This shot was taken by filling a hot air popcorn popper with finished pop corn and turning it on to blow popcorn into the bowl. The background was a black piece of cloth taped to the wall of my kitchen, 6 feet behind the bowl. The hardest part was to get the lighting correct. I could not get enough light to freeze the popcorn in flight with a bounce flash even at 1/500 exposure. It seems that the more energy that the flash expended the longer it needs to stay on during the exposure and therefore the longer the effective exposure. In fact I found that I did not see a significant differnece in motion blur regardless of the shutter setting, it was more to do with the flash power. In the end I had to remove the flash from the camera, place it on a second tripod above the popper and project the light straight down though the built in flash disperser. I did very little post processing in photoshop. Just a little saturation to bring out the yellow in the bowl. Next time...closer crop.
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ok, cough it up. you always put a little more effort into your shots than most; how'd you do this? what was your set up? this was one of my top picks and i want to try it myself.
This is interesting. I think I like the dark background also. Might make a good poster.
I would imagine this could be a rather difficult picture to take and not have the popcorn too white or too contrasty.
Nice idea - it's really neat. Black background makes the kernals look great. The yellow liquid (butter) or whatever it is on the right edge does not work.
I like your picture... The flying pop corn are well disposed in the space. Maybe I would like to see more of the cup because the transparency effect is cool and we don't see much of it in the cropping... a9
ummm ... popcorn .. I wish I could have this every day ... the lighting seems a bit too bright but besides that a really good shot .. I like them in mid air like that. 8
This is a great shot. I like the lighting, composition, focus and the movement of the popcorn is great. I'm not sure what the object on the right hand side is supposed to be. It detracts from the rest of the photo, cropping that out would have been better. [8]
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