Hi all, I have recived a few requests for information about how I achieved the Living Flame [link] , sequence of shots.



So here I go, I will break it down in to two parts, 1. how I think I did it 2. What really happened

1. How I think I did it

I use a cannon 450d and on this occasion had a 50mm 1.8f lens on the front,

Shooting was done in JPG(I know I should use RAW, but I needed more buffer space for these shots) in Program mode,

Other settings included

ISO Speed
200
Metering Modes
Evaluative metering
Flash
Off
White Balance
Auto
AF mode
AI focus AF
Drive Mode
Continuous shooting

at first the brightness of the flames was causing massive over-exposure so I dialed in -2 exposure compensation and ended up with strong flames against black which was what I was aiming for.

The main "trick" was prediciting when one of the fire breathers was going to start and keeping the camera taking shots as long as possiable, this resulted in quite a few failed attempts, but as the evening went on it was easier to judge when to start firing.

The flames were produced by three guys using burning swords, they then "breathed" parafin over them to make the flames.

All the shots were taken freehand so i could move with the action and it took about 600 frames to get these dozen or so images.

2 The "REAL" method

Get a bunch of guys and a lot of beer
Drink lots of the beer
Set fire to the swords
Drink more beer
Grab camera
Watch the guys have fun fire breathing
Take photos
Drink more beer
Play with settings till they look right
Drink more beer
More fire breathing
Take lots more photos
Drink more beer
Pass out on the floor

When able to stand again, go through photos for the good ones

Note:

No major editing was done to these images, mostly just sharpening, contast and cropping.

Enough about that thou here is some other peeps work that I like