More lighting

So I have really been slacking off on the blog posts lately. The simple fact is, it's winter, it's hard to get outside, and I am just not all that fond of shooting indoors. Part of that is due to the fact I have lousy lighting, and with such short amounts of daylight at this time of year, it's hard to get any chance to work with natural light. And part of it is just that I'm not feeling inspired in my own house. However, I have recently acquired a pair of small LED lights on foldy tripod legs, a lot like a Joby Gorillapod. It also has the option of both white and red lights (meant, I believe, as emergency roadside lighting). So perhaps that will at least help with the lighting issue!

What prompted the acquisition of the new lights was my attempt, and mostly failure, to capture some images of caustics. (Here is a description, fancy method, and beautiful images of caustics.) This image wasn't a raging success, but it's not bad, either. I am certainly much more pleased with this than I was with my earlier attempts using a regular desk lamp with a bulb that apparently shines yellow. My set up was a fairly simple one. I was using a sundae glass (tallish, flares out at the top) filled with plain tap water. I played with the angle of the light until I liked what I saw. I considered cropping it closely, but I like the bits of light arcing out at the top and bottom right.

Auto white balance, 0 Exposure Bias, ISO 80, aperture 6.3 and 0.8 seconds exposure length. Clearly, no flash.

Have you ever played with caustics?