Srichand Pendyala's photostream  

The Golden Gate from one of my favorite spots, far away from the jostling crowds and noise.
Peaceful and majestic.

Commercial glass has many imperfections. Cheap goblets at Supermarkets, more so.

The large bubble at the center of the head of the stem as well as many tiny bubbles along the stem have caught my attention many times. They have a distracting, yet unique characteristic to them. I have 4 such goblets and I can distinguish between them quite comfortably, just by the shape of the large bubble at the head of the stem. Its almost as though the bubble adds a persona to the glass.

And so, I made many many attempts at capturing the bubble with my camera. I have tried high-key setups, low-key setups with many different angles but all in vain. Right up to this day.

Today, I decided on a very different setup. I placed two stacks of books on either side, about 10" apart and covered them with black cloth. I then placed a glass cutting board across them and finally a white card stock over the board. I placed an analog flash at its 'Low' setting right under the glass board and focused and shot straight at the bubble at F/16. The result, was this dramatic, almost SOOC shot (save for some very minor cropping).

View this on large, to see the tiny bubbles in the stem as well.

This is a text-book LSM shot. Dark background with translucent fringes.

The only 'tweak' is that I've used a single flash fired into the fringe camera-right instead of two uniform lights.

Still getting my feet wet with flashes and creative lighting. I'm willing to take any pointers you can throw at me!

I was supposed to take the 10-20 on an outing to meet Mr. Buckingham. I got a couple of lightning shots instead. Oh well.