Video cards, part 2

Day 2 brings us a fabulous red card! A brilliant background for contrast. I did use a tripod, but in an effort to allow in as much light as possible, it turns out I was on a bit of an unfortunate angle.

I knew in the drawer of treasures would be cards of all colours, and I was not disappointed! With this one, the white lines around the silver solder are strongest, but the paler red lines on the dark red of the card itself are also fascinating. I still can't decide whether cropping would have made it more powerful, or taken away the magic... So, you tell me! Here are 2 very different crops. Which of the 3 images do you like best?

I need a stronger macro lens. This should be sharper. That issue aside...

This wasn't the center of the original photo, so it's not perfectly focused. But it's still a very cool image!

Auto white balance, 0 exposure bias, ISO 800, aperture 2.8 and 1/25 exposure length, no flash.

Two-for-one

Today is a two-for-one! Using the same physical set up, I took two quite different pictures, and I want to show them both.

The other day, I shared a link to a video of a man Wimp.com called the MacGyver of Photography. I didn't try to recreate what he did there, but it got me thinking about different ways of getting interesting looks. As with yesterday's post, can you guess what this is??

This is a glass of ordinary tap water. I focused the camera on the bubbles on the near side of the glass, and in behind the glass was a piece of green bubble wrap. I really like the way the sides of the glass warp the bubbles in the wrap.

On the flip side is this one. Instead of focusing on the air bubbles on the glass, I forced the camera to look past that, and focus instead on the bubble wrap at the back. The air bubbles look virtually superimposed on the wrap. (And this time there's a neat, slightly different kind of warping happening at the top from the surface of the water. I should have been using a tripod instead of hand-held!)

I really like both pictures, and I love how such a small change makes such a big difference in the picture.