Photopositive

Swan song

2008-09-11T13:43:10Z

One of the reasons I've been so quiet on the blog this year is that I've really had very little time to take any pictures. I was looking through my images from this year so far last night, and it made for very depressing viewing. My images are split into years - 2006-07, 2007-08, 2008-09 etc. Looking in this latest year folder, the number of sub folders was substantially less than previous years. It made it blindingly obvious how I've neglected my photography over the year due to the pressures of freelance life. But what difference does it make? Well, as with everything, once you get stuck in a rut it's very hard to get out. This year I've been stuck in a rut of lots of project work but not much photography. Actually going out to take pictures has been hard. Finding time or inclination is almost impossible. However, after my realisation last night, the back on of the year will be different. I'm going to take every opportunity to get out and take pictures and hopefully I can make my 2008-09 folder look a little more like it belongs to a photographer rather than someone who dabbles in it! This image is one those few I've taken this year. Taken on a warm summer evening walking along Strand on the Green. The warm evening sun was bathing the swan in light and the yellow really stood out against the blue of the water. Technically, there's not much to this shot. I spot metered off the dark blue and set it to be -2stops darker than a mid-tone. Focus on the eye and shoot. With animals, and in many cases people too, it pays huge dividends to get down to the eye level of the subject. Here I couldn't get as low as I'd have liked, but any lower and the reflection in the water would have been minimised.

Midnight sun

2008-09-09T09:39:46Z

Whoah! Two entries in 4 days, something's up! This shot is slightly older than the Croke Park image I put up 4 days ago, but only by a few weeks. I was supposed to be going to Norway during August for two weeks holiday - climbing, walking, sailing and photography. However, life has a way of throwing curve balls every now and again, and so due to circumstances at home, I ended up not going. Instead, I went to France for a week to see my mother's new apartment there. She need some pictures doing (she plans to rent the place out) and I had two weeks booked off for a holiday I was now not going on. It seemed a perfect fit! So I drove down there. Now, the apartment is in the South. The very South. Cap d'Agde to be precise! It took a long time to get there, but I'd decided the drive would be part of the fun anyway. Yeah, big mistake! Anyway, this is the marina behind my mother's apartment. Although you can't see her place specifically, it's in the block to the very left of the image. So why is it called midnight sun? Well, since I was supposed to be going to Norway, and the moon is lighting up the whole scene, it just seemed apt! For those interested in trying this sort of image, two things are essential - a solid tripod and a cable release. In this case, a Gitzo G2227 and a TC-80N3 timer control. Exposure was 60seconds at f14 ISO 400. Now, when you shoot long exposures, you will get image noise. It's a fact of life. The better the camera, the better the noise control will be. In this shot, there is some noise, but it's not intrusive and by processing the image in DPP, what little noise there was has been all but removed. The only 'noise' you'll be left with is hot or dead pixels, which show up with long exposures. These though, are easy to clone out afterwards.

Croke Park

2008-09-05T13:56:45Z

So just earlier this week I was in Dublin for Canon Ireland. Where the England has Focus as their main photographic trade show, Ireland has PhotoFest and PhotoVision (though to be honest, PhotoVision travels to England as well!) as their trade shows. This year, Canon Ireland decided to push the boat out and go for a large presence - a studio setup with a photographer and model, a touch and try area and lots of display. They also asked me to go over and give some seminars for them as I'd done back in April at PhotoFest. The seminars were on EOS Flash, some aspects of Canon software and a look at the EOS-1Series Pro models and who they're aimed at. The event was held at Croke Park. For anyone vaguely interested in sport, Croke Park should be known. for those that aren't, it's an 82,000 seater stadium built for the GAA |(Gaelic Athletics Association) to play at. the amazing thing is, it's an amateur sport unlike football and rugby, so there's less money around. This is new ground that has not been open that long. If for nothing else, Croke Park should be known to anyone interested in rugby union as they use it for international fixtures when Landsdowne road is out of action - in fact, it was the site of their loss in the 6 nations last year to France in the closing minutes. So, what's this image of? Well, there are literally hundreds of thousands of images of Croke Park, so when I had a break in between seminars, I went into the stands to look for some pictures. And this is what I cam up with. Many people avoid the use of zoom bursts now, but I've always been a big fan of them - when used well and sparingly. This was taken with an EOS-1D Mark III and EF24-105mm f/4L IS USM lens. It was handheld with an exposure of around 1second during which time I zoomed the lens from in to out to provide some idea of movement. Although it was quite sunny, I simply dropped the ISO and closed down the aperture to get a longer shutter speed. While it doesn't represent Croke Park especially, it's something different and will make a nice canvas once I've printed it out on the iPF 6100 I have sitting behind me.

Not possible

2008-07-29T16:33:10Z

According to the latest Honda adverts, impossible is worth doing. (Should that be TM'ed?!) Well, sometimes photography can be like that, though whether it's worth it, is a mute point. I've been very quiet on the blog for quite a long time and for that I apologise, but I decided when I started that I wouldn't upload stuff for the sake of it, only when I actually had something to say. Since I've ben so busy recently doing everything but photography, I've not had much photography work to share, or any thoughts worth putting across. For those interested, I'm currently stuck in the middle of a long running project writing training presentations on Canon products. It's been going since around February and looks set to continue until at least October.... it's keeping me away from taking pictures, but immersing me in the technology so I learn something new every day so it seems. Anyway, on to this image. Now, Canon say that officially, this setup is not possible. It was taken with an EOS-1D Mark III, EF100mm f/2.8 Macro USM lens, EF25 extension tube and an EF 1.4xII Extender. Now apparently you can't use the Extender with a macro lens - in fact it's true you can't as it simply won't fit due to the front element of the extender protruding too far. However, put an extension tube in the way and it creates the space to allow them to work together. Clearly AF is not going to work, and you need to be careful of camera shake, but this shot was taken handheld simply but upping the ISO - to ISO 2000 in this case. So what am I trying to say? Sometimes, you need to experiment with what your kit can do. Yes, this image is a little noisy, but it's useable and by thinking about my kit and what might be possible, I got a shot where otherwise I wouldn't have been able to. For anyone curious, this little chap was sitting on top of my printer in my office - that's about as far as I get to go taking pictures these days! If you like reading photoblogs, and let's face it, you wouldn't be here if you didn't, there's an interesting photoblog written by a good friend of mine at p4pictures. It's well worth a read.

Simplicity

2008-02-05T11:15:13Z

Sometimes, simple is best. Two weekends ago I went climbing in Portland, Dorset. Because I was mainly supposed to be climbing, I took a very lightweight kit (it's all relative!) of only a 1D III, 16-35 and 70-200 f4IS. No tripod, no filters, no cable release. Basically nothing that was going to help shoot sunsets. I hadn't intended on taking many pictures - just a few grabs of my friends climbing if the weather was good. Well, it turned out to be fantastic. The Saturday was clear and a little cold, and the Sunday was wonderful - deep blue skies and warm sun on the rock. Quite amazing for January in England on the south coast. Anyway, towards to end of Sunday we'd finished with out climbing just before the sun started to set. I looked out across the sea. Being on the Isle of Portland I had a clear view west across the see to the sunset. With no filters I had to keep it simple and concentrate on space and colour. And then this airplane appeared, and the 70-200mm lens had just the right focal length to make the composition balance nicely with the sun bottom left and contrail top right. It's an empty image really, just bands of colours, but it sums up the relaxed nature of the place. Next time you're out shooting sunsets, think about where you are and the emotion you want to convey. Sometimes this just happens, sometimes you need to put more into it. an image with an emotion will ultimately be more memorable than one devoid of feeling. As far as technique, I simply spot metered off the sky to the side of the sun and set it to be a little over two stops over-exposed.

Happy New Year

2008-01-02T17:10:06Z

Happy New Year everyone! Well, this was a much shorter wait than the last one. I hope no-one held their breath for too long... taken at the New Year party we had at our house the other night. You can't have a good party without fireworks and therefore sparklers. So after the rockets had all been released, I gave out the sparklers and set about taking a few shots. Out of 24 shots, there was only one I had to bin because it was out of focus, the rest were fine, but this was my favourite due to the facial expression. To do shots like this, you ideally need an external flashgun. In this case, a 580EX. This was mounted on the camera, and the exposure was set manually to 5secs at f14. I was shooting handheld, but there is no blur because during the exposure, there was not enough light to create blur on the main subject, and the sparkler was moving anyway. The flash was set to fire as second curtain sync flash so the main exposure on the subject (the guy with the sparkler) was created by the flash at the very end of the exposure, just before the shutter closed. The flash froze his movement resulting in the sharp image, even with a 5 second handheld exposure. I hope 2008 is as good or better than 2007 for all of you, and I promise I'll make more of an effort in updating the blog!

A long wait

2007-12-19T10:02:49Z

Well, I'm sorry. It's been a VERY long wait for you since my last update on here. I could tell you lots of good excuses, but in reality, I've just been busy! Since some of you have been emailing on a fairly regular basis asking for me to update the blog, I have decided to come out of hiatus and post something. This was taken earlier in the year at the mid-Wales falconry centre. It's a fantastic place to go if you like birds of prey. A group of 10 of us hired the centre for the day and had complete access to the birds and the falconer the whole time. They even included a very nice lunch. Anyway, onto the shot. This is a juvenile goshawk feeding on a pheasant that had been put out for it. If you look carefully, you'll just see the feathers of the pheasant sticking up on the left hand side. Others that have seen this image have asked how I did the Photoshop work to get the blurred foreground and background. The truth is, there is no Photoshop involved in the image at all, with the exception of the resize for web and obligatory sharpening. The foreground was created by a using a shallow depth of field and getting very close to the ground. the longish grass has created the out of focus wash of green in front of the bird and helped obscure the gruesomeness of the pheasant, and more importantly, the jesses on the bird's legs. For the techies among you, EOS-1D Mark III, EF400mm f4 DO IS USM + EF1.4x Extender If any of you fancy a laugh at my expense, then take a look here. Yes, that is me... I hope you all have a great Christmas. I will take the opportunity of a break to update my website, and maybe update the blog a little more frequently. But just in case, I wouldn't hold your breath!

Exposure

2007-05-08T15:18:26Z

Exposure can cause more problems for beginners than any other aspect of photography. When you're learning photography, everyone tells you the cardinal rules are 'don't overexpose the highlights and don't block out the shadows'. Rubbish. Sure, most of the time you want to avoid overexposing your images, but sometimes there is a contrast range that you just can't cope with - such as here. The dark patches are many stops darker than the bright patches where the sunlight was falling on the leaves. I decided to expose for the leaves and record the bright areas as a mid-tone. This forced the shadows off the bottom of the scale and caused them to block out. But I'm not worried. The extra drama added by the contrasty lighting works better than had there been flat even lighting across the scene. The moral of the story is don't rigidly stick to the 'rules'. It's a cliche, but they were made to broken. In other news, today I re-launched my website. I've spent the past few days redesigning and re-building it to make it look fresh and new, and not quite as heavy as they previous incarnation. Go and take a look at photopositive.co.uk and let me know what you think.

The power of the sea

2007-05-02T09:14:21Z

I love the sea. I spent a lot of time growing up next to the sea, and it drove me to my first degree (Marine Biology since you ask!). Sadly, Oxford is about as far from the sea as it is possible to get in the UK so I don't get to see the sea as often as I'd like. New Zealand, on the other hand, is a country where all civilisation seems to be congregated along the coast, so my three weeks there recently were spent, for the most part, in very close proximity to the sea. The secret of photographing water is to get the shutter speed right. You should try a whole range of speeds, from very slow to very fast as the difference it makes to the final image is huge. You shouldn't just take one shot either. Water is always changing. Waves don't all break in the same way, so trying each setting a couple of times at different points of the wave crash can result in wildly different pictures, so which work and some which don't. Yes, it will mean you'll take a lot of pictures, but with something as unreadable as water movement, it's worth it. There are still places available on my basic studio photography course to be held on 13th May in Tackley (Oxfordshire). The price is £120 for the day, including lunch. Visit the website for more information and to book.

Mount Cook, New Zealand

2007-04-10T23:15:54Z

So I've just got back from three weeks holiday around the South Island of New Zealand. I hired a camper van with my girlfriend and spent three weeks driving around (3381Km to be precise) seeing the sights. This is the first image I processed from the many I shot whilst away and it will be the first of many uploaded here for you to look at and for me to pass on techy info. This is pre-dawn at Mount Cook. Taken from the approach road to Mt Cook, about 15mins before the sun popped its head over the horizon to catch the top of the mountain (that shot might come later!) Taken with the EOS 5D, EF70-200 2.8 IS lens and using two Lee ND soft grads - a 0.6 and 0.9 staggered to balance the exposure. The camera was tripod mounted and I used a cable release and mirror lockup to ensure there were no vibrations to ruin the exposure. While I'm making a posting here, there are still places available for the basic studio photography course I am running on Saturday 14th April (that's this coming weekend) in Tackley, Oxfordshire. If you want to come along and learn some studio photography, please visit my training page HERE.