Wakefield Wedding Photography Blog

Blog Redesign

2009-07-30T10:17:00.001+01:00

I'm currently redesigning my blog site that will hopefully be up soon, it's here if anyone wants a peek but please remember it's not fully up and running yet

Friday night...in a corn field

2009-07-24T22:09:00.011+01:00

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

2009-07-14T11:53:00.003+01:00

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

2009-07-13T17:34:00.003+01:00

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

2009-07-01T13:24:00.004+01:00

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

2009-06-15T18:54:00.003+01:00

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

2009-06-13T22:20:00.003+01:00

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

2009-06-10T08:05:00.004+01:00

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

2009-06-09T12:00:00.003+01:00

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

2009-06-08T09:54:00.003+01:00

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

2009-06-06T16:22:00.002+01:00

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

2009-05-27T11:13:00.003+01:00

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

2009-05-07T21:13:00.003+01:00

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

2009-05-01T19:15:00.012+01:00

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

2009-04-28T15:52:00.004+01:00

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

2009-04-28T09:40:00.003+01:00

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

2009-04-22T19:38:00.003+01:00

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

2009-04-14T11:53:00.004+01:00

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

2009-04-09T17:49:00.003+01:00

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

2009-03-24T07:55:00.003Z

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

2009-03-23T09:37:00.003Z

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

2009-03-11T09:17:00.005Z

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

2009-03-05T21:06:00.003Z

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

2009-03-03T07:40:00.003Z

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

2009-03-01T20:10:00.004Z

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

2009-02-18T15:24:00.004Z

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

2009-02-17T11:55:00.003Z

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

2009-02-08T15:57:00.003Z

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

2009-02-06T19:53:00.003Z

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

2009-01-06T19:58:00.003Z

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

2009-01-04T17:14:00.003Z

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...

2009-01-03T17:14:00.003Z

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.

Panoramics of the Lake District

2009-01-03T08:17:00.004Z

A couple more from the same walk as the previous post. These were two panoramic shots of the valleys either side of Catbells, the first one shows Derwent water, Skiddaw, Blencathra and Keswick.

I'm not 100% sure of the name of the name of the other valley but apparently it has a town called littletown that is in some of the Beatrix Potter books. It was in shadow for most of the day so remained frosty, the sun lit up the mountains behind it though. In this shot you can also see Grasmoor and Grisedale Pike (I think).I may have posted Instructions for creating Panoramics a while ago, with photoshop's photomerge script they are really quick and easy. I would always use a tripod just to save any trouble when editing, if you get a bit of a slope your panoramic can quickly become very thin!

Cat bells and Derwent Water

2009-01-02T16:50:00.003Z

We were in the lake district for New Years day and decided to beat the crowds and climb cat bells early on. The weather was great with no clouds and no wind so when the sun came up and lit up the Derwent valley it was difficult to take a bad shot.

We were taking pictures all the way up and concentrating on using the sun to side light the hill. There was a lot of frost about so frozen rocks and vegetation was good for foreground interest. I had a 3 stop graduated filter on because I didn't want to blow out the sun and the sky, this often gives a star burst effect which I quite like but you sometimes get a bit of flare somewhere else in the shot (usually right on the focal point) but this is easily correctable in photoshop, try to keep your lenses and additional filters free from any dust of finger prints to minimise this.
Again it's often easier to go on full manual and dial in your aperture and then play around with your shutter speed to get the exposure you want, it's not always best to let the camera decide, especially if you have a lot of contrast in the scene. The first shot was taken at ISO100 16mm, f/16 for 1/5 sec.
The shot from the jetty was taken later on when the sun was well up, however as it is winter you get a nice low sun for a lot of the day. This was a 10 second exposure to really take any movement out of the water in the lake. I also set the aperture to f/22 and the ISO to 50. On my canon you have to set expanded ISO to on in your custom settings. To slow things down further I slapped on a 6 stop ND filter (basically thick sunglasses for your lens) this allowed me to get the exposure time to 10 seconds.

Skateboarding on Boxing Day

2008-12-29T17:31:00.005Z

We went to a school yard nearby to test out this insane skate/snow board hybrid present, I wasn't too keen on breaking a limb but thought I'd take the camera and maybe snap some of the thrills and spills. My sister was directing the off camera flash, hard light coming from camera left, I was wanting to throw a harsh shadow on the brick wall to give it a bit of a grungy look. The second one was just as the sun was setting and the sky looked pretty cool.

When I use off camera flash I always go full manual with both the camera and the flash, this is great because when you get the flash set for a given aperture you can control the ambient just by changing the shutter speed, this is good for to get moody skies.

NB. I have been trying to post these for a few days but it seems the people over at google blogger have had an extended xmas break, all back in working order now. I went to the lake district again today so I'll hopefully have some of those shots up soon. Happy 2009 everyone!

You guessed it, a tree...at sunrise!

2008-12-22T09:59:00.006Z

Hey folks, I wasn't in the best frame of mind for photos this morning so it became more like a what not to do on a photo outing and if you can still come away with something half way decent you are doing ok. (Remember, it's what not to do, and I did them all!)

Set off with no plan of what you intend to shoot.
Take the bare minimum in terms of equipment, filters and polarisers just take up space and you won't need them.
Leave yourself no time to get to where you wish to take photos.
Walk the least distance possible but through bogs that only 50,000 horse power tractors can get through, if possible wear brand new Italian motorcycle boots, oh and clean jeans!
Don't worry about checking what ISO you were using last time, it'll probably be a nice noise free 100 anyway.
Take a haphazard, almost child like approach to crossing muddy puddles, with equipment depreciation these days you can always just get a brand new camera should it come off the tripod as you skip over the half lit puddles.
Spend no time thinking about composition, you'll just over complicate things, is a straight horizon really that important?

This is the result, I'm amazed I managed to remember to take the lens cap off! I got away with being a little lax this time because I was familiar with the surroundings and the equipment. The timing of the shot is critical, shots 10 minutes either side of this one would be moved to deleted pretty much as soon as I got them on the computer. For anyone still following this was a HDR so the shutter varied from 5 secs to about 1/25. ISO was 100 (I do check this without thinking now, despite the above point 5) Keeping ISO's low is extra important when doing HDR stuff, f/16 and 16mm.

I'm adding another shot to this post as I think I prefer it to the HDR look, I'll probably change my mind back as soon as I post it!

More from the Vault

2008-12-18T13:14:00.003Z

This is an old one I was playing with today, only posting as I have been pretty poor at keeping the blog up to date recently. I'll hopefully get out soon to get some landscapes done as we've had some nice clear weather recently, all be it a mite cold! I'm not too keen on the square (ish) crop, only noticed that a minute ago. I'm sorry if this is a little brief, I'm dashing out so can't give any tips on this one.

Desert Landscape

2008-12-03T09:15:00.003Z

This was taken out in the desert (surprisingly enough). I didn't have a lot of time to set this one up as I was holding people up. Unfortunately there wasn't a huge amount of foreground interest, unless you count fag packets and plastic bottles, so I tried to do something with the ripples and the reeds. I originally wanted to have a black and white version but I think the colour one just edged it. This was taken at ISO400 (I had a polariser on) f8, 1/100 at 16mm.

HDR in Dubai

2008-12-02T07:57:00.005Z

I used to do a fair bit of HDR (High Dynamic Range) photography but now I tend to just use an ND grad to balance the sky. This is not so easy when you have lots of sky scrapers dissecting the horizon, plus setting up the filter can be a little bit annoying.

This was taken using my 16-35 lens at 19mm, I focused on the horizon and then set it to manual focus, the camera was in full manual mode at f11 ISO100. The only thing I changed was the shutter speed. I used to just bracket 2 stops either side and join the 3 raw files but now I take up to 9 exposures as I think it gives a far better result.
The speeds for this one was 1/15,1/30,1/60,1/125,1/250,1/500,1/1000 and 1/2000 so a stop difference every time (1 stop is half or double the light) or if you aren't great at judging stops, if your camera works in 1/3 stop increments, each stop is a 3 clicks on either the dial or the wheel.

First of Dubai

2008-11-30T09:29:00.003Z

I'm just posting the first few coming off the card from a recent trip to Dubai, if there is anywhere to practice architectural photography this is it, converging verticals everywhere! I'll hopefully be posting some more of our trip in a few days. These were taken near the marina before the sunrise, a long exposure of about 20 seconds served to really flatten the water and get the mirrored effect.
Obviously I needed the tripod but nothing much else to it, the exif data on these ones was ISO100, 16mm f/8 for 20seconds. I was a bit slack processing them, using noise ninja when not needed etc. So I might redo them at a later date.

Behold The Dawn!

2008-11-17T09:36:00.003Z

I just found this photo I had been playing with a few weeks ago and forgot about it, there isn't much to be said about it really, I'm not a great fan of using myself as foreground interest but when there is nothing else about you just have to make do.

On an unrelated note, apparently photomatix have released a lightroom plugin for all you HDR enthusiasts, I haven't tried it yet but it sounds like a good idea. Anyway I have to sort some wedding photos from the weekend, have a good week everyone.

Woodland Shoot

2008-11-16T18:21:00.003Z

I was out in the woods with my niece and nephew and as the weather was nice I thought I'd take the camera. There are quite a few problems using available light in woodland, as there is a lot less light than normal outdoor daytime conditions you have to use ISO levels similar to indoors. The light levels can also vary dramatically, confusing the hell out of your cameras light meter so in some cases you might be better finding a good exposure for your subject and dialing it in on full manual.

This can be seen in the first photo, the bright sun light coming from outside would have cause the subject and woodland interior to be under exposed and although there are some blown highlights I'd take it over a near silhouette. Another issue I find in woodland photos is a murky green colour cast from the leaves that is not the best for skin tones. Shooting in RAW you can adjust the white balance during the editing stage, I warmed these up to around 6000K as it also enhances the autumnal colours, just try not to go overboard.

Self Portraits

2008-11-05T15:56:00.004Z

I had to send a mugshot type photo of myself to a magazine today and as I haven't posted on here since god knows when I thought I'd kill two birds with one stone, so to speak. I really dislike being on the other side of the camera and I particularly dislike it when I have to use a mirror, I could have set up a tripod and all that but thought it would be a fairly quick affair. So then out came the speed lights and pocket wizards and I got set in front of the mirror.

I have no idea why I decided to take pictures in the bathroom and it was particularly embarrassing when my sister dropped in to see me but I managed to get through it. It was a two light setup with hard light coming from behind me to provide the rim lighting (no I hadn't brushed my hair) and a light in front to 45 degrees to my left. The light in front had an umbrella on in one shot and a home made grid on the other providing two different types of lighting. A decent amount of light bounced from the rear light on the mirror lighting up the room behind me so I just sorted it out with the local adjustment tool in LR2 (now much better after 2.1 patch). I put it in mono as I find it more flattering. The exif was ISO100, 70mm, 1/200 at 5.6.

Sky Library

2008-10-22T08:35:00.003+01:00

I went out this morning to get what I thought would be a great sunrise and ended up sitting in the car for an hour as it started raining pretty hard and the sunrise didn't look too promising, the joys of landscape photography! I decided to come home and although the sunrise wasn't that great and there certainly wasn't much foreground interest to properly compose a photo I decided to add to the sky library. These are great to have on your system if you ever need to replace a dull looking sky from an otherwise ok shot. They can be taken whenever you see interesting sky. I have a few sun rises, sun sets, midday blue skies and some moody cloud shots. I don't do a great deal of composite sky shots but is handy just to have the option.

Bolton Abbey Shoot

2008-10-16T08:42:00.003+01:00

I was doing a shoot at Bolton abbey with some friends but they were busy at a service so I just got some shots of my girlfriend/assistant.

Conditions were very overcast which I don't generally like as the light is very flat and it's difficult to create any depth but on the otherhand it is very soft with no sharp shadows or 'panda eyes' you can get in harsh afternoon light. I got 5 shots I was happy with and thought I would put a couple up, they were taken around ISO200, 1/500, f/4 at about 70mm, processed first in lightroom then in photoshop, 4 out of the 5 were black and white.

Cows Week

2008-10-15T16:57:00.003+01:00

A couple more from the back catalog, I have not done a lot of processing with these really but as you will have noticed I'm back in Black and White mode, I really wanted to use one of the cows bright orange colouring but it just wasn't happening. I was a bit annoyed as when I was snapping these my mate was getting shots of the bull, which I thought was probably a little more photogenic but I had not noticed him until we were leaving, breaking one of my main rules - Avoid the 'walk up' shot and have a look round. Anyway just thought I'd put these up to keep my post rate up.

Smooth Infrareds

2008-10-09T13:01:00.004+01:00

I got an infrared filter a few fays ago and have yet to use it, it's just so much easier getting a similar effect in the digital darkroom. This is a shot I have processed largely using silver efex pro. I like the IR effect, especially on the sky but I'm not a great fan of the glow you tend to get from traditional IR photos. The benefit of doing it digitally is you can experiment and see the results straight away. With this shot I wanted to retain some detail in the grass and the leaves that the IR glow would lose.

Last of the Mud Flats

2008-10-07T10:55:00.004+01:00

These were from the maybe pile from last week that I decided to tinker with and was quite happy with the results. The light was going quite quickly in these shots so there has been a decent amount of recovery both in lightroom and in photoshop. Lightrooms gradient tool and local adjustment brush are awesome, I highly recommend it if you shoot a lot of RAW's.

These were taken at similar settings, 16mm, f/16, ISO100 and around 2 seconds exposure. Again I warmed the tones up by adjusting the WB in lightroom, I wasn't after a high contrast HDR look but I did bring back some detail with the local adjustment brush on the rocks and the gradient on the sky.

Highland Cattle

2008-10-05T09:08:00.003+01:00

I got this one a few days ago at the end of a bit of a photo walk, We came across a field of highland cattle who must be fairly used to visitors. I managed to get closer and closer until after about 10 minutes this one came over to check out what was going on. This was taken about 0.5 a second before he licked the front of the lens. I wanted to get really wide so I was at 16mm at f/5.6 and 1/250 to ensure there was no motion, I still had a circular polariser and an ND grad on the lens, as I'd been shooting landscapes so I had to pump up the ISO to 400, the colour version has quite vivid blues from the sky and oranges from the cattle but I like the mono version as it accentuates the low sun side lighting we were getting, especially on his nose!

Seascape at Sunset

2008-10-04T08:02:00.004+01:00

Another one from our trip to the lakes, this was overlooking the Morecambe Bay area during the last few minutes of sunlight, the tide was very far out leaving large bodies of water between the sand (or mud) banks, as there are no waves the water is very still and ideal for reflections, I was a little annoyed at the ripple saw after we got back but there you go. The original was quite a cool tone so I warmed up the white balance in Lightroom, one of the enormous benefits of shooting in RAW. This was shot with my 3 stop ND grad at ISO100, 17mm, f/16 at 1/2 second.

Boat at Low Tide

2008-10-03T17:34:00.003+01:00

I've just come back from a few days in the Lake District and have started processing some shots. This one was one of my favorites. I used a very low angle to really include pebbles and hyper focal distancing to ensure all but the very closest stones were in focus. I have a colour version which I really like but I've decided to post this mono version. I'll hopefully put a few more up this weekend. As I didn't have my tripod I had to make sure any exposure had to be over say 1/100 as I was lying on the pebbles I wasn't confident to go any slower and keep the camera steady. I had a 3 stop ND filter attached to keep the sky from going places it shouldn't! This was taken at 16mm at ISO200, 1/160 at f/9.

Architecture in Leeds

2008-09-27T20:15:00.003+01:00

I was on a shoot in Leeds last week that called for some architectural shots so I headed for the townhall with a view of doing something with the columns. I wanted to concentrate on the transition of light to shadow on the circular pillars and the shadows they were casting, as I had a feeling I would be doing a mono conversion. I was using my 70-200 lens as I wanted to isolate certain details, I knew if I had my wide angle on I was bound to get some bystander as it was quite busy and I didn't want to spend hours cloning out afternoon shoppers. I took quite a few shots like this but I stuck with this one as I liked the leading line element to the black door, I was lucky with the shadow of the lamp above it too. This was taken at 70mm, f/4 @ 1/400 ISO100.

1 Strobe, Choose your background

2008-09-25T13:18:00.002+01:00

Hi folks, I've been playing with my pocket wizards again just experimenting with exposures with one flash off camera and some light coming in from the window. This was quite a quick setup in the living room with no clear backgrounds, I have done a shot to demonstrate what was in the background (a couch!). I didn't have any willing subjects so I had to use my wii guitar.

I think ambient exposure was about 1/100 at 2.8 ISO400. From this I can now choose if the background can be blown out white or Black, obviously for a white background there also needs to be something lighting your subject or you would get a silhouette, in this case the light came from the window.

So to blow out the background I had my flash pointed at the ceiling at 1/4 power, my camera set to 2.8 ISO400, 1/200sec, the window light exposed the guitar and the flash blew out the background.

Now to make the background black I had to eliminate all ambient light so I set my camera to 1/200 (I couldn't go any quicker as this is the 5D's x-sync speed) ISO100 and f16. The drop in ISO and aperture would also reduce the effect of the flash. The flash was now lighting the guitar, it was still at 1/4 power but I set the zoom (on the flash) to 85mm to reduce the spread and had it coming in from about 45 degrees to the right, this was important as I didn't want any spill onto the background, not to mention the horrible sharp shadow it would have produced. Instead of increasing or decreasing the power of the flash I just changed the distance between flash and subject and thats about it. I did a very minor tweak in lightroom to ensure the blacks were black and the whites were white but nothing else.

Sports Portraits

2008-09-24T10:57:00.003+01:00

I did some more outdoor lighting yesterday with my nephew playing football (a big man city fan). This was a 3 light setup with two speedlights behind and to the side of the subject, providing rimlighting, and another just off to camera right. This was quite tough as there was only a small area of space that was lit by all three lights, I could have probably made it easier by removing the one to the camera right behind the subject and increasing the spread of the remaining lights but then I wouldn't have got the rim lighting I was after. The light levels were also dropping quite quickly but I wanted a small amount of ambiant light to get the motion blur. This was taken in full manual 1/125, f11, ISO400 34mm.

Off Camera Portraits

2008-09-21T18:50:00.004+01:00

I've recently bought a couple more pocket wizards that allow me to use more lights off camera, this was from a few quick shots we got in the garden. It was a two light setup with an umbrella to camera right and a bare light behind the subject to camera left providing a little separation light from the background. I'm going to use another light behind the subjects to the camera right. This was taken on full manual, both lights and camera, the exif was f/11, 1/200 sec. ISO400 at about 150mm. Sorry for the quick post but will do a more detailed version when I get a better shot.

More Bales

2008-09-19T19:52:00.004+01:00

There was some really nice light this evening so I dashed out to my nearest field that I knew had some hay bales in it. Nothing extraordinary really but it was nice to be out doing a landscape, I'm doing quite a lot of strobist type shots at present and hope to post some soon. As always with my landscapes I did a mono conversion and decided it was slightly better but there wasn't much in it. I used my trusty 3 stop ND grad filter but thought it was a bit strong so I brought the sky back about a stop using the local adjustment gradient in Lightroom. The exif was my safe 16mm, f/16, ISO 100, 1/6 sec, I forgot to take my infrared filter with me, must remember for next time.

Pre Wedding Portraits

2008-09-12T10:13:00.005+01:00

I had a pre wedding meeting yesterday with a couple we are covering in a few weeks and I thought I might use some off camera flash, I've been reading a lot of strobist, if you haven't been it's worth a look for techniques and inspiration. Anyway as the sun had pretty much dipped over the horizon I wanted to do something with the sunset, but not have the couple as silhouettes, so in full manual I metered for the sky and got f5.6 at 1/160 sec (ISO100) I had a flash to the left through an umbrella and it was just a case of changing the flash power (I ended up at about 1/4 power with an old SB28, I know, a Nikon!) I could have darkened the sky by simply adjusting the shutter speed. I tweaked the shot in lightroom, I originally added a textured layer in photoshop but decided it made the photo look like it was on a backdrop so I binned it. I was going to do a mono conversion but decided it wasn't necessary

New Macro Lens

2008-09-05T17:10:00.006+01:00

I recently bought the Sigma 150mm Macro (after reluctantly selling my 50mm version) so I decided to have a few test shots with it. I used a 580EX off camera to let me use a narrower aperture (to increase DOF). I didn't spend too long on these really, I just wanted to get some pictures as it was raining quite hard outside. These were taken at ISO200, f8, 150mm, 1/125 sec, on full manual mode as I was using a flash, the shutter speed was enough to cut out any ambient light.

Chester Zoo

2008-09-03T16:51:00.005+01:00

I went to Chester Zoo at the weekend, I wasn't expecting to get too much but I was quite surprised with some of the ones I came away with. I had to pump up the ISO on some of the shots and was thankful of the image stabilizer on my 70-200 lens. I've processed them all in mono because I quite liked the effect and did a little doging and burning in photoshop, the gallery with the 12 I processed can be seen here.

Crazy Stunts

2008-09-01T14:31:00.003+01:00

We went to the Llangollen Balloon festival at the weekend, didn't see a great deal of balloons as the weather was pretty poor but the stunt bikes were pretty amazing, the lads did a victory lap at the end and they all looked about 12! Anyway this is a little different from the stuff I normally shoot so it was a nice change. I was shooting on Shutter priority as I needed to freeze the action more than anything, so that was set to 1/800, ISO 200 using a 70-200 focal range, the appertures were usually about f9, AF mode was set to Al Servo.

More Landscapes

2008-08-28T18:08:00.004+01:00

Thought I'd post a couple of landscapes I got earlier today, I've been waiting for the clouds to be just right, they came in a little towards the end but I was quite pleased with these. I did a little dodging and burning both in LR2, with the local adjustment brush and then a little more in CS3. I liked how both images semed to have a different feel to them even though they were only teken about 30 minutes apart. No foreground interest or leading lines in the second one but I thought the sky was great.

Last Macro

2008-08-24T13:52:00.003+01:00

I'm putting this one up because it'll probably be the last shot I take with my sigma 50mm macro lense as I'm selling it, I'll probably be tempted to buy another at some point but the proceeds will go towards it's bigger (heavier) brother. Anyway this was just a quick shot of an echinacea plant (I think) Taken at f2.8 50mm, ISO800 1/30, I was surprised there was no camera shake, especially as I was in an odd shooting position. I processed it with niksoftwares silver efex pro. If anyone is thinking about getting this lense my advice would be to go for it, you won't be disappointed, although the longer variants (105/150/180mm) are probably better for insects.

Farmers!

2008-08-10T21:05:00.003+01:00

I ran past a field today full of hay bails bathed in glorious morning sunlight, excellent I thought, I'll bring back the camera in the evening and get some shots. I returned this evening to find the farmer had collected anything resembling foreground interest and the sun had been replaced by overcast skies, most frustrating. Anyway I decided to do a bit of HDR because I hadn't done any for a while. Anyway this is my only one worth posting, it was the only leading line I could find!

Back in Black

2008-08-05T10:44:00.004+01:00

This is one I got last night during a break in editing wedding stuff, haven't done any landscapes for a bit so it was nice to get out. I was trying a new (ish) black and white plugin for photoshop called silver efex (by niksoftware) it seemed pretty good, it's one of these that claim to replicate film black and whites etc. I was going to take out the tower but thought I'd just leave it in as it was only a snap shot really. Shot with a 3 stop ND filter at f16, 16mm, 1/10 ISO100.

Lightroom 2

2008-07-31T19:43:00.002+01:00

Hi Everyone, just putting this post up as I've been playing with the new version of adobe's lightroom, first impressions are that it's pretty impressive. There are plenty of review sites and tutorials about all the new features, I like to have a bit of a play round instead of reading the manual. There are loads of additions to the develop panel, one that caught my eye is the graduated filter. It used to be that if you wanted to say darken the sky slightly you had to open your RAW files in CS3 then add a gradient layer and change your blend mode but now you can do it all in LR. This picture is an example of a coloured grad I added to an old photo I never got round to processing. There are plenty of other features to streamline your workflow, that sounds so much like managerial bull***t, but it's true. There are some performance issues being talked about, I have noticed on my fairly old computer it does slow down but never locks up or crashes, people fortunate to have quadcore, watercooled computers say it all works fine so it looks like I may have to get a few upgrades!

Photoshop Actions

2008-07-29T11:37:00.003+01:00

I've recently been using a lot of actions in photoshop and came across this site called PanosFX. He has loads of free photoshop actions to try, I used an action called 'the big picture' on a photo I took of a poppy field a while back. It takes a few moments to run the action as it needs to cut out bits and create drop shadows and that sort of thing but once it's done it gives quite a nice effect. There are other actions to try but I thought I'd post this as it is one of my favs.

Contrast

2008-07-28T11:26:00.003+01:00

Contrast is the dissimilarity or difference between things, acording to wiki.

I'm adding this because I submitted it to a contest on my favorite photo forum, talkphotography.co.uk. It has contests every month and I sometimes have a punt, this months subject was contrast, quite a tough one really, a lot of black and white images as you might suspect, heres my take on it.
A simple flash setup with lighting coming from a single 580EXII to the left the black polo was changed in CS3, not as easily as I first suspected. First I applied a layer mask (cutting out the polo using the pen tool) and just added an inverted adjustment layer, the problem with it is it turns the black shadows white which isn't what I wanted. I went back to the layer mask and used a levels adjustment to just bring down the levels of white and grey to black.

Pet Photography

2008-07-24T19:45:00.003+01:00

I don't get to do a lot of pet photography which is a shame because I love animals, my old man was a vet so I grew up with all sorts of different animals running around the place. The only problem with pets is they do just that, run everywhere! With pet photography it's just a case of getting the owner to keep them entertained out of shot, and avoid getting your lens licked! As with any portrait the thing that sets them apart is emotion, I liked how the dog was anticipating another biscuit. I wasn't going to turn it monotone but failed once again! This one was done in my studio, ISO100, f11, 1/100 at 70mm.

Another Portrait

2008-07-17T17:40:00.003+01:00

Hey folks, I thought I'd put this one up of one of my nieces who was over recently, I did a bunch of photos of her and her brother in the studio, both were very photogenic. I liked this image because of her eyes.
I've been experimenting with some photoshop actions as I find them a little more effective that lightroom presets, I can't quite put my finger on why. Actions, like presets, are recorded steps you can apply to several images very quickly and they are a great labour saving method. There are plenty available on the web, some are free and some are, well...not.

Weddings

2008-07-11T11:05:00.002+01:00

Hi Everyone. Seems like ages since my last post, I've been a bit busy with wedditing (Weddings followed by editing) I could do with getting up to the lakes, the weather has been really changeable but it makes for some great landscapes, as long as you don't get soaked to the skin! Anyway this was from a recent wedding, I decided to do a little HDR on the dress with a black and white conversion which I thought looked quite cool. I used Dynamic Photo for the HDR and then CS3 for the BW conversion. I really liked the sky in the mono conversion.

Aged, distressed look

2008-06-29T21:30:00.003+01:00

I have been working on aging or distressing some photos recently and thought I would post this example. There are some good presets in lightroom for an antique look but these rely on usually lowering the saturation of a photo, adding a brownish tone and a vignette. It is a reasonable effect but to take it a step further you need texture. This image has 3 textures layered in various blend modes to give a decent aged effect. I also reduced the saturation with a Hue/Sat adjustment layer. The textures can be anything from old brickwork, woods or metals. The texture used in this one was from an old wall with decaying plaster.

Emley Moor Mast

2008-06-24T11:03:00.005+01:00

I've recently been asked by a few people if I had any shots of Emley Moor Mast so I thought I would head up there and see what I could get. I did have a few older shots but wanted some new ones really. These were two of my favorites.

The first was my standard 16mm wide landscape that I like doing, with a 3 stop graduated filter to keep the sky from being blown out. I really liked the sunburst but wasn't a great fan of the bits of glare here and there so I had to clone out a couple of spots. I did have my polariser on which isn't much use into the sun, these add to the glare so I've only myself to blame. The second one was a telephoto landscape taken at 100mm, it has the effect of compressing the elements and obviously the mast is more prominent.

Abercastle harbour, Pembrokeshire

2008-06-17T16:41:00.004+01:00

Thought I would post another from my trip to Wales. This is a small port (or harbour, not sure what the difference is) called Abercastle in Pembrokeshire just as the sun was on it's way out. I wasn't using a tripod so the exposure was a bit of a compromise, not made any easier by adding my polarizer, which will get rid of 2 stops of light at it's full effect. So I needed to get decent DOF, decent ISO and a shutter speed I could keep steady, and I don't trust my hands to stay steady as I grasp onto a cliff face above a harbor so I ended up with ISO250 1/80, f/7.1 at 16mm.

More War

2008-06-14T17:53:00.003+01:00

Another one from my forthcoming war collection which I'm tinkering with as releasing as limited ed prints (bit pretentious I know). I'm going to do a total of 25 images with a run of 25 on each image. I've brought in a few props, in this one we can see the famous Sherman tank bearing down on the Germans. Anyway the partially complete gallery of these shots can be seen here. Take a look if you have a spare few minutes.

One Man and his Dog

2008-06-13T12:00:00.003+01:00

Granted the man and his dog are a fair way away in this photo but I had my wide lens on so this is the best I could do. This was taken during a nice spell of hot weather in the Pembrokeshire National Park. I'm endeavoring to do more landscapes using the sun as a focal point in the harshest of conditions (in lighting terms) for no other reason that the sun gets up far earlier than I do. I'm still getting shots during the golden hour at sunset though. The sky was kept from being blown out by my trust 3 stop graduated filter, I really liked the star burst effect this gives. There was minimal processing with this shot, just a quick mono conversion in Lightroom and a few dust spots cloned out. Taken in full manual mode. ISO320 1/100 sec f/11 at 17mm.

Another Little Planet - Leeds

2008-06-05T08:55:00.003+01:00

I was in Leeds yesterday trying to do some more 'little planet' shots and came up with this one outside the Queens hotel. I was going to do one from millennium square but it had been closed off because of some concert or festival. These are really quick and easy to do, just set up a tripod and spin round taking snaps, ignoring the bemused look of people who are certain you are tracking them and only them! I used PTGui to join them then in Photoshop make a square canvas and rotate the image 180 degrees and use the polar coordinates filter, and thats it, you might want to clone in a bit of floor or even better take a snap of the floor when you are done and use that.

Marco Soldier Art

2008-06-01T19:29:00.005+01:00

I'm doing a small collection of images using old toy soldiers and this was one from the first batch. Pretty simple set up, one light coming from the left and a small amount reflected off a white board on the right, quite a dramatic result.
I used a 50mm macro lense and set the camera to full manual and dialed in ISO200 f/16 1/100sec. I was also using a new border style today, more to try and define it as art rather than Haribo toy product shots!

Confetti

2008-05-31T11:29:00.003+01:00

This was one from a recent wedding that I quite liked, sometimes the autofocus can lock on to the confetti but as long as you max out the frames per second for a while you usually get one or two. You can always try a different composition for the confetti shots as the couple and the guests are usually more than willing to do it again if you suggest it, the vicars normally line you up in the cross hairs from the bell tower though!
This one was done at ISO200 f/3.5 1/2000 sec at 27mm, processed in Lightroom to add the sepia tone, the vignette and the 3D effect.

Circular Panoramic Photosphere

2008-05-21T13:36:00.004+01:00

I was just experimenting with a panoramic from Wales, I haven't been doing much shooting lately so I have to play with older photos, it is still only 2 weeks old though. I saw this effect in a recent photo mag and thought I would try it out. This vista is not the best for this technique, the ones I have seen are normally cityscapes, so I must remember to do one next time I'm near canary wharf. The floor of the shot is also an important part, one I omitted on this occasion. I will write a better tutorial when I get a better example.

Buttermere

2008-05-16T16:09:00.003+01:00

Hi guys, just thought I'd pop this one up. It was taken about a month ago whilst I was up in the lake district. I have processed it with dynamic photo and quickly cleared up a few dust spots with CS3. It is a really nice walk up haystacks from Buttermere and you can take in a few other peaks before coming back down which is good, on a clear day there are plenty of views but good luck getting a clear day up there! We had a nice morning and then the clouds rolled in. Theres nothing too remarkable about this one, more of a memory shot really, I would have liked to have a bit of foreground interest and possibly made more of the path but I was there primarily for the walk. The info on this one is f/16, ISO100, 16mm 1/40sec. I also used a 0.9 Lee ND grad for the sky.

Astro Photography

2008-05-12T20:23:00.009+01:00

I haven't done a great deal of astro photography, largely due to a lack in focal length but as it was a relatively clear evening I decided to slap on the 100-400 and a 1.4x tele extender and see what I got. The tele extenders increase your focal length by either 1.4x or 2x, but you loose a stop of light with the 1.4 and 2 stops with the 2x, with this type of photo I wasn't too worried as I wanted to be at about f11 to start with. You also have to manually focus with the TX's, again shooting a moon this isn't too much of a problem. A tripod is essential as is either a cable release or using the cameras 10 second timer and I've just remembered mirror lock up, in this example I forgot about mirror lock up but if you have it under your custom functions use it as it reduces shake further. I started to appreciate that the moon is traveling at over 2000 mph and it soon moves from your viewfinder so you need to keep adjusting. When it comes to processing I found the histogram to be quite narrow so you need to stretch it a little either using levels in CS3 or the blacks and exposure sliders in Lightroom (or the tone curve) this results in more contrast. I also had to crop in quite a bit, this can be solved by attaching you camera to a telescope ;-) I took this around sunset so the sky was still quite blue but I converted to mono and dropped the blues right down. The info for this was f/11, ISO100, 560mm, 1/200sec.

More of Snowdonia

2008-05-11T10:50:00.002+01:00

Another shot from the same walk as yesterdays post. This one was taken from bristly ridge during our ascent of Glyder Fach but looking back at Tryfan. I didn't use a grad for this shot or a tripod but I did have a polariser on so I had to up the ISO a little and open up the aperture more than usual to compensate for the darkening from the CPL. The exif data was ISO250 f/11, 16mm, 1/125 sec. I originally tweaked it in lightroom and then CS3 but I did another version using dynamic photo which I preferred. If you use Dynamic photo you know a lot of it is experimenting with the sliders and it can be a bit hit and miss, the first thing I always do is drop the colour saturation and the vivid colours back to zero, this goes a long way to remove the 'overcooked' HDR look.

The Castle of the Wind

2008-05-10T18:09:00.002+01:00

I was in Snowdonia national park a few days ago to celebrate the start of summer, I was scrambling up mountains with a friend and we found this interesting formation at the top, I say we found it but I imagine there have been plenty of previous founders, this was confirmed when we found out it was called the castle of the wind, a cool name it has to be said. The name is due to the sound that can be heard when the wind passes over the mountain through the sharp rocks. Anyway this one was taken using a 3 stop soft edge ND grad and processed in Lightroom where I added some contrast and a vignette. The exif was ISO200 (I was hand holding) f8, 16mm 1/125 sec. The mountain was called Glyder Fach and I highly recommend it to anyone who likes a bit of scrambling.

Lifestyle Portraits

2008-05-08T21:13:00.003+01:00

We did some outdoor shots at the weekend as the sun was out (occasionally) and the oil seed rape was in full bloom, excellent when one of your subjects suffers from hay fever (I only found this out after). We did some posed shots in the studio but the outdoor ones were all pretty much off the cuff, I really liked this one, I thought the pose combined with the balloons was great.

I went for another '300' style processing effect in lightroom with the heavy vignette. This was my first outing with the 70-200 f/2.8 lense and I loved it. It was taken at f/4, 140mm, 1/1250 sec at ISO100. The large aperture and the long focal length made gave great background blur and I think the low angle (basically lying on the road) finished off the effect. It's always good when you don't get shot at by irate farmers!

What the...

2008-05-01T18:15:00.002+01:00

I have no idea what was going on when I processed this one, I imagine it didn't make much sense whatever it was. I don't think the image is particularly strong so I think I tried to process it in a zany way to make it better but not 100% sure about the results. I couldn't give you a rundown of the steps to get this as it was all a bit random, I did venture into the world of LAB colour at one point in CS3, but I didn't like what I saw!

Wind Turbines

2008-04-29T11:46:00.004+01:00

I took this one a few days ago on one of my few days ago with a 'tog buddy. I thought we'd get some great photos but it was a bit of a nightmare composition wise and the great light that kept creeping through the clouds pretty much vanished. I was trying to use the fence as a leading line on this one to lead the eye into the turbine and the mean looking clouds, I did do a sepia version but decided to stay with colour this time. I was doing a product shot for a fan (air fan, not someone who loves my work) and made a composite image with the fan replacing the turbine which looked ok. Anyway the info on this one is ISO200, 16mm 1/80 f/8, I was hand holding and needed a reasonably fast shutter to stop the blades I also had a polariser on which cuts light by about 2 stops, but worth it if you have blue skies and clouds.

Landscapes Part 2

2008-04-23T10:18:00.003+01:00

A similar one to yesterdays post with slightly different colours used during the mono conversion. I had to wait a while for the light to be right. Again processed in LR for clarity and spot removal, I really need to give the sensor a bit of a scrub! This one was taken in aperture priority, as most of my landscapes are, exposing for the land and using a 3 stop graduated filter to keep the clouds from blowing out.
The data was ISO100, f/16, 16mm 1/13 sec. Hopefully I'll process some lake shots today and resist the urge to turn them sepia!

Yorkshire Dales

2008-04-22T15:40:00.003+01:00

Just got back from a few days in the Dales and the Lakes, not the greatest of conditions for landscape photos unfortunately, We did a nice walk around Buttermere taking in a few peaks. It was blowing a hurricane on the top of high stile so our descent was a bit hair raising. I've said it before and I'll say it again, I'm just bad at assessing risk, ironic considering I used to be a risk assessment consultant. Anyway, I got this one just north of Ingleton during a break in the clouds, I kept the sky under control with a neutral density graduated filter. The exif data was ISO100, 17mm 1/15 at f/16. Ingleborough is in the distance. The raw file was processed in Lightroom, adding a little clarity and a slight tone curve to increase the highlights. I burnt the clouds in CS3 and added a tinted BW adjustment layer.

Graduated Filters For Landscapes

2008-04-17T14:47:00.004+01:00

Hi Folks, I've just been testing some new neutral density graduated filters and thought the comparison might make a good post for those considering buying some grads. I would say if you do a lot of landscape work, these things are essential. You can use HDR but it's extra work and results can be very hit and miss. Grads are basically rectangular bits of plastic that have a clear end and a shaded end. The shaded end is to compensate for the brightness of the sky, your brain does this automatically but cameras aren't that smart. You then expose for the land and if you have the right filter the sky should also expose properly instead of being 'blown out'. You can get 1, 2 & 3 stop filters, 3 being the darkest, and the one I used in this example. You normally have to buy a holder and an adapter ring to screw into the front of your lens. A firm called Cokin make reasonable filters, holders can be bought fairly cheaply off ebay. I actually started with hitech filters and would recommend them. Anyway these two photos were both taken using the same exposure, ISO100 f11 1/60 16mm (I wasn't going for an award winning shot so comments on composition etc aren't necessary) They are merely to show the effect of using grads.

Before
After

More Black & White Trees

2008-04-15T16:59:00.004+01:00

Thought I would put this one up to keep ticking over, not an award winner I'm afraid but it what can you do. There has been some interesting weather at the moment, plenty of cloud breaks for the sun to peep through (and cloud bursts to soak you and whatever camera gear you have out at the time!). I wanted to do another high contrast mono similar to my infra red shed I posted a while back, which incidentally is being published in the May edition of Practical Photography (out April 23rd) if anyone cares.
This was taken at ISO100 f8 16mm 1/100 Sec, I had to use f8 because I was without a tripod and I had a polarizer on. I tweaked it in lightroom and then added a BW adjustment layer in CS3. For anyone who uses Ligthroom, version 2.0 is now out for free beta testing, so you can try it and report any bugs you find.

Adventures in Macro Photography

2008-04-09T17:41:00.003+01:00

A bit of a lazy day photography wise today, I ended up getting back into my macro mode, I used to do quite a lot of macro stuff but haven't recently, (the same could be said for blog posts!) Anyway there were no fancy lights involved or even tripods used in this shot. It was taken over a sink of water with natural light from the outside causing the refracting in the bubbles to get the colour. The exif is as follows: 1/200 at f5.6 ISO800 with my sigma 50mm macro lens. I decided to stop when I started dipping my camera in the water. As the ISO was a bit higher than I usually like I ran it through noise ninja, a plugin for CS3 which does a good job of removing noise. I'm not sure about the open space at the top but I'm not a huge fan of changing aspect ratios so I left it in.

Ultra Micro Nikkor Lens Sale

2008-03-22T13:48:00.005Z

It's not really a photo tips post this it's more of a classified ad. I'm hoping it will appeal to any Nikon collectors or fanatics out there.
I have recently acquired (from a relative) an Ultra Micro Nikkor 135mm f4 lens, this is an ultra rare affair made (by hand) circa 1965. I'm trying to a) see what it's worth and b) see who wants to buy it. It was used in a printing factory that needed lenses to take photos of circuit boards I think, apparently it can resolve down to 2 microns (0.002mm) so it's some kind of super macro lens. I rear a review from a quirky Japanese collector that stated "the god of light lives in this lens" I thought that sounded great. Anyway there is a gallery here showing some more pics of this lens here, If you know anyone who might be interested just drop me an email, I've had a crazy response from nikonhistoricalsociety already which is good, I'd like it to go to a good home, me being a canon shooter have no need for such items

Maternity Photography

2008-03-20T22:31:00.003Z

Another ultra quick post because I need to go to bed, I've just been processing this one as it was literally the first one I looked at from a shoot this evening and I needed something to do while all the other photos were being imported. This was of my good friends who don't mind being photography guinea pigs! This isn't how I typically process a maternity shot, but I quite liked the effect, I imaging the rest will be in mono, I have another 293 of these to do! Anyway happy easter!

Farmers Field

2008-03-17T20:32:00.003Z

As I haven't been out taking many landscapes of late I thought I'd see if I have anything in the back catalog and came up with this one. This is from a field near my house as the sun was going down. I probably didn't work on it as I have a decent number of tree shots and try to avoid adding to them, but they are just so damn photogenic. I have done a bit of HDR on this one in Dynamic Photo. The exif was ISO200, 126mm, 1/640, f4 don't ask why I didn't go to ISO100 and have 1/320 it's not like the cows are the fastest of movers!

Icy Puddle

2008-03-14T08:53:00.003Z

Two post in two days, I do have these fits and starts when it comes to posting photos. This was another from our ascent up to high street in the eastern fells of the lake district. This was looking back at the crag featured in the previous photo, I think this is called eagle crag (but could be wrong) apparently the last surviving golden eagle in England resides around here, very sad indeed. Anyway I've burnt the clouds a little to add a bit of drama and dodged the snow to make it slightly whiter. In retrospect I think it might be a bit too central but if I crop it I get rid of the dark cloud to the top left of the shot and I really wanted to keep him in.

On a completely unrelated point, I downloaded some free lightroom presets for any lightroom users, it is from a site called protography.com the link for the presets is here. They are pretty good if you need a bit of direction on how to process your shots.

My Buddy, The Medic

2008-03-13T19:15:00.004Z

I haven't posted for ages and I thought I'd get back with a HDR shot taken of my friend who went with me up high street in the lake district today. I was explaining how it is possible to process a RAW file for HDR but you are better using a bracketed exposure, obviously this isn't possibly for moving subjects. You used to have to process the raw file 3 times and blend them together in photoshop but it really is much easier to use a dedicated HDR program such as photomatix or the one used for this photo, dynamic photo hdr. The clouds were fairly thick but still had a bit of texture too them so I under exposed by 2/3 so I didn't blow them out. There are plenty of sliders to play with in dynamic photo it just depends how much you want to cook your image. The painterly effect (if thats the right word) is a new feature in the latest version, it's called match colour, then you chose which sort of colour set you want, I recommend you give it a try. The exif for this one was ISO200, 16mm, f8, 1/320.

Lloyds Building

2008-03-05T20:57:00.003Z

Another quick post I'm afraid, this was another from a recent trip to the big smoke, I managed to walk around all day and came away with very little. I've processed this one in photomatix (although I tend to use dynamic photo for HDR stuff) then I tweaked it with some presets I have in Lightroom, it might be a bit overcooked for some but it was another one of those experimental things.

London

2008-03-04T15:47:00.003Z

Someone told me I hadn't posted anything recently, I haven't been taking much worth posting to be honest, and this one is no exception in my opinion, I had to import a sky to make it a bit more interesting, anyway as I have to rush out I'll post in now and maybe edit in a bit.

Infrared Shed

2008-02-20T10:00:00.004Z

I was in the peaks again yesterday, went for a nice walk around Froggart. I spotted this shed and tree from the car and quickly jumped out to get it. I was using my new wide angle lens (16-35 L) which was an absolute joy, it's nice to be able to get quite close and still fit everything in. I also had a polariser on which really brought out the blues in the colour version, but as I'm still in a mono mood I'm only posting this one. It was taken at 16mm, f/16 for 1/15 sec at ISO100, I did have another version with a sheep's skull as foreground interest but I prefer this version because of the whispy clouds.

(Edit: I'm just putting the colour one up for some one who wanted a comparison)

Panoramic Photography

2008-02-18T09:11:00.003Z

I took this one a few months back up in Whitby (the abbey was behind me in this shot). There are a few important points to remember when getting panoramic photos.

Always shoot in portrait mode, this gives more height to the finished shot.
Set your tripod level with the horizon, some tripods have a spirit level on them if not you can get hotshoe mounted ones for a few quid.
Shoot in manual keeping your aperture, shutterspeed, iso, focal length, focus point and white balance the same for each shot. Meter from where the middle of your panorama will be, if you meter from the sunny side everything else will be underexposed, if you meter from a relatively dark area you risk over exposing the brighter bits.
Keep an overlap of about 30%, so if you are panning from left to right look for a feature, such as a tree that is about a third of the way in from the right then when you pan your tripod right, frame so that tree is on the left of the shot. That sounds more complicated than it is.

If you get these basics right you should have a good set of say 4-8 photos that can be stitched using CS3. Photoshop has a really good automatic stitching program (file - automate - photomerge) there are other programs such at PTGui that do a good job too. This panoramic was taken at f/16, 1/4 sec, 43mm at ISO100 I had an 0.9ND grad filter to balance the sky. The file has been drastically reduced so it has a smaller size.