A Silly Lighting Solution Done Mostly Just to Do it.

Shower heads. 

I was photographing at a Spa out near Lake Travis when I came across this shower room, just off the massage area. I wanted to shoot a close up with the water running and I wanted the light to come from below and really accent the water stream. I thought about it for a few minutes and then it dawned on me that with little LED panels I could put the lights anywhere I wanted them. 

I stuck them on the floor, directly under the water streams, but first I stuck both of the LED panels into plastic bags. With my camera on a tripod I could select any shutter speed and aperture combination I wanted so I tried to find one that isolated the shower heads from the background without completely obliterating the background. This is the image straight out of camera and I'm sure we prettied it up a bit in the post production but it was a lot of fun watching my assistant's face when she realized I was going to subject my lights to "water torture." 

It's not the first time we've stuck lights in odd and wet places. A few years back we were photographing a zero edge swimming pool at sunset for an architecture magazine and we sealed portable flashes, equipped with radio triggers, into several layers of Ziploc(tm) plastic bags and tossed them into the pool for more illumination. It all worked out well. I did have to jump in and retrieve the lights at the end of the session but I never seem to mind getting in and out of swimming pools....

Here's what our BHS lighting looked like in the shower...

And here's the pool shot:

OT: Life is all about making choices.

Les Miserable. Zach Theatre.

It seems fashionable these days for bloggers to share their weaknesses, addictions, foibles and idiosyncrasies. I think I'm generally transparent enough for most of my readers to discern that I'm indecisive; long term, and too decisive; short term, when it comes to buying cameras and lenses. What seems like a brilliant strategy in the moment seems like a blunder when I look at the long game. I think you can also tell that I can ignore logic, in the service of immediate gratification, better than most. Otherwise I'd still be shooting with the two Canon 5Dmk2 cameras I bought nearly ten years ago, along with the selection of lenses which, in hindsight, I did not appreciate enough. Those cameras would have  served me just as well as the never ending conveyor belt of new camera models and brands I've dallied with over the years.

Maybe worse than others I subconsciously believe