Dragon Fire

Its taken me somewhat in excess of 2 years, but I've finally reach 730 blips, and in celebration decided to challenge myself to something different.

First off, I thought I'd try out a Bokeh effect, using a home-made cutout- using 730 of course! A quick trawl of the internet yielded some DIY approaches, and I ended up with cutting the 730 out of black card inside a circle of about 1cm, with a larger border. This was attached to another piece of black card sized to fitting tightly inside the UV filter for my f2.8 100mm macro lens (in future I can replace the 730 cutout with other shapes - that's called foward thinking). Using this setup, with the lens wide open, I took some shots of silk flowers with LED christmas lights - and bingo, there was some smoke with 730 in it!

The next part was to take some detail shots of one of my dragon models. Then it was into Photoshop to play about with blending the two shots together - I so need more practise with this!!!

So there you have it, my 730th blip, with many thanks for the comments and encouragement to the friends met for real or virtually over the last few years ... Enjoy!