Information about business transfer and new portfolio links

May 19th, 2009 by MjP

MJP-Photographs business is transferred to Studio Foxy Oy at spring 2009.

Please take a look of our new company web-site at Studio Foxy Oy.

I have also updated portfolio page to links Studio Foxy Oy’s portfolio pages.

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Photo backup integrity

April 26th, 2008 by MjP

In certains situations your photo backup storage might get corrupted (e.g. DVDR disks will not last forever) so you need a tool to detect possible errors on your photo backups. I use small free program called FileCheckMD5 ( http://www.brandonstaggs.com/filecheckmd5/ ) to determine offline backup integrity. After the files are backed up I will run the program to generate md5 hashes from each file. After a period of time I can recheck if the files are corrupted on the backup disk by running the program again. This way I can determine possible errors on disks and correct the situation if needed.

For actual backup process I will use 2BirghtSpark SyncBackSE (http://www.2brightsparks.com/downloads.html) backup program in the future (I have 30days trial version on the testing). The software is similar to Nero BackItUp  but have much more options and works better than old version of BackItUp program which I have been using. The backed up files goes to external hard disk and the copy of that hard disk is located on off site location.

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Portfolio updated

March 18th, 2008 by MjP

Portfolio pages are updated with new images and whole new gallery called landscapes and nature is added. Please take a look and leave comments about images. The portfolio pages can be found from here: (MJP-Photographs photography portfolio). Each of these royalty-free images can be licenced from agencies listed in left column of this page. New images will be added to these portfolios in near future.

Thanks for looking!

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Whiskey in the jar part II

March 16th, 2008 by MjP

After unsuccessful attempt to photograph ice on the whiskey glass I decided to try it again. This time main idea was to use artificial “ice cubes”, non drinkable liquid and quality crystal glass.

Friend of mine told me about article in foodesigns.com e-magazine where ice cubes where made from transparent candle gel. So I went to local craft shop and bought small pot of candle gel (cost was something like 9 euros). Here is what I did to get these artificial ice cubes shown on photos in this post.

  • I poured melted gel to rectangular shaped vase about 1 inch thick
  • Waited until the gel was firm again. Then I did take the gel “block” out from the vase and cut it nice cubes
  • After that the fun part begin (and most dangerous one). I removed little bit gel from edges of the cubes (make more realistic looking cubes). Then I took candle to melt the edges carefully (remember that gel is used for candles so it will burn quite easily. So be extra careful on this part if you try to do fake ice cubes). You can easily mold cubes any shape you like with heat source.
  • Result was realistic looking fake ice-cubes which does not melt in room temperature :) .

Just cubes in the glass:

Empty glass with fake ice cubes

And the whisky (coke with water) on the rocks:

Whisky with artificial ice cubes

I think the result is quite nice and these cubes were great to work with. Next time I had to try it with soda and other liquids. The lightning setup was similar to first attempt to photograph ice and whiskey.

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Whiskey in the jar

November 13th, 2007 by MjP

Ingredients:

  • Single malt whiskey
  • Heavy duty glass (bought cheap one)
  • Clear ice cubes
  • Camera and lightning props

Expected results:

A drunken photographer? Maybe, lets see what happens…

Setup:

Making the clear ice cube: If you want clear ice-cubes you need use distilled water and boil it twice (boil the water, let it calm down and boil again) and freeze them slowly. I did not have the distilled water so I tried do with tap water.

You can also use use artificial ice-cubes manufactured by Trengove Studios or similar cubes from other companies like Condor Foto (ice melts really fast, it is easier to work with artificial ice).

The key light (60cm soft box) was located behind black paper (gobo) which had 25×15cm hole in it. The glass is put on the small black tube to make isolation on photoshop easier. The amount of the black on the edge of glass can be controlled by moving glass forward to key light direction.

The fill light was located right side of the camera (angle of 45 degrees) to get nice reflection to left side of glass and correct color to whiskey. To get correct color I used yellow filter about 20×30cm with 50x 50 cm “frost paper”.

Here is my lightning setup diagrams:

Top view:

Top view of whiskey glass studio setup

Front view (camera side):

Front view of whiskey glass studio setup

Results:

Results were not good as I wanted them to be. I made few mistakes during the shoot and preparation. The tap water I used for ice cubes did not make them clear enough even with boiling the water twice. The ice was clearer than usually, but not clear enough to get really nice looking ice. I will use artificial ice next time to get more professional looking image. Other problem was the frost occurred on the glass which did not look nice (it would look nice on the beer bottle but not in the whiskey glass). Other mistake was to use cheap whiskey glass. The low-quality glass have tiny scratches and defects all over so this means lot of photoshop work afterwards.

First image without ice cubes:

Studio photograph of glass of single malt whiskey

and the second one with the cubes:

Photograph of glass of single malt whiskey shoot in the studio.

Conclusions:

  • Home made ice cubes are not clear enough if made from tap water (not sure if clear enough even made from distilled water).
  • Use only high quality (crystal) glass to avoid excessive use Photoshop. Cheap glass has many defects and tiny scratches all over it. High quality crystal glass does not seem to have these problems.
  • Lightning filter (gel) needs to be used to get correct color on the whiskey.
  • Artificial ice cubes will be used next time (real ice melts too fast and changes liquid outlook and it makes unwanted frost on the glass)
  • Whiskey tasted good Laughing

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