A while back I wanted to try some artistic shots of the pool table we have at our office. The first one was a little tricky to get. I set the camera up on a tripod on the table and set the self-timer to give me time to get back to the other end of the table. The shutter speed was 1.3 seconds and I set the flash to fire at the end of the exposure instead of the beginning (2nd curtain flash). Then I waited until I hear the shutter open, and hit the cue. This way the camera was able to pick up the intact rack for about a second before the break and the flash caught the balls exploding off in all the different directions. Then I just processed it a bit afterwards to increase the contrast. The second shot is just your typical shot of the eight ball trapping the cue on the wrong side of the target ball, with a shallow depth-of-field. It’s been done a million times, but I still wanted to take one of my own anyway…
Steve Boer Photography 