The Little Squirt

The Little Squirt is my favorite of my SQUIBB images. I randomly thought up this idea of the orange and the mist and I had a lot of fun. I bought a basic black bed sheet from Walmart and then used a speed light, squirt bottle, and camera to capture this shot. I set everything up in the study room at my apartment and shot away. I sliced up an orange and with the light behind the orange slice, I would squirt my squirt bottle and then snap the photo as the mist was floating in the air.

I kept my F-stop at 11 and my shutter speed was 1/250 sec. For post editing, I pulled the image into Photoshop and sharpened the orange so that the cells would be more defined.  I also darkened the edges of the photo and some of the foreground so that the orange would be the central focal point.

Set up with my black sheet and squirt bottle. Photo taken by Douglas Phan.

Shining Yellow

I used the same setup for this photo of the yellow sunglasses. I bought the glasses at DI (Deseret Industries) and they worked great. Instead of spraying the squirt bottle above the subject I sprayed directly at the sun glasses. Even though there is no mist, I love the spray of water on the lens.

My setting were the same as they were for the orange photo with an ISO of 100 and focal length of 39mm. The focus is slightly off on this photo and even thought I did some sharpening in Photoshop it still lacks a little clarity. Despite the incorrect focus, I find the image to be very interesting.

Childlike

This little boy belongs to the managers of the apartment I live in. The dad came down with his little boys in a wagon to water the lawn and I got this one of Reggie. He is almost one year old and so cute!

I took this outside in the evening light with an F-stop of 11 and shutter speed at 1/250sec. I used Photoshop to change the coloring a little bit as well as to get the background to be a little darker than I was able to get with my camera.

Tulip

These tulips grow right outside my bedroom window. I love the red and yellow and their vibrant color. I took this photo in the evening time and I worked hard to capture just one tulip by itself.
I kept my ISO at 100 and had a focal length of 55mm so I could get a little closer. In the original image you can see more of the tulips next to this one, but I used the brush tool to darken them so that my subject has good contrast from the background.

The Critic

My roommate Natilee is a character. We went to the Kirkham building on BYU-Idaho’s campus and with my speed light I was able to get many of these photos in a dance studio. I love that she is looking over her sunglasses at me. I feel like she is surveying me with her blue eyes.

I kept the shutter speed at 1/200 and F-stop at 11 to get the black background. I didn’t do any editing in Photoshop, which is unusual for me. I really like the raw image and didn’t feel the need to enhance her portrait further.