Wedding Photography

Another one of those shots to display my range, I've put this one up because I'm using it for a couple of wedding photography ads that I hope to put out and some more business cards for me to check when I forget my mobile number. I really like this one, it was done fairly late in the day, everyone was relaxed and the light was good. The Exif data is 140mm at f5.6 for 1/200 still at ISO 100. I'm sure all the enthusiasts know but just a reminder, a new version of photoshop lightroom (1.2) came out a week or so ago, you can get it here. Have a great weekend.

Paint with Light

This is a technique called painting with light where you leave the shutter open (bulb mode) on you camera and just use a light to set where you want to expose, the light in this example was just a little pen light but you can do the same sort of thing in fields at night with torches to illuminate say, rocks or trees. In this picture of my epiphone and amp I just opened the shutter and traced round the edges of each element, i.e. body, strings, amp etc. This created multiple exposures which I then combined in photoshop (I believe I set the blend mode to screen to keep only the lightest parts). A tripod is essential as neither the camera or the subject can move during any of the exposures and obviously the less ambient light entering the room the better.

Travel Photography

I was just looking through some old photos taken on a trip round the world and found this one I quite liked. This was in Cambodia when our bus broke down, or ran someone over, I can't remember. We were just sat on the side of the road watching traffic waiting for another bus when this wagon rolled along. I thought it converted to mono really well, my only regret was I didn't have an SLR at the time althought my old Canon Powershot A95 was the best.

Smoke

I was just clearing my lightroom database and I came across this one so I posted it, I haven't done one of these for a while, it's a really easy technique, I shot this at f11, 1/250 iso 200. I used an off camera flash to light it from the side. This is shot on a black background, just a piece of card should do it then all you need to do is invert the colours when you process it, ie black becomes white etc. Colour can be added as an overlay or by playing with your white balance settings and the hue/saturation layers. I also have a rainbow tinted smoke trail on my site from the same shoot as this.

Water Macro

It's raining far too heavily to take the camera out so here's one I took earlier off a car bonnet outside, I do have another version of this on my site but with a petal to add some interest to the scene. It was taken on my 50mm Sigma Macro lens at f8 for 1/2 a second I should have used a far higher aperture to make sure all the droplets were in focus. I added a gradient overlay in photo shop with the blend mode set to colour.

Wired

This was a picture of me after a day of product photography, I was a bit wired to say the least. In all seriousness though, if you get to go to Ponderosa, near Heckmondwike, I'd advise it, it's great for animal shots, if you have a mid telephoto lens and the subject is far enough from the bars you can blur them to the extent that they are barely noticeable.

Corn Field

This was a cornfield with Emley Moor Mast in the distance, the tallest free standing building in Britain apparently (330 metres) and was taken near New Hall women's prison. A graduated filter was used to keep the detail in the sky as the sun was setting and it was exposed at f16 for 2 seconds at 17mm. The yellow tint was added in Lightroom through split toning.

Ullswater View

A super quick post this morning as I'm going away for a few days and won't post, and as I didn't the other day I thought I best put one up. This was the view coming down St Sunday Crag in the lake district. I'm putting this up as it is the first time I've used a photoshop plugin that can mimic different types of film, it's called Exposure, by Alien Skin. There are loads of presets depending on which film you want to mimic, this was Velvia 50. As I was never a film SLR user I have no real 'favourite film' but I think a lot of older photographers may and this plugin may interest them.

Silhouette

Another one from the back catalog today, I need to go get a new sensor cleaning brush for my camera so I didn't take any photos yesterday as I didn't want the dust I could see to become "welded" to the sensor. This is a really easy technique to produce great silhouettes of, well whatever your shooting, buildings, animals or people are all good subjects. The key is metering from the sky, as the sky is often a lot brighter relative to the land you will usually get a very high shutter speed such as 1/2000, this will expose the sky correctly but leave the subject black. If you have an exposure lock button (a * on canons) focus on the sky behind your subject, press exposure lock and then refocus your shot on the subject, you usually get about 10 seconds before the exposure lock turns off, take the shot and Roberts your fathers brother.

Blurred Trees

Another quick post this morning I am afraid, this abstract photo was taken towards the end of the walk at the weekend, where a few "experimental" pictures were taken. This was exposed at f11 for 1/13, the small aperture was used in this case just to bring down the shutter speed, I could have just set the speed in shutter priority (Tv mode on canons). Whilst taking the photo the camera was moved up and down for the blurred effect, I was tempted to even turn this black & white or go the other way and change the colours completely (rotating the colour wheel) but in the end I decided to leave it as it was taken.

Rocks In the Peak District

Just A quick post today, we went to Derwent Resevoir in the peak district at the weekend to take some landscapes, midday is not ideal for landscapes, in fact it's probably the worst time to shoot as the light is usually very harsh (creating sharp shadows). The walk was very pleasant, having never been to the peaks I was very impressed and would advise anyone who likes walking to go and have a look round (it was full of cyclists too).
I had been thinking of black and white versions of what I was shooting to try and create an Ansel Adams style photo, if you have never heard of him check him out here. This was done at f22 at 42mm for 1/20. I did some dodging and burning in photoshop for a bit more contrast and to try to improve the sky.

A split toning RAW conversion

I seem to be putting a lot of tree shots up at the moment, no real reason other than they are a subject I enjoy shooting so here's another. The sunset was great last night but my location selection wasn't the best but as it was getting a bit late I didn't want to move. You really don't want to be driving along looking for locations whilst the sun is setting, especially on windy country roads hunched over the wheel, marvelling at the sunset, very dangerous. I wasn't overly happy with the shots I got so I really experimented with my RAW conversion until I found an effect I quite liked. If you do shoot in RAW I would recommend getting adobe lightroom (here). It's just full of options for getting the most out of your photos and there are loads of tutorials on the web about the program, such as lightroomkillertips.com. Anyway the main effect I used here is called split toning, this is where you can pick the colour and saturation for the highlights and the shadows independently, I pretty much used yellow for both but you can use complimentary colours. It can be a bit hit and miss but that's the beauty of shooting digitally.
The info on this shot is as follows: f16 (to maximise DOF) for 1/2 second (so using a tripod) at about 34mm (shot in aperture priority). I did shoot with an exposure compensation of -2 this means the shot was underexposed (for the sky), I was originally going to merge 2 shots, one exposed for the sky and one exposed for the land but in the end I left the land as a silhouette because I liked the impact of the sky. Hopefully going to get some shots in the peak district tomorrow, where my foreground interest will be rocks instead of trees!

Flower Macro photography

Macro photography is where the subject is recorded at actual (or larger) size, and as most sensors (in digital cameras) or film don't exceed 35mm (corner to corner) the subjects have to be very small. I really enjoy this side of photography as you can get some great results from fairly ordinary subjects and you don't need to travel to far off locations. Flowers and insects make really good subjects. One aspect of photography it helps to know about in macro photography is depth of field, this is the measure of how much of a subject is in focus, this can vary from miles, as with landscape photography to millimetres, in macro photography. One factor when dealing with depth of field (DOF) is working distance, ie how close the camera is to the subject as the closer you get, the thinner the DOF. To combat this it is often necessary to stop down your aperture (to say f11 or 16), this results in longer shutter speeds as there is less light getting in (remember smaller apertures = smaller hole = bigger f numbers). and therefore a tripod is often used, especially if shooting indoor. A really good DOF simulator can be found here

This image was taken at f8, 1/50 at 180mm mounted on a tripod and I used a black background to really draw the viewers eye into the picture.

A Trip To The Armouries

Yesterday a friend and I went to the Royal Armouries in Leeds, he had just got a canon 400D and wanted some tips on using the shutter priority and aperture priority modes. I said as a general rule of thumb, to avoid any motion blur from shooting handheld always use a shutter speed of 1/focal length ie at 50mm don't go slower than 1/50, at 300mm don't go slower than 1/300. A quicker shutter speed is needed at longer focal lengths (more zoomed in) because the shake of your hand is amplified.
This was put to the test when we went inside the museum, where even with the aperture wide open (low f numbers, 2.8 or 4) we were still getting shutter speeds too slow to hand hold, flash would have been helpful or better still a tripod but I think we would probably have been shot at by the guards if we even attempted to break out the tripod, so we just cranked up the iso settings.
The test was a bit extreme but it helped my friend get to grips with the relationship between shutter speed and aperture, we also had a go at panning shots (of people jousting none the less) but thats another story. Anyway for those still reading this shot was done at 1/400 at f8 at 38mm, I realise this wasn't exactly practicing what I preached but I was at iso 800, I would have rather been at iso 100 for 1/50, but I was lying down and the suspicious looks of the guards watching 2 seemingly pro photographers was making me a little uneasy.

Another Moody Tree

After some nice comments by fellow bloggers I decided to post another shot from the same location, a little bit lazy I know but I haven't taken any pictures today (it is only 8am, landscape photographers will be saying the best of the day is over no doubt).

This was again taken on my 5D at 25mm, f11 I combined two exposures in photoshop, one for the sky and one for the land and then converted it to duotone. The tones I used were black, pantone 1205c and focoltone 5012 (so it's actually tritone). A quick note if you are trying a similar effect in ps you must first convert the image from RGB to grayscale (under image, mode).

Anyway thanks for the comments and hope you enjoy future photos.

Wuthering Heights

This image was taken at Top Withens a few miles west of the small village of Haworth, near Bradford. The small ruin was supposedly the inspiration for the manor featured in Emily Bronte's book "Wuthering Heights" There is however a plaque stating that the fairly unremarkable ruin bore no resemblance to the house in the book.
This image was taken with a Canon 5D with a 24-70mm lens on a tripod at 34mm at f11 for 1/40 of a second.

My First Blog

Hi Everyone,
I've decided to start a photo blog where I will publish some of my photos and a short description about the shot. This is to supplement my site at http://www.petebarnesphotography.co.uk/ where these, and others, can be viewed or bought.

This blog will be aimed at photo enthusiasts who are interested in tips on taking better photos, advice on processing digital files or simply looking for some inspiration. Like other blogs, I may get sidetracked and start other topics but all should be related to photography.

All comments are welcome and I hope you enjoy your visit.

Pete