Namir Noor-Eldeen was one of the most respected Reuters employees in Baghdad. Noor-Eldeen and his driver Saeed Chmagh were killed in eastern Baghdad on July 12, 2007 in an American military action. Reuters/Courtesy of AP-Khalid Mohammed.

“5th April 2010 10:44 EST WikiLeaks has released a classified US military video depicting the indiscriminate slaying of over a dozen people in the Iraqi suburb of New Baghdad — including two Reuters news staff.

Reuters has been trying to obtain the video through the Freedom of Information Act, without success since the time of the attack. The video, shot from an Apache helicopter gun-site, clearly shows the unprovoked slaying of a wounded Reuters employee and his rescuers. Two young children involved in the rescue were also seriously wounded.” more…

More links:

• Remembering Namir Noor-Eldeen by Michael Kamber
• Namir Noor-Eldeen, 1984-2007 by Michael C. Johnston

As recently posted on Scott Kelby’s blog, here is a video of Jeremy Cowart explaining what Help Portrait is all about.

I just signed up today and looking forward to December 12th!.

Here is my favorite quote from Jeremy:

“We don’t want to see your photos. This isn’t about you, or me, or portfolios, or lighting. This is about giving pictures, not taking them. It’s about exposure, opening yourself up, laughing, connecting, sharing and most of all serving for the pure sake of serving. It’s about helping people see the beauty of who they are and what they already have…”

Please visit help-portrait.com for more detail.

Normally, I shoot at 1/60-1/125 of a second with flash. But when I want more ambient light in a photograph, I drag my shutter down to around 1/15 of a second (the value depends on the available ambient light). By keeping the shutter open that fraction of a second longer, the camera is able to pick up more ambient light from the background, producing warmer photos with more detail.

Let’s look at these two photos. Not particularly great, but they illustrate the point. Both were taken seconds apart with a Canon 5D Mark II in RAW format and there is no post-processing other than converting to JPEG, cropping and resizing.

1/60 sec, f/4.0, ISO 800

1/10 sec, f/4.0, ISO 800

As you can see the second photo look so much better. The ambient light makes the image look more natural and warmer.

If you are using a point-and-shoot camera, here are a few tips on how to achieve this effect:

• If your camera allows you to shoot in manual mode, or if you can manually adjust your shutter speed settings, then choose a shutter speed of around 1/15 of a second (again the value depends on the available ambient light). If you can’t shoot in manual mode, night-scene mode should give a similar effect.
• Change the camera settings so that the flash always fires.
• If the camera allows setting flash exposure compensation, you can reduce the flash output (and thus reduce flash shadows) by setting flash exposure compensation to a negative number.

The trade-off with dragging the shutter is that you’re often using really slow shutter speeds, meaning camera shake and subject movement can become factors. Sometimes ghosting can appear around the frozen subject.

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A couple of weeks ago, my wife asked me if I can photograph water drops for the cover of her Ph.D. thesis. First, I thought it might be very difficult without a proper equipment. After reading a couple of articles about photographing water drops I decided to give it a try.

There are also lots of electronic circuits and expensive gadgets on the market for high speed photography. Some of them claim that it is extremely difficult or even impossible to achieve this kind of high speed photography with standard photographic equipment. How difficult do you think it could be to photography water drops without an electronic devices?

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After a long preparation I set up a small home made studio. The picture on the left shows the setup that I have used to photograph water drops. As you can see the setup is very basic. The water in the square glass tray is colored with black ink to minimize the reflections of the glass. The orange thing on the cap of the plastic bottle is a thin plastic tube from which the droplets fall at a consistent rate. Good lighting is one of the essential things. I have used two flashes to illuminate the water surface, one on the camera and one behind the blue transparent film.

It is very important to mount the camera on a sturdy tripod to prevent camera movements. Although, I don’t have a macro lens, a macro lens will probably result in better photographs of water drops.

You also need to turn off AF (Auto Focus) on the lens and set the camera to manual mode. As a target for focusing, I placed a bar code (from a milk carton) in the drop’s path. I set the aperture to f/8 for enough depth of field, the exposure to 1/640 of a second and the ISO speed to 400.

I must say that it requires patience and a lot of  practice to get the right shot. You may need to shoot hundreds of photographs to get a few good ones that you will like.

The Cover Photo

If you have any other techniques about how to photograph water drops that you’d like to share, feel free to leave your comments. I’d love to learn more about photographing water drops.

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WhiBal G6 Pocket Kit cost me $29.95 (no shipping cost to The Netherlands). The kit includes WhiBal Pocket Gray Card, quick-release lanyard, table stand, and lightweight carry case. The card is made of extruded cellular PVC; a sturdy foam-like material. It is slightly thinner than a CompactFlash card and about the size of a business card.

Premium Digital Grey Kard is $ 20.99. However, it cost me $22.98 with the shipping. The package includes set of three color balance cards (grey, white, black) and lanyard with detachable clip and safety release. The cards are made of PVC plastic, each the size of a credit card.

The table stand and carry case are a plus for WhiBal. I found the table stand of WhiBal very useful for ease of setup on tables or flat surfaces. It is not easy to set up Digital Grey Kard as WhiBal. The carry case is good enough to protect the WhiBal card from scratches.

The test image above was captured in RAW with Canon 5D Mark II using AWB under tungsten light mixed with a little daylight. The original RAW file can be downloaded from here.

I corrected the image using “White Balance Selector” (eyedropper) in Adobe Lightroom. Strangely, different areas of the cards produce different results. Therefore, I selected a random point from each card.

The first image was corrected using Digital Grey Kard. It is slightly warmer compared to the second one which was corrected using WhiBal. In both cases the cards provide a useful white balance reference. After this point it is up to the photographer to fine-tune the photographs.

Personally, I like warm tones. Digital Grey Kard gives pretty good results and is cheaper than WhiBal although the money is not the most important consideration for me. However, I found the lack of a table stand inconvenient. Although, it requires a few more clicks with WhiBal to get warmer tones, it is very easy to set up.

Edit (June 7, 2010): Here is the proof that I didn’t pay for the shipping. So please don’t debate the shipping cost.