i expect there will be many of these for this week's theme... this is an epic fail... i was trying to catch the second hand moving... and the fact that i feel i have to tell you that this is what i was trying to do is clear indication of failure because it should be obvious... but my husband stood there staring at it for a full minute and then said "i haven't a clue what you're trying to do" - so, uhm... yeah... epic fail ;p
it took me several tries to get the right shutter speed and light... used my ikea lamp and macro lens... processed from RAW in lightroom, converted to bw in nik silver efex... sepia toner added...
It may not be what you hoped, but I certainly would not classify this as an epic fail. I love your processing, use of b&w, and lighting. I like it, but I am just a novice.
Err. You did catch the second hand moving. There are very few watches where the second hand smoothly moves, it ticks (and tocks) from one point to the next, and you can clearly see that in this photo. Pretty much a perfect representation of the theme I would have said (except the theme is moment*s*, so you'll have to do over to show several seconds of movement!)
Why was it difficult getting the lighting/shutter speed right?
Nice shot, even though you didn't achieve what you wanted. I photographed a metronome and it took ages to get the correct shutter speed, through trial and error. In the most successful shot I used the flash to capture the flash to capture the arm then the slow shutter picked up the movement afterwards.
Love your POV and the processing and the light is fantastic. There was a great photo on here a while back where they'd taken the second hand moving - they used a longer exposure about 5 secs I think. But like Cheese Biscuit says it's not smooth so you had shadows of where the hand was rather than a sweeping movement.
@Cheesebiscuit yeah - i realized after the fact that the problem was how it was moving... it took me forever to figure out the timing because i'm sloooooooooow! just tons of trial and error...
@pennyp i tried the second curtain flash but couldn't get it to work... i think i just couldn't figure out the lighting... with a 1.6 second shutter speed i couldn't get enough light without the flash to get the first part of the movement without blowing everything out when the flash came on, even at the lowest setting... quite possibly i missed a trick on this, tho'...
Wow. our watch looks hairy! It's kinda creepy. Oh, and always remember that Thomas Edison had 10 000 epic fails before he perfected the lightbulb - so you're in good company! ;-)
I don't think the fact that it isn't the shot you intended takes away anything from its brilliance. I love the close, close, closeness accentuating all the detail and the wonderful POV. Fav xx
Maybe an epic fail in terms of what you wanted to achieve, but not from my point of view! The thing is when you release a work of art into the world what matters is what the viewer/listener etc makes of it, not what you intended! This is great!
Why was it difficult getting the lighting/shutter speed right?
@pennyp i tried the second curtain flash but couldn't get it to work... i think i just couldn't figure out the lighting... with a 1.6 second shutter speed i couldn't get enough light without the flash to get the first part of the movement without blowing everything out when the flash came on, even at the lowest setting... quite possibly i missed a trick on this, tho'...