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2016 05 02

Snaps : Nightlife

SCooper Blog, Snaps cinelens, club photography, featured, nightlife, ramshackle, samyang 24t1.5 0

Last month I visited my good friend and former colleague and boss Sam Short. Sam was on the same course as me at the University of Bath but during his time studying set up a thriving photography business specialising in nightlife and club photography. He took me on as his fourth photographer to join the team and turned me from a quiet nerd who rarely left the house in to a better, more confident and outgoing photographer.
I’m sure there’s a lot of people who would probably look down on club photography and for the most part I think that’s because there’s a lot of trash out there being produced however as a company we really cared about our image and the work we did and this reflected in the photos we produced. In just a couple of years we were covering every major club and night in the city.
I’ve moved away from Bath and the nightlife work now to pursue engineering and while I do miss the status and friends I made in the industry, I know deep down it was the right thing to do to push my career forwards.
During my visit last month I was able to follow Sam round as he worked at the o2 Arena in Bristol which presented a great opportunity to take some photos of my own using my Samyang 24mmT1.5 lens that I’d always wanted to test out in a club environment. Typically all clubs shots we produce are shot with an external flash so I was just trying to have a play with some low light, ambient light photography, challenging but I think I got some great photos out of it. Check out the full album here.
If you do get a chance, check out my friends site and work at Soul Media.

2016 05 02

Builds : Waterdrop Rig Part 2

SCooper Blog droplet, flash, high speed, photography, water, waterdrop 0

In the two weeks since my last project udpate I have been working pretty hard in my evenings and weekends soldering away to get this project completed, not as easy as it sounds when I spend most my time at work soldering and designing circuits only to come home and do exactly the same thing; it’s a good job I enjoy it.I ended up breaking down the controller in to its individual elements and constructed each of these boards seperately. This meant that alongside the brains of the controller, an Arduino Uno, there were the following separate modules and boards:

Power Rail
Valve control
Front panel
IR Trigger
Trigger Controllers

As a complete unit, the electrical design is pretty simple, probably a few things that could be specified better to improve speeds but the majority of the control complexity will come from the actual software.

Power Rail Board

Utilising a single power rail board is something I’ve opted for in a lot of my recent projects. I find that rather than attempting to jump wires all over the place, the electronics remains much more manageable and easier to debug if I simply provide a single rail in which all additional boards receive power from. For the purpose of this build, the entire system is being powered by a 12v adaptor, the solenoid valves I have selected (very generic ones off of ebay) run off of 12v, and everything else runs at 5v provided by the voltage regulator on board the Arduino which will provide enough juice for this project.
For the final build of the controller, which came about after many rewiring attempts due to my inability to size wire lengths correctly I have utilised molex kk series connectors for ease of connection and disconnection of various modules from the system for testing and installation.

Valve Control Board

Valve control takes advantage of the low current draw of the solenoids of approximate 100mA and just switches power on and off through an NPN transistor. I have included flyback diodes across the solenoids to counteract back EMF and valve connection is done through 2.mm mono jack socket.

valveControl

Front Panel

The front panel consists of the user inputs and screen. I’ve chosen to use a 4×20 monochrome LCD for the screen and this should give me enough space to display all the informaion I need to. These screens are also really easy to interact with making use of only 6 of the Arduinos outputs. I’ve also made a very small board for the screen to cut down on power connections to just two wires (5V and GND).
Alongside the screen are 5 PTM switches that will be configured to act as a directional pad and a selection switch. In hindsight I would have liked some lighter touch and smaller buttons as these required a pretty heavy touch to operate.

IR Trigger

The IR trigger I have made is probably a little overkill and may require some rework. I’m currently using an IS471 IR detector which includes a built in modulator to control the IR LED to eliminate the effect of outside IR interference, like I say, overkill, but may prove beneficial. This is connected to the main controller through a 2.5mm stereo jack plug. I also included a visible LED on the board that lights when the detector can see the IR LED which should help in setting up.

Trigger Controller Board

To remove the potential for any stray currents or voltages reaching the camera electronics I am using 4N26 optoisolator ICs. These little chips consist of a built in diode and photodetector that connects the outputs when the diode is powered whilst also ensuring the two circuits are electrically isolated. They are incredibly simple to wire as shown in the schematic. Four of these ICs allows me to individually control the camera shutter and focus (connected through a 2.5mm stereo jack) and two flash guns (connected through 2.5mm mono stereo jacks).

The completed electronics ends up using all but one of the Arduino Uno’s IO pins.

Inside the controller

Completed system with valves and triggers connected

Software Design and User Interaction

State machine architecture based off of menus

Now that the hardware was all completed and tested, next came the controller software. Being unsure exactly what I would require out of the controller I decided that too much control would be better than too little as so outlined the software architecture as a state machine consisting of different user menus each allowing control over different elements.
I had to be very careful with the user interaction during each state ensuring that it was as expected and consistent but then did not overly complicate the interaction and increase the depth of sub menus and controls unnecssarily.
The final software was complete in a single afternoon and evening of coding so could probably do with a bit of a rework and tidy up down the line but I’m pretty happy with the level of interaction and control available.
The final software consists of:
Run Menu: This is used to initiate a drop sequence after setting the other parameters. There is quick control access to the flash trigger delay on this screen to elimate unecessary menu depth and breadth.
Test Menu: This allows toggling of the output triggers and valves. Pretty useful to just test the system isn’t malfunctioning and I’m hoping the valve control can be used as a good way of “flushing” out the system at the end of use.
Config menu: In here it is possible to set the trigger mode and whether the IR gate should be used or not.
Setup Menu: From here it is possible to toggle each of the three valves as enabled or not and then set up, up to three drops per valve which includes their drop delay time and their size (size determined by valve on time in ms).

Coming up…

Coming up part 3, I should have a video showing the controller operation and hopefully, the first photos.

2016 04 17

Builds : Waterdrop Rig Part 1

SCooper Blog arduino, build, engineering, photography, water drop 0

What do I want and how do I actually do it…

Those were the two big questions I faced entering in to this project. Now anyone that knows me personally will be aware of the fact that as well as being a massive nerd, I am, at my very core, an engineer. It is way more than a job for me and I spend most my time asking myself “could I make that” or “could I make that better”.

Now, about four years ago I had my first and only experience with waterdrop photography. Being honest, it was great fun, I got some, for my experience at the time, great photos out of it but the time consuming, elaborate macgyver style rig I had produced did not encourage me to ever try it out again. It was one of those setups and experiences where you spend so long just trying to get the whole system to work together that you never really get a chance to hone in on a really good shot as there’s so little control over what’s happening (a pin pricked bag of water above a mug will do that to you).

I’ve since got much (much) better at photography, my equipment has got better, and now that I’m no longer a student I feel like a have a bit more free time in the evenings to experiment with a few things so I have decided to revisit an old idea of building a waterdrop control rig that will accurately handle all the timings and droplets for me so I can really focus on getting the photo at its best.

This part 1 is intended to be a little introduction to what I’m hoping to achieve, how I will achieve it and what I’ve done so far and will be addressing that first question I opened with, “what exactly do I want”.

This was definitely one of those questions best answered with a bottle of wine and some relaxing music in the background and armed with those tools I came up with what I, for now, think is a pretty complete feature list for the controller that should let me do some really interesting things.

Camera shutter and focus control.
Support for firing two flashguns.
Ability to use an optional infrared gate to trigger the timing sequence.
Support for three independent solenoid valves that produce the droplets.
Each of these valves should allow up to three drops per sequence to be produced.
Each of the delays between individual drops and individual valves should be configurable.
The droplet sizes should be independently configurable (by adjusting the time the valve is on).
Ability to “flush” the system when finished.
Ability to set a main trigger delay time. i.e the time in which the flashes trigger from the first drop.
Support for multiple exposures: flash firing multiple times. Again this frequency/delay should be configurable.

In my opinion it’s a fairly comprehensive list and I’m a little worried about implementing all this support in one go, should be an good challenge for my programming skills.

Constructing the frame…

Unfortunately I don’t have any pictures of the design process but it’s fairly straightforward. I wanted something sturdy, relatively professional looking, and not going to be a complete pain to construct. I opted to use t-slot extruded aluminium, for those who have not used this before it’s fantastic for quickly throwing together framework and was perfect for this application; maybe a little more expensive than using word, but a really nice finish.

Extruded aluminium frame

Dimensions of the frame are: 250mm for the feet, 750mm for the uprights, and 500mm for the horizontal. I figured this would provide a good height for producing the drops, leave plenty of room for the container being dropped in to and the exposed upright sections above the horizontal, where the valves are mounted, will be ideal for attaching the reservoirs with some cable ties.

Start of the electronics…

I’ve only done some of the basic electronics at this stage. Primarily wiring up the 2V025-08 solenoid valves and working on trigger cables for the flashes and camera. An interesting interaction I noticed, I shoot with a Sony A99 but also have my old A700, by re-purposing the proprietary connector from a cheap ebay trigger for my camera I was able to get the A99 firing in manual mode off of just the shutter trigger, the A700 on the other hand requires both the focus and shutter to be triggered for the camera to fire even in manual focus mode. Trigger operation is simply a case of closing the circuit across the pins of the connector, similarly for the flash guns.

A little researching online recommended the use of optoisolators to do this as it ensures that the control circuitry remains completely isolated from the camera circuitry ensuring no risk of stray currents or voltages to the camera. I’m using 4n26 isolators and the wiring of these is incredibly simple. Just got photos of the process for now, will have schematic pictures ready for part 2.

Solenoid valve wiring

Triggering flash through the socket

Dismantling trigger for the sony plug end

New camera trigger cable wired up to 2.5mm stereo plug

Wiring up opto-isolators for camera shutter, camera focus and two flash guns. Not quite finished yet.

Coming up…

Hopefully in part 2 I’ll have more of the electronics finished and some of the programming done. If you have any questions regarding what I’m doing please don’t hesitate to get in touch, would love to hear from you if you’re doing something similar.

2016 04 10

Snaps : Guilin to Yangshou

SCooper Snaps china, featured, guilin, li river, snaps, yangshou 0

I’ve been revisiting a lot of my China travel photos recently as when I edited them, I probably wasn’t in the right frame of mind and also doing a lot of batch editing as I wanted them done and posted. Now I’ve got a bit more time to really play around with individual photos, try out some new editing techniques and see what I missed the first time round.

This particular photo is of a riverboat ride along the Li River between the cities of Guilin and Yangshou. Absolutely stunning, almost prehistoric like, landscape.

2016 03 15

Behind the Camera : Walking the Wall – Throwback

SCooper Behind the Camera, Blog, Throwback behind the camera, beijing, china, featured, global grand challenges, great wall of china, photography, RAE, royal academy of engineering, summit, throwback, travel 0

My intention for this site was originally just to keep an online portfolio of my favourite work and while it will somewhat feature this intention I’ve come to the realisation that I’d much prefer to keep a record of the stories behind some of my favourite photos. Not every photo has a story behind it and of those that do, many may not be interesting or worth telling, but the ones that are worth telling are what I feel I should use this site for.

For me, what I enjoy most about travelling, besides getting away from work for a while, is the experiences and stories we can come back with. I know many people that are more than content with having a lazy holiday, lay by the pool, getting a tan, going shopping or whatever; but that’s not for me. Not that I think what they’re doing is wrong, it’s just not for me, I need to be out there, doing things, witnessing things and experiencing things otherwise I feel like I’m not making the most of the place I’m in and all it has to offer.

However, as much as I may want to travel, it’s not something I can regularly do and write about cue these throwback entries. The idea of these being that I can tell some old stories about some of my favourite shots and how they came about starting with one of my more recent photos from China September 2015.

This is another photo that I have to be thankful for the Royal Academy of Engineering scholarship for. Through their scheme I was able to secure an invitation to the Global Grand Challenges Summit in Beijing thus leading to possibly the greatest trip of my life thus far. The Global Grand Challenges Summit is an event organised by the UK Royal Academy of Engineering along with the Chinese and American equivalent academies aimed at highlighting the challenges that humanity, scientists and engineers face today ranging from security and health all the way to the joy of living and revitalising urban infrastructure. The two day conference is one of those events where you just can’t fail to be drawn in to the energy and atmosphere created by your surroundings and the speakers on stage and it genuinely makes you feel like, if you put your head and heart to it, you could achieve anything you wanted to, and help save the world. I’ve questioned a lot about myself and my careers choices since those two days and try to act on those lessons whenever possible. One of the things I’m most thankful for about that conference and the RAE scheme itself, is that it introduced me to my travelling companions for the next few weeks following the two day conference. These were people I had only ever briefly met before, once a year at the RAE annual get-together but we had all taken a risk and agreed to go travelling together following the conference.

Photo Credit: Pooja Moonka

The stories we made for ourselves and experiences we had on that trip make me consider these people some of my closest friends despite the relatively short time I’ve known them, but when you live together in tiny hostel rooms for any amount of time, without showering, and spend every day exploring a strange country together like that, I think it’s impossible not to either massively fall out with them or consider them a close friend after that. Beyond these three people I spent the majority of the trip with, I was also lucky enough to share time with other great people along the way who I’d met at the conference and I don’t think anything will ever beat some of the nights out we had together clubbing in Beijing when we had around 40 American and UK young engineers piling in to a small bar and overflowing out on the street, dancing on tables, singing at the top of our lungs and drinking in to the early hours of the morning (all while being filmed extensively by locals passing by who were fascinated by so many western tourists together at once).

One of my biggest concerns about not knowing who I was travelling with was whether they would tolerate my constant desire to stop and take photos, I know it’s not to everyone’s liking and for those who just want to walk and explore it must be infuriating to have to stop and wait on someone like myself or so my parents have told me after the many times I went on holiday with them growing up, fortunately though I was with like-minded individuals who were more than happy themselves to stop and take their own photos at every opportunity they could.

My favourite photo from the whole trip, and currently on my wall as part of my “Best of 2015 Series” was definitely from the Great Wall of China. My group and I arranged to visit the Wall while in Beijing through our hostel (Downtown Backpackers) who provided transport and a friendly guide, Jerry (one of the hostel workers). The trip was advertised as a 10km walk of the wall, it sounded amazing. Up until this point we had been mostly confined to the conference and city so I considered this our first proper adventure out in China.

The day began fairly early with us being picked up from the hostel by mini-bus, worrying that we would be too early for breakfast we had stocked up on yoghurts, cucumber flavoured crisps and cookies for the journey the night before but were pleasantly surprised by the offering of more cookies and snickers bars from our hostel upon entering the vehicle. I think our excessive number of cookies ended up lasting us until almost the end of the entire trip!

The drive itself was fairly uneventful, but we began to have concerns over the legitimacy of our trip as we approached our final destination. Every mile or so we would see big signs and billboards reading “Keep Out”, “This area of the wall off limits”, “Thank you for not entering this area of the wall”, of course our mini-bus ignored all of these and headed straight on, who were we to question it.

The early morning light marking our path through the forest

Unlike most organised trips to the Great Wall, this one did not intend on dropping us off at one of the hotspots of the wall that are renovated and officially open to the public, instead we were dropped at the base of a steep hill outside a thick forest. The next forty minutes were a fairly gruelling uphill struggle (for some of our party anyway) and several of us, myself included, did fall a tad far behind the main party. Part of our journey up hill was brightened up by a rendition of “Happy Birthday” for Pooja, one of the members of our group, which another tourist group also got involved in.

Along the way we were only treated to brief clearings in the foliage to see how high we were and where we were going and it never prepared me for when I rounded a corner and was then just smack bang, up against the wall.

It can get pretty steep and slippery on the wall

Despite following one of the hostel workers, it still felt like a real adventure elevated by the act of having to climb up on to wall using a ladder made of lashed together branches. An official tour of the wall would never take you to the areas we visited but we were treated to 6km of incredible scenery along the crumbling remains of one of the greatest man-made structures in existence. Many parts of the route are dangerous but it is all beautiful and I couldn’t help but have a grin on my face the whole way despite the heat and exhaustion caused by my poor fitness.

Andy on the edge

After around 6km of walking, the frequency in which we saw other people increased greatly along with the general structural integrity of the wall itself and eventually we passed a sign that only solidified our belief that we probably weren’t meant to have walked the previous 6km we had. We took a moment to celebrate this milestone and the Pooja’s Birthday with a can of beer each at 11am stood on the Great Wall of China, not many who can say they’ve celebrated their birthday like that.

I don’t think we were meant to go there

The photo I’m most happy with from this day occurred during the final 4km of the excursion of the more built up section of the wall. I’d been trying to capture the perfect panorama to commemorate the day, going so far as to climb up crumbling towers to get a better vantage point, but think I finally achieved it with this one. It may not be the most technically brilliant photo but I think the composition works well and I love that it features several members of the group I travelled with within it even if they weren’t aware of it at the time. This makes it not just a photo of the Great Wall of China to me, but a photo of amazing friends I made during some of the greatest weeks of my life.

2016 03 14

Behind the Camera : Lost in Hollywood

SCooper Behind the Camera, Blog featured, hollyridge, hollywood, LA, sign, skyline, sunset 1

I was recently lucky enough to attend the Unity Vision Summit in Hollywood Los Angeles thanks to some funding from the UK Royal Academy of Engineering. As fantastic as that conference was, it’s not the story I want to write about now.

I’d managed to secure myself four days for this trip, two would be taken up by the conference, one by a completely necessary trip to Disneyland and the final just for wondering around Hollywood before my departure back to the cold, gloomy UK leaving the beautiful LA sunshine behind me. Having not had many opportunities to do any, what I would call, “proper” photography as of late there was one shot I was determined to try and get during my visit. A panorama of the LA skyline from behind the Hollywood sign.

My initial research raised a lot of potential pitfalls for this attempted shot as it turns out the locals of the Hollywood sign have been waging an ongoing war with tourists attempting to visit the sign by campaigning for the closure of routes and access but a day before I left for my trip I was able to find the recommended route, the Hollyridge Trail, that starts at the end of Beachwood Drive.

With limited time to act and a fairly set plan of what I was doing each day I decided the best time to attempt this photo was at the end of the second day of the conference that should leave me enough time to complete the 1.5 mile route and reach the sign by sunset and after a slightly hairy Uber ride to the Sunset Ranch that marked the beginning of the trail, I was on my way.

The trail itself is very enjoyable, despite the slightly worrying sign warning of mountain lions and rattlesnakes, and gives fantastic views over the city but the views reaching the peak are simply phenomenal. I ended up spending around an hour at the peak behind the sign shooting the sunset and city lights and it was an incredible experience just being able to sit there and take it all in.

Unfortunately the sign is now fenced off and you are unable to get near it (I’ve heard armed police are involved if you do attempt to) which does mar the resulting photos slightly but nothing a heavy amount of photoshop clone stamping and several hours of your life can’t attempt to fix.

Getting back to civilisation was a feat in itself though. Having spent around an hour at the peak shooting the sunset and ensuing city lights as darkness crept in I realised it was probably time to go. In a moment of brief forward thinking I had managed to remember to pack a head-torch with me for the trip but had, stupidly, underestimated just how dark it can get on these trails. Cue me spending a mile and a half fumbling my way through the dark attempting to stick to the correct trail while expecting to get attacked by a mountain lion or rattlesnake at any moment. It really was one of those moments of brilliant clarity where I analysed everything that had lead me to that moment and how incredibly dangerous it was doing what I was doing completely on my own. There’s wild animals, the path is pretty uneven in places and for most of it the edge of the path just leads to a straight drop down in to the canyon. But there we go, I’m still here, I’m still in one piece and a did make it back down with no issues despite a brief encounter with a coyote who thankfully ignored me and I then enjoyed a slow walk back to my hotel for the next five miles.

I made a really stupid decision that night leaving it so late to leave the sign especially with being on my own, but you know what? It was completely worth it. Life’s all about the memories we make for ourselves and it’s these experiences that define who we are. I think I got a great story out of this trip and I love the photo I got from it and that’s what matters to me. Eventually I’ll get this shot printed and hung in my apartment somewhere and it will bring back the memories of that evening every time I look at it.