Tuesday 17 January 2012

WW... How to take that M&Ms shot...






Live, Love, Travel


Well I said when I did my first Wordless/Wordful Wednesday post that I wanted to up my photographic skills this year and try and share what I was learning.  Because of the more than kind reaction of people to the shot I took of M&Ms for Scavenger Hunt Sunday I thought I'd show a 'behind the scenes' look at how I did it.  Bear with me on this - I've never done one of these before so if there's anything obvious that I've not said then please let me know.

What I used...


First I got a bowl of brightly coloured sweets - because the M&Ms have now disappeared (!), I've used a tube of smarties for illustration purposes here.  The M&Ms were brighter in colour and there were more of them, ideally I'd have a lot more sweets in the dish.  Then I placed a CD cover on two glasses over the dish - the aim is to put some distance between the CD cover and the sweets to create a blurred background.  For the droplets I used a syringe - but a dropper etc would be fine.  (The strange shadows in this shot are caused by the kitchen worktop down-lighters!)


Next I placed droplets onto the CD case at random - you can experiment with how big the drops are.

M & Ms 11/366
Now for the exhasperating part...

I shot from directly above with my camera set to manual focus using a 55mm lens and with the widest possible aperture.  I also put a macro filter on the lens.  Then it was a case of focussing on the drops and moving backwards and forwards until the sweets came into focus within them.  Don't give up if you can't get it first time - (I tried a few different arrangements of drops until I got one I liked).

Editing wise I was pretty limited as I'm still bereft of my software on the MAC, so I used PIKNIK (Flickr's photo editing site), which is amazingly good!  All I did was boost the colours and contrast and clarified it a little - plus the obligatory sharpening.

That's it! Hope that's useful and you have fun giving it a go (by the way I saw a great version of this on Flickr with hot air balloons in the droplets - brilliant!).


11 comments:

jabblog said...

Fascinating! The kaleidoscopic effect is magical.

Ashley Sisk said...

So cool - pinning!

Jaymi said...

wow that's really great! I tried this once myself and it was a complete fail--I could not get anything to show up in the water drops. You've definitely inspired me to try again. I have a link up on my blog today (and every Tuesday) to share tips, I'd love for you to link this up! http://jaymiblog.blogspot.com

Barbara said...

Jabblog - thanks, it's worth the effort it takes as I love the effect the droplets have.

Ashley - thank you :O)

Jaymi - Hope it works for you, it does take a bit of experimentation. Thanks for telling me about that link-up, have just been over to enter. Your photos are stunning!

Mira Crisp said...

That is a great idea and the picture came out nicely! Great job!

Laloofah said...

How fun, I love this "behind the scenes" stuff. Thanks for sharing! I hope to give this a whirl myself one of these days, the effects are so pretty!

alicia said...

What a great idea! Thanks so much for sharing your tips. Very cool photos. I'll have to bookmark this one to try later. Happy WW!

Anonymous said...

Fascinating! Do keep them coming! You are, officially, my photography guru! :o)

Penny

Barbara said...

LOL! thank you Penny :O) I need someone who is a dog guru today - how on earth do I control a springer spaniel whilst taking it's photo?!?

Anonymous said...

Lots of treats!!! :o)

Penny

Jay said...

Wow .. thanks for that! It's a great shot, and a very interesting technique. I'd have got the droplets and the sweets, out of focus, in the background, but whether I'd have thought of focusing on the sweets-within-the-drops ... probably not!

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