The idea
When I was putting rice in the rice bowl for rinsing the rice, the free flow of rice into the bowl, captured my attention. I just felt a sense of beauty in it and decided to capture it.
Settings
- Shutter speed : 1/200 sec
- F stop : f/5.6
- ISO : 400
- Lens : 35mm f/1.8 prime lens
- Camera: Nikon D3100
- Lighting : External flash ( attached to the camera)
- File name : DSC_6445
The setup
Kept the rice bowl on the table, set-up the camera stand and clicked a few shots without flash to make sure composition is correct. Poured rice into the bowl and kept experimenting with ISO and f stop. Found that ISO 400 and f stop f/5.6 was ideal. Then I tried with flash, but the rice grains were blurred. If I increased the flash, there would be too much light( reflected back from the wall). So decided to up the ISO to 400 and the results were good. But it was just rice in mid air……….. not very interesting.
Then this idea came to mind, that if I could have the rice bounce back, there would be multiple lines of rice moving, that is, there would be one line of rice falling on the ground, another line of rice, jumping back from the surface( at different angles). I also had to make sure that the background does not interfere with the white color of the rice.
I had to have a black background. Hunted around the house and found two cardboard flaps which was used to keep photo frames. Used that as the background. Marked a place on the surface with the marker, so that I know exactly where to drop the rice grains, otherwise the rice will be out of focus, if I drop the rice at different places for each shot. The surface where the rice was falling was granite, make it almost a mirror like surface ( which I had not thought about). I also made sure I wiped the surface clean with clean cloth, so there was no dust or other particles.
The camera was kept pointing at a 30 degree angle (thanks to ball head of the tripod) so that we feel more depth and hence not parallel to the subject
Used remote control for controlling camera shutter, since there was only 1 person to pour the rice and also click the photo 🙂 Also being close to the subject ( falling rice grains) helped me choose when to click the photo
Asked God for forgiveness for wasting 100 grams of rice
I must also admit that the two other shots, I took along with this was not this dramatic, so that was defnitely God’s grace . Also the tripod made the whole experience much easier, especially while composing the shot( could not have done the ring of heart without it). Definitely a worthy investment.
Post processing
- Colour was distracting( rice had a yellow tint), so removed colour
- Cropping was done to bring focus to the centre
- Highlights were reduced and contrast moved to 100%
Original photo ( with no edits)
