POTW 2/25/07

Another strong week in the favorites folder on Flickr, where it is getting harder and harder to pick which photos will go out front each week.

This flaming martini shot, by Justin Lucarelli, jumped out immediately.

This is way cool. And as I have to shoot a near-weekly illustration on alcoholic drinks for The Sun, I am so gonna steal borrow this technique sometime soon.

Of course, I will feel compelled to improve upon it. But I will be hard-pressed to do so. I'll post about it when I shoot it.

As as for the idea of a flammable beverage, martinis are so high school. I prefer ethanol as my cocktail of choice, with a splash of diesel.

This backlit twilight scene, by HeNkiS da Bro, looks like it could have come right out of the movie adaptation of Sin City.

All it needs is Jessica Alba and a pole. This is awesome light. And if shot for publication, the internal contrast is such that it would repro well on almost any paper type - including the Charmin that we print on at The Sun.

Update: The above photo, it turns out, was done solely with ambient street lights. But I am going to leave it up to avoid confusion as to why it went away. (Thanks for the heads-up.)

Like the drink shot, this multi-flash-blur shot of a book, by Andy Spencer, is another technique that could come in handy for an illustrative photo on winter reading (or almost anything else to do with books.)

If you are shooting for publication, you always want to have some neat tricks in your pocket to save your bacon when you have a mundane subject that needs to be shot for a conceptual purpose.

Just don't pull them out until you really have to, and they can turn what would have been a failure into a home run.

Last but not least is this portrait by Xombi Rises, which gets double duty out of the pan-reflector background light to act as a low/cross rim light.

The effect really gives a three-dimensional effect on the (camera left) arm, the shadow side of the face and, uh, other areas.

There is a lot to like about this light, from the coolish palette to the fact that it is at once soft and still very textural. Nice.

This week I have a couple of long-form posts in the on-deck circle. One is on using speedlight flashes in a college basketball arena, where I shot along with reader Patrick Smith on Saturday afternoon.

Also, I am going to start a new feature called, "Pimp my Light," where I'll take an already very good reader photo in the pool and look at ways it could have been amped up just a little bit more for that "little something extra."

So, look for those in the next couple of days.