A How-To with Facebook Photo Comp Winner, Michael Tannos

As you'd know by now we love giving our customers as many opportunities to express themselves through photography as possible, and one such way we achieve this is through our frequent Facebook competitions.

Last month we held a comp with the theme 'Miniature Memories' and this spawned hundreds of fantastic entries covering a myriad of interpretations; the standard was very high but one man sought to defeat them all with his gravity-defying Barbie hair-whip. For his effort he received a Canon EOS M Twin Kit in white.

This man was Sydney photographer Michael Tannos, and he was kind enough to share his process with us for the blog:


Michael: "I am glad that I entered as it is my first time that I entered a competition.  My partner talked me into doing a photography class together in april 2010 and I am glad I did."
In order to achieve his image he built a handy mechanism, which he explains:


Michael: "It took about 15 minutes to build.  It’s rough but it works  - I poured cornflour over her hair and then you pull the longer string on the left handside with your left hand and press the remote button of camera on a tripod with your right hand – take a couple of practice shoots for speed and timing and that’s it."

Below is his sequence:

The Barbie Doll is attached to lever arm with a screw thru her shoes When you pull the string as shown it flips the doll vertically up in the air	Pull with left hand
As the doll raises to Vertical position Final Shot

You can see more of Michael's work on his Flickr page, and check out his winning image on Facebook.