Not such a bright idea ...

My submission to the January "Photographers in Perth" "In Homage" project.

I'm not sure if this is stretching the definition of "In Homage" but this shot was certainly inspired by three people/groups.

First, David Hobby over at Strobist and his CFL picture. He's trying to draw peoples' attention to switch to CFLs (compact fluorescent lamps) from light bulbs, I guess this is the second half of the picture! I admire David's effort in dispensing knowledge about off camera flash and forming the community that he has to promote this idea and I've certainly learned a lot from his posts and "On Assignment" articles. The method of making the bulb float in midair is pretty much identical to what he did (although I used a thin metal rod because I had less space to hide the supports - and of course I only got one try to break the bulb!).

Secondly, Graham_WA and his sound activated strobe photos. I've been meaning to do this sorta thing for a while and seeing Graham's work finally got me off my backside to actually implement it. The actual circuit I used was based on the circuit here.

Finally, Mythbusters and their ingenuity in building devices to solve a problem - in this case, to resemble their hammer swinging rig (Episode 67, original air date November 26, 2006). Sure they get the odd thing wrong (and generally they revisit it anyway) but just the sheer energy and comedy that goes into each episode is great I think.


Strobist info:
Minolta AF4000 strobe below left on minimum power and reflected back by a white sheet on the right, triggered by a homemade audio trigger placed about 30cm away from bulb. Old Starblitz optical slave at camera bottom with blue gel shooting at the black cardboard background. Lightbulb itself is a 100W 240V bulb powered from a 30V current limited power supply (in case the hammers short the bulb out). Exposure was 8 seconds with the bulb broken at about the 7.5 second mark.

More setup details coming soon if there's any interest ...