Had an idea about chocolates. If I once start eating them I just keep on going, so I decided to take pics of them instead .

I was 85 yesterday and had 2 boxes of choccys given to me for my birthday.

I decided as a New Years Resolution to limit myself to 1 per day [Choccy not box] It will be a strain but I will try my best to keep to it.

Trouble is Belgian chocolates are so delicious.

An idea.

I saw on the Sony DLSR forum an item about making a diffuser, so i thought I would see if I could do it cheaper.

I went down to Weston and bought a lidded beaker in the Pound Shop. The first step was to cut a hole in the top to take the flash. As I had bought it on impulse I had to judge the size. The flash would only just fit so I had to cut down in the rim.

This allowed it to fit as a push on.

I took pics with it set at 90 degress, 45 degres and then straight.

160th at f16 direct is fair enough with a good spread of light through the 'frosted' bottom of the beaker. The others had to be taken at f7.1 and although correctly exposed are not in my opinion showing enough depth of field.

I have come to the conclusion that if I want to do a bounce flash portrait I will either use a bare flash head on the ceiling of a room as at Trellis House where I simply bounced the flash. Or use for straight shots, my inflatable diffuser that was a sight cheaper than Gary Fong's offerings.

I was posting some abstracts on Flickr and noticed a reference to a fractal programme called Teira-Zon. It is a free to use site and will make fractal and abtract images. I downloaded and find it is very interesting. I like the way in which the colours are graded across the images.

Who would think that the far left image could be transformed into the abstract pic on the left.

I uploaded it - the abstract - on morguefile Monday 14th Jan and it was used on the Spanish medical site when I looked and searched on Google Tuesday morning.

Nice to know that it is not just useless rubbish I am making with my idle moment games.

Abstracts.

Been having a bit of fun making abstracts a la Damien Hirst from pics.
Found to my amazement that some of them posted on http://www.morguefile.com/ have been downloaded and used on a Spanish medical site.

Blonde
You sit before me, I adore your shape

the ample swelling in your upper parts.
I worship you for you are truly blonde

and I would never leave you for another.
I drink deep of your beauty as I sip

the heady nectar of your golden form
I could not be unfaithful to you love

for I am just a slave who worships you.

A very cheap flash box can be made by cadging a polystyrene box from a local shopkeeper. Tropical fish are imported in similar boxes . I got mine from a friendly greengrocer that had his chilled brocoli arrive in them.

Cutting an A1 sized sheet of paper can get a good seamless background and for taking pictures of light coloured objects or clear glass a tinted paper gives good contrast to the background.

Holes are cut slightly smaller than A4 copy paper and the sides are then covered, the flashes are positioned at around 9-10 inches away with diffusers on them. This gives a good spread of light on the A4 paper and to the inside of the box. I am lucky in that my old Minolta 360 px flashgun will link to the Sony Alpha camera via an adaptor and my Vivitar 383 flash is fired via a slave.

It should be possible though to fire both flashguns via slaves by covering most of the on-camera flash just leaving enough light to trigger the slaves, If the guns are too powerfull and cannot be stepped down then all that is needed is to move them further back from the box.