Canons little brown box makes you think outside the box

I recently received my little brown box from Canon for there EOS photo5 challenge. What am I talking about??? Well every year Canon Australia holds a contest in which you receive a box in the mail and in that box are 5 props you use to capture the most creative and imaginative photograph you can come up with.

This years box contained an eye dropper, stick of bubble gum, some incense, a package of confetti and a link to a sound. The first brief was to create a macro image using a liquid or liquids. This was a difficult task as I have never tried macro photography it really got me thinking outside my norm.

I did some research online and got some great ideas but nothing was original and I did not want to just copy someone else's idea. So I figured the best way is to just dive in and get my hands dirty and my apartment wet! I started off by putting water drops on different surfaces to see the effect, cooking tray, mirror, black plastic, lens caps...etc. I then switched liquids, water, oil, wine, juice...

I found the result I liked best was sticking with water drops and using either a black plastic surface (lens caps) or using a DVD. By placing the drops on these two surface I could see a reflection in the water. I started to brainstorm what one might or might not typically see in a drop of water. After some thinking I sketched a umbrella on a piece of tracing paper.

To create a strong reflection I needed to back light the sketch, I taped the sheet of paper to tupperware container which would act something like a soft box. I didn't have a off camera flash cord or cordless flash sink so I had to get creative here to. After setting up my camera on some books and getting the focus locked. I used the Canon RC-1 Wireless Remote Control to trigger the shutter and hand held my Canon Speedlite 430 Ex II flash manually firing it behind the tupperware using the pilot button.

I also tried the same concept but replacing the umbrella sketch with a photo I had previously taken and printed. I changed the surface from the lens cap to a DVD and found I got some really interesting differences.

I found that once I got my angles, lighting, shutter speeds and other detail worked out I could get more creative with water drop placement. Give it a try have some fun, feel free to ask any questions and share your work! For more information on the Canon EOS photo5 or to check out some of the other entries click HERE.

The finished project!