Blog Redesign

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Friday night...in a corn field

Went out this evening as the sky looked like it was going to light up the modest amount of cloud cover and I ended up, as I do more times than I'd like to admit, in a field with absolutely no foreground interest. I pulled out the 10 stop filter, to try and do something with the movement of the clouds and the corn, I thought the hill and the trees to the bottom right almost had a Tuscan feel, well, about as Tuscan as you can get in Northern England.Anyway I didn't spend too long editing it, mainly removing the magenta cast from the long exposure filter by adjusting the white balance in lightroom. The exif data was 20mm, f/11 cooked for 30 seconds at ISO400, 400 I know, and it was still slightly underexposed, I get a little nervous above ISO400, I don't know why because the 5D handles noise really well.

I was lacking in inspiration with my wide angle but saw Emely moor mast in the distance looked like it was about to get swallowed up by the storm so I swapped to the 70-200 and zoomed to 200 to eliminate any distractions. I could have done with the clouds being a little more side lighted by the low sun but there you go. This was taken at f/8, 1/40 ISO200. I was ok going to 1/40 at 200m as I was on the tripod but as a rule you should always have the shutter no slower than the focal length to avoid any camera movement. ie 400mm should ideally be taken at 1/400 or faster, 16mm you can get down to 1/16 (actually 1/15) but that is about the limit of hand holding for shots I find.I've also cropped to a 2:1 ratio for these shots, I quite like this widescreen, panoramic look and it works well with these as there wasn't much going on at the top and bottom of the frame.

Have a good weekend folks.

Yamaha XVS 1300 Cruiser Motorbike

A couple of the Yamaha XVS1300 from yesterday, I like to think of it as an automotive work of art that no picture can ever do justice to. Not sure if we got the location right looking back, perhaps an abandoned warehouse would have been better, giving a more gritty feel. Same setup as the previous post with the same problems of no light stands! I'll have to get some moving shots soon, could be a little tricky as I might have to ride backwards as a pillion passenger snapping as I go!

Suzuki Bandit 1250 Streetfighter

I was out on the bike with a friend today and we decided to stop get a few shots of his new bike. It's a 1250 Suzuki Bandit for any bike buffs out there, a special edition I'm also informed. We pretty much lit the bike with 2 speedlights on full tilt and I also had a polariser on, this was more to try and reduce the ambient exposure so I could fire at under 1/200 without stopping the aperture down too much. Unfortunately I didn't take any light stands or modifiers so it was a bit pot luck with the lighting but I think we managed, it although I had to put my VAL (voice activated light stand) ie, my mate, to good use. I processed them in Lightroom and Photoshop with a bit of dodging and burning to bring out the clouds a little.

Marketing Material

Hey folks, not posted for a while, it's pretty quiet at the moment although I have been accepted to an exhibition in Skipton called art in the pen. It's an art exhibition in a livestock pen, I think it's pretty trendy, it was started in 2006 and has been growing pretty steadily, you never know it could be my cavern club! It's here if you want a look. I've done a bit of business type stuff recently that I don't usually go into on my blog but I am doing today as I haven't been out with the camera recently. These are the layout for my trifolios, they are cards that fold in on themselves so they can stand freely and just give people a chance to see some of my work. They are easy enough to design if you know your way around photoshop. I get them printed by my pro lab called Loxley Colour. Just got to drop them in at some local shops now.

Buachaille Etive Mor and The Cuillins

Not the easiest mountain to pronounce, Buachaille Etive Mor or the buckle as it is known in some walking mags. It is near Glen Coe and normally has a decent covering of snow on it but more often than not, a few low clouds I imagine. This was taken at sunrise at about 3.30. A common composition has a few waterfalls in it but I didn't like it as there is a small tree that slightly obscures the mountain. The exif for this was ISO100, 16mm, f/16, 0.6 second. The next shot was also in Scotland, this time on the isle of Skye and is a rugged mountain range known as the Cuillins, we walked up one of these a few hours after this was taken, it was a little grueling to say the least, not aided by the fact that it was one of the hottest days ever recorded on the wee island. Spectacular views at the top though but quite difficult to get a shot in the midday sun. This one from the bottom uses the bridge near the Sligachan hotel for a bit of foreground interest. The exif is ISO100 at 28mm, f/8 for 30 seconds, I used the 10 stop neutral density to try and get some movement in the clouds, didn't really need it in the end.

Four Trees

I was struggling for a decent composition this evening, probably because I spent most of it chatting to a fellow photographer when I should have been scouting out locations! Anyway I usually do lone trees but there wasn't really enough space between these to isolate one tree so I got a bunch of them against a fairly impressive sunset.

Lens flare was a bit of a problem as it always is when the sun is in shot but I got rid of most of it in post, I should have really removed the polariser as it was doing nothing facing the sun, it'd have been one less dirt and dust catching barrier between the scene and the sensor! I used a soft Lee 3 stop grad as the sky was a crucial part but I didn't want the land completely silhouetted. The exif stuff is ISO100, f/16 for 1/3 sec at 16mm although I am going to make a conscious effort to use a slightly narrower focal length in future, say 24ish mm, it's tough when I like to include so much sky!

More Beach Photography

Two more beaches from Harris, these probably count as the same beach but one is a little bit hidden. They aren't short of white beaches and blue seas up there, unless you go to the east side and then it's rocks and more rocks, the change in landscape over such a short distance has to be seen to be believed. The fist shot was another with the 10 stop ND filter and a 90 second exposure at f/11 (ISO100) one of the key things I learnt whilst doing this was to stand and position your shadow over the camera and tripod, this gets rid of any glare from the sun. I'd always read about shielding the sun but my hand always ended up in the shot. If I'm not behind the camera I may as well make myself useful and stand at the side! This technique cannot be done in the second photo as the sun is in shot, producing the glare, it can be removed in post but I wanted to keep it in on this one. Nothing overly tricky with this one, ISO100 16mm, f/16 for 1/3 sec. I had a 3 stop soft grad to make the sky play ball and tried to compose so the lines (rocks, sand etc) lead to the sun.

Panoramas from Glen Coe

These ones are coming out of the camera thick and fast! We spent a day travelling around the famous photographic locations around Glen Coe in Scotland such as Rannoch moor, BuachailleEtive Mor and the actual glen itself, a great drive and the weather was fantastic, in fact it was probably a bit too nice for photos, certainly at midday when the sun was high. As all the locations are relatively close together I could go back and forth between them which was good, especially at late afternoon/sunset.


The first shot was at the 3 sisters and is a panoramic stitch of about 7 vertical shots taken at 35mm, I've started zooming in more for panoramas if I can. There is an export to panorama function in Lightroom which is pretty good (it takes them straight into photoshop and does the business) but for these panoramas I used a program called PTGui, it allows you to move the horizon about which is handy when you do a panorama without a tripod, or in my case with a tripod but with a bent horizon, as mentioned, this was my first outing with a ball head so I needed to get used to it.

The next panorama is of Glen Coe, it has to be one of the prettiest places in Britain. Again a stitch of about 6 photos, I had to go to 16mm with this one as those mountains are pretty big!

Cropped Landscapes

A couple more from the Scotland trip. I have put these two together as I have cropped them to an aspect ratio of 2:1 as opposed to my usual 3:2. This gives a more wide screen format and is useful when there isn't a great deal going on at the top and bottom of the frame. The first shot was a sunrise near Brogaig on Skye, I got up thinking it would be amazing and only took 3 frames before the clouds moved up and got me, so had to go read my book in the car in the hope they would clear, they didn't. Taken at 35mm, f/16 for 6 seconds (ISO100).


The second is on a beach in Harris at Husinish using the slightly unruly 10 stop filter to smooth out the sea, not that it needed a great deal of smoothing. It was taken at 16mm, f/16 for 30 seconds at ISO200, I could have done ISO100 for 60 seconds to get a similar exposure with a little more movement but that would have meant going into bulb mode and getting the cable release out etc, I was there at midday so these were just snapshots really. I think the semi panoramic layout works quite well for these though, I guess I just have a bit of a dislike for the older 5x4 ratio that is almost a square!

Isle of Harris

I have recently been on a trip to the Isle of Harris of the north west coast of Scotland to do a few landscapes. We were very lucky with the weather all week and hopefully I got some decent shots. I've barely begun processing them but I thought I'd put a couple up now and others as and when I finish with them. I was in a long exposure mood so a lot of them have the associated cloud and water movement. These two were near where we camped on the western side of the island. We also stopped in Glen Coe and Skye for a few nights so I'll put some of those up soon too. It was my first time using a ball head tripod, I usually have a 3 way but this is a great bit of kit, as long as you remember to lock it down, I forgot once or twice which was almost quite an expensive mistake! I think both of these were taken on Bulb mode with a shutter release cable at f/11 for 90 seconds (ISO100).

Aston Martin at a Wedding

Just a quick one from a recent wedding, this one was a pretty quick snap of the couple and the car, and a superb car it is too, they had taken it for a spin between the church and the reception. I knew I had the shot I wanted straight away but I could have probably done the formals and the couple shots solely around the car but in the end we had to drag ourselves away. It was taken at f/4, 1/2000, ISO400 at 24mm, if I was doing just the car I would have had a grad filter to really deepen the clouds, maybe even have tinted them red like top gear! No time for such things at a weddings though.

Back in the Field

The sky was looking very interesting tonight, it was a shame I didn't really have a fixed idea where I wanted to be as I think I could have done a little better. As it was I ended up in a field after vaulting numerous walls desperately searching for foreground interest other than grass, I failed. I tried the 10 stop ND filter to really blur the grass but didn't like the results, I kept seeing a windows wallpaper type landscape but with really mean looking clouds! I drove round a bit more to see if I could get anything but no joy, it's really infuriating when the sky is so dramatic and you can't find a half decent location! Anyway this one was taken at my stock landscape settings, 16mm, f/16, 1/30 ISO100, with a 3 stop graduated filter. It was good to be out doing a bit of landscape photography again though and I got back before the rain, which was good!

Fearless

I'm having a few issues with the blogging side of things today so if I don't post this time I'm going to give it up as a bad job!

This is the last of my wedding posts from this wedding, I've done a couple as I was a bit low on wedding posts but after this I'm going to get back to some landscape stuff.

I was pretty nervous shooting this part of the wedding, the river was quite wide so there was quite a lot of stepping stones, it didn't help matters that one guy who went turned back as he didn't like the look of one of the stones. I was also aware of a number of spectators filming it on their mobiles and commentating on it as if they knew they'd be sending it to you've been framed! Luckily it went off without a problem and I got a lot of keepers. I had to clone out quite a few people on the banks but it's easy enough with Lightrooms spot removal and photoshop for the more tricky parts.

More of the traditional stuff

Not too traditional mind, I try and avoid the getting in the wedding car shots whenever possible. As mentioned previously, I did have a lot of time with this couple as they are close friends so as a result I have quite a few to post, I might put a slideshow up at some point too.

These are more the traditional black and whites which I really love. The shadows are slightly warmer than a straight black and white and a decent vignette also help the image along.
I won't go into the exif data other than to say I was at a higher ISO than I should have been in bright outdoor conditions but only 400 so not really noticeable. It's never a good idea to step out of a dim church into the sun and start papping everyone at ISO3200!

Different style of wedding photography

I'm still playing with photos from a recent wedding, I have done a load of black and white conversions which I really like but now I'm doing some cross processing and more texture overlays. Cross processing is another throw back to film days where people would use different types of developer for different film producing high contrast stuff with odd hues. It was often quite unpredictable and yielded great results as often as bad ones. With digital the randomness of the process isn't really replicated but it is a technique that can work better on some shots than others. Museums tend to be quite big on cross processing and lomography, usually of bicycles or old cafes. Not for everyone but I quite like some of the results. I've also done some border overlays to complete the look.

The Bride and The Veil

We had a great wedding at the weekend and I have a number of shots to process but I thought I'd post this one. The wedding was at Bolton Abbey in North Yorkshire, it was a fantastic location and the weather was great. The couple are good friends of ours so it was a bit of a bus man's holiday but they were up for anything in terms of photography which is always good, you'll see what I mean if I post some shots of them walking on the stepping stones on a pretty wide river. There was a light wind so every time the gust picked up I tried to get a flowing shot of the veil, this being an example. I did a little HDR work to really bring out some detail in the veil back of the dress but not a great deal. The shot was converted to mono with silver efex so it has some authentic film grain too. The shot was taken at ISO400, F4, 1/4000 at 35mm (all the fours!)

Smiling Bride

It's wedding season again! We got this one a couple of weeks ago at a great wedding in North Yorkshire. I'm currently experimenting with textured overlays as they can give quite interesting effects. You can build up a library of photos of interesting texture, be it brick walls, wooden tables etc. and try overlaying them in photoshop. All you have to do is paste the texture onto a new layer and set the blending mode to overlay (I start with overlay but some of the other ones give different results) Reducing the opacity and masking areas also helps. These can be a bit hit and miss but it's just a bit different from the selective colouring we see quite a lot of. The image itself was taken at ISO200, 200mm, f/2.8 at 1/1250.

The black and white I've posted was a follow on from the technique I was working on a while back taking a slightly out of focus image and adding a little film grain to get a retro reportage style shot that would otherwise have been binned. This would also work with a lomo or cross processed style of processing. This was taken at ISO200, 78mm, f/2.8, 1/200. For the grain I use silver efex or alien skin's exposure, which also has coloured film effects.

2 Minutes of Sky

Last post 24th March! If I knew what the date was I'd be shocked, I know we're close to some religous shebang that has something to do with chocolate and bank holidays. Anyway I went out the other night as the light was looking pretty good so I arrived and set up and the light went straight to hell so I thought I'd do a few more long exposures. I did a few at 10 minutes but didn't like the results, this one was exposed for 120 seconds, f/16, ISO100 16mm, and if these setting seem familiar it's because I was taking photos of a tree and they are the only settings I allow for tree photos :) Not much else about it really, the 10 stop gives off a little magenta hue for long exposures but if you shoot RAW you can have a little diddle with the white balance when you get home. I quite like how the outer leaves were blurred but the stable branches stayed sharp, gives it a etheral quality. Have a good weekend everyone.

Striding Edge, Lake District

Another one from Saturday. This was a quick and dirty panoramic (non of that tripod nonsense) Camera on full manual with focus set to infinity and about 5 shots taken in portrait orientation with about 33% overlap from one photo to the next. Photomerge in CS4 is so good now it can get rid of any vignetting you might have or any geometric distortions that come with using wide angles. I wanted to use striding edge as a leading line up to the mountain but also wanted to include the tarn to the right. These were all taken at ISO200, 16mm, f/13, 1/125.

Helvellyn and Ullswater

Took a quick trip up to the lakes at the weekend as it seemed the weather was going to be good, unfortunately it was a little hazy so didn't get the camera out too often but these were a couple that seemed worth posting. I'll have to get there for sun rise one of these days. I didn't have my tripod so it was a hand holding compromise again between ISO, aperture and shutter speed, not too difficult in full manual, I even put the grad on on the lake shot as I new the clouds would be an important element.

The boathouse on Ullswater is very picturesque and there is usually at least one tog there trying to get something. Striding edge is a great part of the walk up Helvellyn, it was a shame the clouds were a little low but again, you really need to be there for the golden hours to get anything memorable.

Another Long Exposure Landscape

This is another one from the same shoot as my last post, the weather hasn’t been the best lately but I think it’s brightening up now so I will hopefully get out this week. Not vastly different from the shot I previously posted, this one is in portrait as I wanted to include a little more sky.
It was taken at ISO100, 21mm, f/8 30 seconds. I zoomed in a touch as I tend to get a little vignetting at 16mm when using a lot of filters. The flat water again comes from the 10 stop filter allowing for a 30 second exposure. I always try to shoot at ISO100 and had to use f/8 as that was the longest speed without going into bulb mode, I could have done 1 minute at f11 or 2 minutes at f16 plus, if I’d have gone to ISO50, this would have taken me to 4 minutes. Unfortunately I was getting hungry and the car park was closing!

Long Exposure Sunset

I was out taking this at a local water sports lake and I had a couple of points I thought might be useful to remember for this blog but have forgotten them! I think I'll have to get a ball head for my tripod at some stage, I have a three way head at present and they can be a little cumbersome, especially when composing a shot a few inches above the water. To make things even worse I had to look through the view finder upside down, not the most accurate way of getting the horizon level. This was taken with the 10 Stop filter that I'm using a fair bit lately. As these are so dense (in terms of light transmission) you have to compose and focus with the filter off the camera and then slide it into the holder, although I find it easier to take the filter and the holder off and just snap it on for the shot. I also had a graduated filter to prevent the sky from blowing out, very easy when including the sun. A good idea if you are using these long exposure filters is to get your exposure right without it on then just add 10 stops of light So say 30 clicks of increasing your shutter speed, or if you get to 30 seconds and don't want to go into bulb mode but have only done 6 stops (18 clicks if your camera goes in 1/3 stop increments), open up the aperture 4 stops (12 clicks). It seems a little difficult to get your head round but once you do it'll make things a whole lot easier and you'll always use full manual, for landscapes anyway. This was taken at ISO100 19mm, f/14 for 30 seconds. There is a little lens flare to illustrate my last point, ALWAYS clean your lens and any filters between the camera and subject, be it UV filters, ND filters or Grads, any dust when shooting into the sun will refract it and make the shot only good for blog tutorials or healing brush practice!

Black & Whites with lots of Grain

Last night I was messing around with a technique I had seen using soft focus and digital noise to try and replicate an old photography style probably similar to Holga type photos. It relied heavily on the image being slightly out of focus, converted to black and white and a lot of grain added.

Grain is the film equivalent of noise in digital and a lot of the purists say it can't be replicated, where as noise is a pretty horrible by product of shooting at high ISOs, grain can add another element to the photo. I originally though it would be better to use a high ISO (say, 3200) and try and add grain digitally. However the noise is a little uneven and seems to almost create bands on the image, especially if you increased the noise further by increasing the exposure in Lightroom.

With this image, and yes it was taken quite quickly with little compositional thought, I did use a high ISO and wide aperture and tried not to focus on anything in particular. I then used silver efex (a photoshop plugin) to do the conversion and add the grain. It is very user friendly and can add a wide variety of grain effects. I went a little overboard on this example perhaps but I think it could be used quite effectivly in future, possibly for those wedding shots that are good but let down slightly as they aren't quite tack sharp. This was taken at ISO3200, f/2, 1/1000 at 50mm.

Trees and Masts

I had a feeling we'd get a decent sunset this evening but I couldn't have been more wrong, a mite disappointing to say the least!
It was pretty windy up near Emley Moor Mast so I took the opportunity to get my 10 stop filter out and see if I could get a bit of cloud movement, notice the complete lack of interesting sunset in the background, that's breaking the rules for ya! The mast one was taken at f/5.6 ISO100 19mm 30 seconds.
The tree was taken about an hour earlier, I was using the fence as a leading line and side lighting from the low sun. You wouldn't believe it if I told you but when I was approaching there was a big mean looking cloud behind the tree that would have made a decent shot but alas it vanished and left me with a fairly plain blue sky.
The important lesson is not every outing is successful and this is why it's so rewarding to eventually 'get' a shot, I'm told golf is similar but I don't believe it for a second.

The Glass Floor

I was doing some studio portrait shots yesterday and thought I'd have a go at this technique I saw a while ago. It's easy enough to do and gives a decent effect. You don't need to be a genius to figure out how it's done, probably not a great idea if are photographing subjects with skirts on, or Scots in kilts for that matter. This was taken at 45mm 1/125, (studio flash) f/8 ISO125, I increased the ISO by 1/3 because they were a little underexposed and I couldn't be bothered getting up to increase the flash power by a 1/3. A quick Q&A for you, I could have also opened up the aperture to 7.1 instead of the ISO increase. Remember when lighting with just flash the shutter speed is irrelevant as long as it's under the cameras x-sync (usually around 1/200th).

Long lense if you don't feel like walking

I got this a few mornings ago and pretty much forgot about it until today. I wasn't dressed to brave the snow and I didn't really have time to get to a location so I got another view of my favorite tree! I had the 100-400 lense on, I think this one was about 230mm, I got a few with the tree isolated but wanted more of the great sunrise so I pulled back a little and used the tree and horizon to just set the sky. I didn't use any filters.
It was a bit tricky setting the white balance in the end I set it on the cooler side, about 4000K but desaturated the blues slightly. I added a bit of a vignette in photoshop and that's about it, there might be a few dust spots as I don't think I took care of them at the start.

Motorbike Photography

I'm going to start doing a bit of motorbike photography, this was quite a quick attempt largely due to the freezing conditions outside. The garage wasn't the tidiest I've seen and there was a car just behind the bike so I had to be careful not to light any of it. There was no ambient light so everything was lit by 3 flashes, one you can see in the top left and another between the car and the bike, both these were hard unmodified lights. The third light was an umbrella just to camera left and this provided the detail to all the chrome. Everything was on full manual and with the flash powers varying from about 1/2 to about 1/64. They were all fired with pocket wizards, the quick mono conversion was done in CS3. Hopefully I'll be getting out and doing some moving shots with more riders and less lights!

Snow... with trees

It's been far too long since I've posted anything on here so I'm putting up a couple from today's outing. I'd seen this tree a while back and wanted to get some shots of it and with the recent snow it seemed like the perfect opportunity to get out. I waited until the sun was quite low in the sky and did some side lit shots but these weren't really that great so I went a backlit shot. I wanted the light to really show the texture of the snow (hence the side lighting) but still have a focal point.

I wasn't out for very long and I certainly wasn't lying down for very long. I kept the sky under control with my Lee Grads and tweaked the levels in Lightroom. In hindsight I should have done a killer HDR with about 9 exposures but my mind must have been elsewhere. These two were taken at (about) 16mm f/16 1/60 at ISO200, I went to ISO200 as I took the camera of the tripod to get (frostbite) really low, I was at about 1/30 before and I didn't want to handhold at that speed. Thanks for looking.

Castle Hill

I braved the cold today and went up to Castle Hill near Huddersfield. The day had been very crisp and clear but there wasn't enough cloud to get a really good sunset. I tried some side lit shots but I had little success, in hindsight I should have found a vantage point a mile or so away so I could incorporate the hill and the sunset, maybe next time. I had to resort to a HDR shot to get some detail in the dark side of the tower. I also had to correct the converging verticals in photoshop.

Ice Ice Baby

Taking a break from landscapes I got this on one of my rambles, I liked the abstract quality and the wavey lines in the ice. The pebbles break it up a little and add a focal point but to be honest there wasn't a huge amount of compositional thought behind this one. A lot of photo mags say it's a good idea to freeze some leaves in a plastic tub to get some abstract ice shots, I've not tried it myself but it seems like a decent rainy day thing if you are into macro photography. As for exif, this was ISO100, f/8,1/25 at 70mm.

I'm getting some mileage from these...

I think this will be the last from this set and I'm only posting now instead of tomorrow as I might be busy then and I'm not now. The first jetty was the one I wanted to get but I arrived and it wasn't in the best state of repair, good job I didn't plan to get the boat there! I was after some long exposure shots so out came the 6 stop ND filter which got me to 25 seconds at f/16 (ISO100). I used a cooler white balance to give the colder tone, you can either do this in camera or, if shooting RAW, in processing.

The second shot was on the way up Catbells, using some frozen vegetation as FG interest and a 3 stop ND grad to keep the sky under control. This was taken at f/16 ISO 100, 1/10 sec at 16mm.