Alien in the Water......

I was all set, to venture out into the world this afternoon, tripod in hand, to capture a magnificent landscape.  The location I had in mind was a place I had driven by many times, just off of a main road.  It wasn't until this fall, when the leaves began to fall from the trees, that I noticed that behind them was a great view of the lake below.  I like these hidden gems....places that lie right in front of our faces, yet we pass by them daily without giving so much as a glance.  I love it when I get to make a picture of one of these places, so that when I show it and people ask where it was taken, I can see the look on their faces when I tell them, and they realize they've passed by it a million times.....

So I was headed to lunch with a friend, and then on the way back I was going to stop off and capture that money shot.......then I got called in to work!

Getting off of work 3 hours past sunset doesn't help, when your shooting an unlit landscape!  I'm always up for developing my Strobist skills, but I just don't have enough Speedlites in my bag to light an entire lake......what would David Hobby do?

Come up with a Plan B, that's what......
I quickly ate my lunch, then grabbed out my Kindle Fire to search for the weather report.  As it would turn out, the first major snow storm of the new year was on it's way, and would be in full swing right about the time I would be getting out of work.  As much as I love snowy scenes, it didn't sound like the ideal setup for some street photography tonight.  As I racked my brain for a few ideas, I decided to try something I had never done before......

Since I mainly shoot portraiture, I rarely get to focus on shooting anything that's purely artistic, so I decided to do something abstract.  A quick trip down the grocery isle for some food coloring on my way out the door, and I was all set.

Photographing food coloring, dropped into a jug of water sounded pretty easy......not so much.  There were a lot of duds, before I finally found my rhythm.  As it turns out, the food coloring doesn't exactly do what you want it to do....it pretty much has a mind of it's own!  Auto focus was out of the question.....it's incredibly difficult to focus on moving liquid!  Eventually I got a few good ones, and a whole lot of ideas to try it again sometime in the future.......this won't be the last one of these that you see on this blog!

I kept jumping between a few different photos, but always came back to this one.  It looks pretty cool....and I swear there is an alien face in the blue color!  Look closely, he's there......

-MT