Dinosaur cakes and Birthday parties

Last week my son turned six. And so , as most parents do , we decided to hold a party.
Sometimes I wonder why we actually hold a party. For him to celebrate his birthday or for us to celebrate that he made it this far, against the odds.


Ok, no , it is not that bad. We are happy to see him grow up , learn and grow.

OK. So to celebrate his birthday we held a party . And as is the custom by now , He gets to choose the type of birthday cake that he wants. Three years ago it was 'NEMO', then 'Sharktale', Last year , a castle with dragons.

And this year - A dinosaur cake. And thus Dad, that's me, set out to build a dinosaur cake.
My son had some pretty specific ideas of what the cake should look like. For one it had to have a volcano. And so a Volcano it was.

My son had a lekker bash on Saturday , and of the cake a small ice cream tub filled wit bits of cake and icing was left over. Seems the volcano did good.

Wonder what challenge next year is going to bring.

High Speed photos

It has been a while since I last played with high speed photography. But this weekend I had a blast. Literally.

Between myself and two friends we shot at and destroyed 65 Osram 60w lightbubs. Thank goodness for digital cameras. If I had to do this on film I would have been broke.

So let us look at a quick howdunnit.


To get the image above I put my camera on a tripod with a cable release attached to the camera.
The lightbulb was placed in a light holder and switched on for a couple of minutes. (they explode better when heated up) . Two flashes (a Nikon Sb600 and Canon 550ex) were placed close to the bulb on the left hand side. The flashes were attached to a sound trigger that I built in 2005.

From there things were fairly simple. Lights off. studio fairly dark. Camera shutter opened with cable release. Shoot the bulb with a pellet gun. Flashes react to sound and illuminate the exploding bulb. Close camera shutter . and Voila.

Here are two more shot with a blowpipe. Only difference is that a third light with a blue filter attached was aimed at a whiteboard background. You can view more of these photos on my website at http://www.perfectpic.co.za

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