magic

The first photo I shot was lit very simply. Just a single hot light bounced off the white ceiling shown directly onto the sink scene. I love that first rose shot (Love Spell), don’t get me wrong, but it was just a little on the boring side, and it was time to make things interesting!

I pulled the petals out of the sink and threw in a little bling. I have these little styrofoam balls that are covered in sequins, and they’ve become a go-to background element I’ve used in many of my images. In this case, it was the fact that these babies float in water that attracted me to them in the first place, but the bling was certainly a nice bonus.

As usual, though, the images never really start off how I envision they will. I wasn’t getting any sparkle at first. It just looked like a slightly shimmery, white background – super boring. Even after I added a couple of flashes for some extra pop, it wasn’t turning out quite right. I added colored gels to the flashes and that’s when the magic started to happen. There’s just something about pink and purple that makes me happy, what can I say?

The last problem I dealt with was directing the flashes at the water’s surface without getting the funky color all over the flowers. I made a snoot out of aluminum foil to give the direction of my light more control with as little power loss as possible. It was still a continuous challenge to get the positioning of these lights right when I moved on to a new flower or composition. Sometimes I’d get a hot spot or splotchy color that didn’t spread across the entire frame. It took a  lot of experimentation to get things just right, but that’s just an expected part of my process by now.

 

Glitter Rose

Meditating in a Tornado was the post I wrote when I figured out exactly what this series had to teach me.

 

Trading Order for Chaos

Once I started getting consistent results it was time to break out of the rut. I threw everything into the sink. Sparkly balls mixed with petals, petals from various flowers got thrown together, and I started to change up the movements too. Instead of swirling, I plunged the spatula from the surface to the bottom of the sink to create a bobbing motion on the surface. I had to move forcefully enough to create a few seconds of movement, but gently enough to avoid rocking the vase. There were quite a few blurry flowers.

It was during this controlled chaos stage that I think many of the best photos came out. I felt like the big bang and these were my galaxies! Magic.

 

Rose to the Stars

Sparkling Sea in My Sink… sometimes you gotta think outside the sink.

Rose Galaxy

How do you see the world? How do you see yourself? It’s All About Perspective.

Red Roses in a Diamond Glaze

A story about yours truly, the Control Freak, and how I’m trying to let go.

Dew Splattered Rose

This photo got posted closest to my 1-year Blogiversary, so I did what all nerds do: I totaled up all kinds of nerdy numbers for the whole year of creating I completed. Woot!

Pink Daisy Cyclone

I get a little cynical in Down the Drain… it slips out of me sometimes, can’t help it.

 

Pink Pom Twister

How I Embraced the Chaos, a story about meditation.

 

Pink Pom on Fire

I admit it… I’m a whore… a Passion Whore.

 

Daisy Tie Dye

Painting with Motion is a story about a moment that gave me a little boost of artistic confidence.

 

Fire Flower Flow

What would you think if I told you that photography is a mixed media? That was the point of Unveiling Photography’s Hidden Layers.

 

What’s next?

If you get my newsletter, you already know that a batch of super close up snowflake photos came next. Just like the windswept leaf photos I showed you in Part 2, the snowflakes are inserted into a real snow scene that I blurred in the camera. I’ll show you the scenes behind the art in Part 4 in a few weeks! If you sign up below I’ll make sure you don’t miss it! (Plus you’ll get the chance to win my art EVERY MONTH and a digital download of my artsy fartsy calendar… how can you say no to an artsy fartsy calendar?)

Update: Part 4 is now available, so now you can learn how to photograph snowflakes and get a glimpse of the snow scenes I used to create abstract, windswept backgrounds.