Photography Challenge #1: Photo 24 - The Final Shot

The Sterling Engine appears for the final time in this photography challenge. The spotlight will dim, and the Engine shall return to its place on the shelf to gather even more dust. Take a bow, Engine.

It's been an interesting challenge. I'm glad I did it. But I'm really tired of taking photos of the Sterling Engine, and look forward to not doing it any more.

I will post a Photography Challenge summary and lessons learned once I've had time to reflect some on the experience.

Photography Challenge #1: Photo 23 - Light Painting

I once saw a wedding photographer take a picture, then deliberately wiggle his camera. When I asked him what he was doing, he told me, "sometimes you get interesting results." These days, those interesting results is called light painting.

A flash at the beginning of the shot captures the subject. Wiggling the camera lets bright objects leave an impression.

The drinking bird is in the photo because I was trying to achieve something else entirely, earlier, and failed miserably. Perhaps I will have some success later, and will be able to bring my idea to fruition for the last photograph in this challenge.

Photography Challenge #1: Photo 22 - Second Cylinder Interior

The hardest part of photographing the interior of the second cylinder is positioning the camera to peer inside. Lighting is a snap, since the walls are translucent.

I would have been disappointed to have not discovered dust in there.

Photography Challenge #1: Photo 21 - Alien Encounter

Departing from reality, when properly lit, the second cylinder looks a lot like a containment chamber from a science fiction movie. Especially when inverted.

What's in there? Is it alive? How does all that dust stick to the ceiling?

Photography Challenge #1: Photo 20 - Strobe Progressive Zoom

If the progressive zoom was a dramatic zoom, the progressive zoom with strobe is an LSD trip.

Photography Challenge #1: Photo 19 - Backlight

The second cylinder on the Sterling Engine is kind of an unsung hero. The large main cylinder in the base gets all the notice, mostly because it takes center stage along with the flywheel in the Sterling Engine design. The second cylinder sits quietly in the background, running in quadrature with the main cylinder. Without it, the whole Sterling cycle would not happen.

It remains unsung no more. I wanted the second cylinder to be the feature of this photo, without resorting turning the whole engine around. To do this, I had to light the engine from the rear, but my speedlight cast too wide a beam. I needed a spotlight, so I put a snoot on it.

In this case, the snoot was a roll of brown shipping paper wrapped around the speedlight and held in place with a rubber band, but I'm sure more expensive, commercial solutions would work just as well. This light makes the second cylinder glow, drawing your eye to the unsung hero, while keeping the cylinder in context with the rest of the engine. Some additional lighting manipulation in post really emphasizes it and, as an added bonus, hides all the dust on the base plate.

Photography Challenge #1: Photo 18 - Black and White

I've read that shooting black-and-white is a great way to improve your photography. It's reducing the variables to a single tonality, allowing you to concentrate on how the scene is lit instead of getting lost in all the colors. It's an interesting idea, and may be the theme for another Photography Challenge.

In the case of the Sterling Engine, black-and-white certainly accentuates the dust on the base plate.

Photography Challenge #1: Photo 17 - Progressive Zoom

Dun dun duuuuunnnnnn!

A long exposure plus zoom lens manipulation leads to an effect that reminds me of the dramatic zoom in on a character in a movie (with the requisite drama-heightening music in the background). Ironically, this is accomplished in a photograph by zooming out, but it looks like you're zooming in because of the motion lines.

The other thing it reminds me of is the action lines in comic books. It's heat-to-mechanical energy exchangin' time!

Photography Challenge #1: Photo 16 - Double Exposure 2

In my seemingly never-ending quest to capture motion in the Sterling Engine, I decided to try a double exposure -- one with the Engine in motion overlaid with one of the Engine still.

In actuality, motion images account for only 25% of the pictures in this challenge so far, so it hasn't really been a never-ending quest. Perhaps I've discarded more motion shots than others in this challenge? Hard to say. It's all a blur.

Photography Challenge #1: Photo 15 - Double Exposure

One of the many features my camera has is the ability to combine multiple frames into one exposure. Sure, you can do it in post and have finer control over the end product, but where's the fun in that?

That is to say, it's more challenging to try to compose things through the view finder. And my camera is probably better at photoshopping images than I am.

Photography Challenge #1: Photo 14 - Infrastucture

The support arms are the bass players of the Sterling Engine. They're an integral part of the machine, without which nothing would work, but are mostly ignored. Instead, the fly wheel, cams, rods, and cylinders (the moving bits) get all the glory. So here's to infrastructure, the unsung heroes of the machine.

This photo should also act as a reminder to me (and anyone), that it's always a good idea to take a break and revisit your work before delivery. Right before posting I noticed that the shadow line (effectively a horizon) on the support arm was just off horizontal, so I quickly rotated the image some just before uploading.

As for the dust, I've given up on that battle.

Photography Challenge #1: Photo 13 - Abstract 2

After following some lessons in Strobist's Lighting 101 posts, I randomly positioned my light umbrella directly behind my model for the lesson (a large teddy bear who turned out to be much more patient with me than any living model could be) and got a striking silhouette. I instantly thought to myself, "that would make for a cool Sterling Engine photo," so I tried to recreate it.

Unfortunately, due to the size differential and some positioning issues, the ribs of the umbrella were visible in all my shots. Which led to me thinking, "if I zoom in on a portion of the Engine, perhaps I could get a cool silhouette of that." So I slapped on my macro setup, and proceeded to shoot parts of the Sterling Engine back lit by the umbrella.

One thing led to another. A second flash was introduced. I started getting drawn to the reflections in the base plate that were back lit by the umbrella. Eventually, I captured the image above.

What you're looking at is a support arm and part of the brass flywheel reflected in the base plate, and silhouetted by the umbrella flash. Before processing, it was a stark, cold, black on white image, with hints of gold for the flywheel. In LightZone, I played with the white balance to see if I could remove all hints of color. Instead, I ended up going the other way, emphasizing warmth.

The image evokes the sense of motion in me, even though there is none in the object I was photographing. Sometimes I imagine liquid flowing out of a vessel. Other times I see a multi-legged creature skittering across the frame. I would never connect the Sterling Engine with this photo if I had not taken it.

Photography Challenge #1: Photo 12 - Strobe

When trying to capture motion, a (relatively) long exposure only gets you so far. You can only capture a small range of motion, or capture such a long exposure that everything just blurs out. Believe me, I've tossed a lot of photos in this challenge because of this.

Fortunately, my camera flash offers a handy alternative: Strobe.

By capturing many discrete, bright-enough exposures, and combining them together -- essentially a multiple exposure with a single drop of the physical shutter -- you can capture the sense of motion over a much larger range of motion. In the Sterling Engine's case, the entire range of motion.

Photography Challenge #1: Photo 11 - Motion Blur

What good is a Sterling Engine if the flywheel isn't spinning in some photos?

Sterling Engines are often called external combustion engines. The heat source is external to the engine, unlike an internal combustion engine, where the heat source is inside the cylinders. In this case, heat was delivered via the hot water sitting in the mug that the Sterling Engine was placed upon. I walked up the shutter speed from my initial guess until I could see the blurred spokes of the flywheel, and adjusted aperture for the light as I went.

Photography Challenge #1: Photo 10 - Deconstruction

The idea for this photo wasn't planned in the least. In preparation for Photo 11 in this series, I found that my Sterling Engine was no longer functional. It was binding somewhere in the stroke. To fix it, I had to completely take it apart -- almost. The small, plastic cylinder head can be disassembled further, but I didn't want to mess with its alignment or risk bending the fingers connecting the rod to the head. So I left it intact.

It was a very straightforward dis-assembly. Unscrew the six screws from the base cylinder, and the whole thing comes apart. The only thing holding the black foam cylinder head to its rod (just left of the screws in the photo) was friction.

Some graphite for lubricating the main cylinder rod and reassembly, and the Sterling Engine was up and running again. Just, perhaps, not as efficiently as when it was new.

Photography Challenge #1: Photo 9 - Reflection

This dramatic angle showing off the flywheel, axle, and cams of the Sterling Engine is actually a reflection on the top of the base. After eight challenge photos, I finally cleaned the base of the engine, returning it to its near pristine, mirror-like condition that it had coming out of the box.

I rotated the image 180 degrees in post, making it look like you are gazing up towards a giant flywheel, when, in fact, the camera was pointed down.

Photography Challenge #1: Photo 8 - Silhouette

Back lit by the sun, the Sterling Engine makes for an imposing figure, light bouncing off the flywheel to illuminate the rear cam and support arm in a warm, golden light.

I was kind of hoping to capture a lens flare, since I was shooting with my kit lens, but I guess I positioned the sun inappropriately. I do like how it's diffracting around the one spoke, though, which is why I put it there.

All without going blind, shooting into the sun. Hooray for live view!

Photography Challenge #1: Photo 7 - Abstract

Moving the Sterling Engine around to position it for shots, I caught the reflection of the brass wheel off the top of the base in my camera's live view. I thought it looked interesting enough to stop, compose, and take some shots to see how it would turn out.

I like how it's pretty much the polar opposite of tack sharp. It offers a dreamy impression of the Engine's flywheel and piston rod instead of a realistic representation.

It's Monet instead of Courbet, and not an area of photography I've considered.

But maybe I should.

Photography Challenge #1: Photo 6 - Base Plate, Edge On

This is a photograph of the Sterling Engine base plate. What looks like an innocuous piece of stainless steel gains a lot of character when zoomed in real close.

The white layer on top is the gasket for the base cylinder. It keeps air from escaping in ways you don't want it to.

The grey layer below is the gap between the base plate and whatever surface it was resting on. It's grey because the engine blocks all but the stray light that manages to bounce around between the surface and the reflective base plate.

Everything in between is the stainless steel plate, maybe 1mm thick.

At least I think it's stainless steel.

Photography Challenge #1: Photo 5 - Cam Macro 2

Another macro technique I picked up is reverse-lens photography, where you mount the lens backwards on the camera. So instead of reducing the image to fit on the sensor, the lens magnifies the image. Combined with an extension tube, you can get serious magnification. And a boat load of light loss.

The down side to reverse-lens photography is the camera no longer controls aperture, so you have to do it manually with an adapter ring. When you stop down, the view through the viewfinder is stopped down, making it hard to see anything, let alone focus. Live view, once again, comes to the rescue. At least on a tripod. If you're hand-holding the camera trying to shoot out in the field, I don't know how useful it would be.