Beginning Photography

Self portrait

James — Thu, 03 Feb 2011 21:26:16 +0000

I recently received a free copy of a magazine, Digital SLR Photography, after seeing an advertisment on a forum I frequent. I have to say the magazine has been good inspiration for getting the camera back out. One shot in particular got me interested in portraiture so I thought I’d have a go at a moody self portrait. The following was the result.

I was trying to make this pretty moody. I frowned at the camera to try and get some character in there. For now I only have lightroom available so the range of filters I can apply is slightly limited (photoshop would be nice), but I really like how this turned out. Fairly sinister. In hindsight I should have worn a leather jacket, but this was more an experiment than a finished article. I expect to try this again in the near future.

Black and white portraits

James — Tue, 04 Jan 2011 02:00:29 +0000

My girlfriend and friend in black and white. The room was very dark for these, I bounced flash off the roof and have done a B&W conversion in lightroom

2010 in review

James — Sun, 02 Jan 2011 11:02:28 +0000

The stats helper monkeys at WordPress.com mulled over how this blog did in 2010, and here’s a high level summary of its overall blog health:

The Blog-Health-o-Meter™ reads Wow.

Crunchy numbers

A Boeing 747-400 passenger jet can hold 416 passengers. This blog was viewed about 3,000 times in 2010. That’s about 7 full 747s.

In 2010, there were 57 new posts, growing the total archive of this blog to 112 posts. There were 229 pictures uploaded, taking up a total of 51mb. That’s about 4 pictures per week.

The busiest day of the year was January 8th with 51 views. The most popular post that day was Sun, snow and good timing.

Where did they come from?

The top referring sites in 2010 were lensaddiction.wordpress.com, johannes.jarolim.com, talkphotography.co.uk, alamy.com, and alphainventions.com.

Some visitors came searching, mostly for water drops, water drop, beginning photography blog, spinning coin, and beginning photography blogs.

Attractions in 2010

These are the posts and pages that got the most views in 2010.

Sun, snow and good timing January 2010
2 comments

Fun with water December 2009

Thumbnails November 2009
2 comments

About October 2009
8 comments

Ash in the sky for a sunset over the lake April 2010
2 comments

My New Toy: A Flashgun

James — Mon, 27 Dec 2010 21:15:04 +0000

I’ve been a good boy this year so Santa brought me a nice pressie for Christmas: a canon 430EX 2 flashgun. Yay. Having never before used a flash other than the one on board this has been on the desirable list for quite some time. So, Christmas day dawned and I spent a lot of time annoying the family with my new toy. Two here to show, the first a “standard” portrait, the other an attempt at a high key image

In the first image I bounced the flash of the corner of the wall and ceiling behind me. Both are white/light in colour so make a great reflector to diffuse the light nicely.

In the second I’ve bounced the flash off the wall directly to Anna’s front, serving to highlight her features and blow out the light wall behind her.

DoF

James — Mon, 06 Dec 2010 11:16:57 +0000

I decided to see what the nifty 50 could do wide open. With aperture set to 1.8 I descended on ice covered bushes in the garden, the following two images being my favourites.

One thing I’ve learned, this lens isn’t quite as sharp wide open as it is when stepped down to around 2.8. It’s good though, as these photos attest, certainly sharp enough to produce very nice images.

Icicles

James — Fri, 03 Dec 2010 19:22:28 +0000

With the snow sorta melting we’ve had the most amazing formations of ice coming off the roof. Icicles up to around 5 feet long all along the fascias and guttering. Before I knocked them off I got the camera out and had a bit of a god, the following two are my favourites

Lighting here was provided by the security light hanging just out of the image to the right.

This one made use of the onboard flash in addition to the security light.

Mum, snow, and a new lens

James — Thu, 02 Dec 2010 21:21:09 +0000

Today was my first serious play with my new lens, the canon 50mm 1.8 mk 2. As primes go it’s a cheap as they come, cheap as chips build quality etc, but it’s a very sharp bit of kit.

Subject for the day, my Mum. It’s snowed, loads.

Things to note: Metering a black coat in the snow is HARD. In the end I set to manual and chimped like hell, and I still over exposed everything slightly. Alas.

Shooting with a prime forces you to make good use of foot zoom. You really notice the issues when you don’t have much room to back up.

November the 5th

James — Mon, 08 Nov 2010 22:01:56 +0000

It came and went, and I took piccies of fireworks. More specifically, Catherine wheels. These are my two favourites after a quick look through. No changes other than to levels and curves.

Technique for these was simple, but involved a lot of guesswork.
1: Position yourself downwind of the Catherine wheels. That way you get a face full of smoke and the images are crap
2. Realise that you made a complete screw up with 1 and re-assess, no longer standing downwind.
3. Set camera on tripod, set ISO as low as it will go, aperture as high as it will go, and focus on something in the vicinity of the firework.
4. Light the catherine wheel and run like hell, camera on bulb and hold down the shutter with a remote release. Try everything from 4 seconds (no no and no) to about 1/5 of a second, and everything in between (in other words, guess). See what works, and take loads, hope for a nice effect.
5. Pretend you knew what the hell you were doing when you get a few nice images.

Back to nature

James — Sun, 31 Oct 2010 21:46:46 +0000

Having woken at the ridiculous hour of 5:30am this morning in order to fetch my parents from the Airport (lucky blighters have just been to Rhodes), I grabbed the camera and headed out the door. The reason was simple, on the way back over the Pennines the scenery was gorgeous, a low lying mist juxtaposed with the autumn colours just looked fantastic. There wasn’t a breath of wind, so I thought I’d head down to a local lake that I haven’t visited with the camera in the hope of getting some great scenary.

The best laids plans of mice and men, however… as it turned out there was the feintest breeze that was rippling up the lake, and the mist was obscuring the lovely colours. A quick change of plan and I started harassing the local birdlife. These were the result.

I think my favourite is the one with the swan dipping it’s head, but I couldn’t put my finger on why. The white background here doesn’t suit these images, they look best on a black background. Check them out on flickr (hit the zoom icon) for a better look).

Portraits in France

James — Thu, 28 Oct 2010 12:55:59 +0000

A few portrait shots to share here from a recent trip to France. I can’t claim credit for all of these, I’m in two of them, taken by Jo (who’s in the others). I just did the exposure and she did the framing. Great job she did too, despite the model.

And then a couple of Jo. The poor girl has to put up with me pointing my camera at her far more than is healthy. The first of these is my favourite, it looks phenomenal in black and white too, but after a brief fascination with black and white portraits I’mback loving colour again. Black and white seems to be a nice change, but for the main I think colour is the way forwards. Then again I’ve got one of these on my phone in black and white as a background, so expect me to change my mind again.