Fototastic

Mountain Intermission

2012-01-28T20:41:00.003Z

There will now be a brief intermission while I go and ski down some French mountains!

In the meantime, here is a picture taken on a previous skiing holiday back in 2005.

Stay tuned and I'll see you in a week or so :)

Strongman Turns To Drink

2012-01-26T21:13:00.004Z

Continuing the Strongman series that I started last week.

This week, Strongman turns to drink!

For all the Strongman series posts, please click Here

Bolt From The Blue

2012-01-23T22:59:00.003Z

Here is a another photo using the home made lightbox.

Taken in RAW colour at f/8, 1 sec exposure, ISO-100. Various layers added during processing to increase brightness, contrast etc.

If you like the blog then you can me on twitter @fototastic for behind the scenes photos, links and more.

Ring Light Reflections

2012-01-19T21:59:00.006Z

I recently got some new ski goggles and thought I would do some more experimentation with my DIY LED ring light.

The double lens on the goggles didn't work too well as it created duplicates of the reflected LEDs which give the appearance of them being blurred so I also tried it out whilst wearing sunglasses.

Us usual, click on the images to enlarge.

Strongman

2012-01-16T20:29:00.004Z

Back in July 2007 when I started this blog (has it really been that long!!) I just wanted somewhere to post random photos, snapshots and phone camera pictures. Back then I had just upgraded from a 2 Megapixel Canon Ixus V2 to a 5 Megapixel Canon PowerShot S2. Since the latter part of 2008, I have entered the world of the dSLR and procured various other photography equipment - Lenses, tripods, flashes, shutter remote, backgrounds, remote flashes to name but a few!

As time has progressed and I (hopefully) have progressed with my photography, my personal standards and expectations for my photos have risen and I now seem to spend more time thinking about, setting up and processing the photos. This is not a problem as I enjoy photography and the whole creative process that it involves but it does mean that more time has to be found for each shot and as a result I seem to be taking less and less photos for the blog.

With this in mind, I thought that it would be fun to go back to basics and create a sort of photo series so that I could have a theme and post some regular tongue in cheek shots to fill in the gaps between more time consuming projects.

Next I had to think of a subject for this and as if by chance I received a Strongman / Key Pete for Christmas so I thought this might make a neat little project of him holding various different items in his magnetic hand.

Here is Strongman as he was intended to be used - As a magnetic key holder.

Watch this space for more Strongman posts...

Google Strange View

2012-01-13T21:24:00.007Z

I came across this really cool little web app recently called Street View Stereographic that gives you Stereographic Projection using photos from any Google Street View location you provide it.

I tried the site in standard installations of Firefox 8.0 and Internet Explorer 9 but I got a "your browser doesn't support WebGL" but it works just fine in Google Chrome.

I had a play around just using one location in (Salisbury City and got the following images.

As usual, click on the images to enlarge

Cloudy Moon

2012-01-09T21:56:00.005Z

I was out yesterday evening and and noticed the bright full moon occasionally peeking through the clouds so when I got back home I thought I'd have a go at getting a shot of it.

The picture below, shot through the clouds (and trees) was taken from my back garden. I took it hand held as I was too lazy to go and get a tripod!

Made In England

2012-01-05T22:50:00.006Z

The old Ferranti radio in the picture belonged to my Grandmother who sadly passed away last year at the age of 86.

I really like the design and it was something that appealed to me as a bit of a keepsake. Currently it does not work and long term I hope to revive it by installing replacement radio parts or maybe even upgrading it to digital but in the meantime I thought it would make a good photograph of some classic British engineering and design.

As usual, click on the image to enlarge

Happy 2012

2012-01-03T22:16:00.004Z

Happy 2012 everyone.

I hope that you all enjoyed the new year celebrations and are so far having a good start to the year.

I thought I'd have a play around with some Electroluminescent Wire that I recently purchased and mark the start of the new year.

These 2 shots were both created in camera by zooming and panning during a long exposure.

As usual, click on the images to enlarge

Fototastic 2011

2011-12-31T14:06:00.002Z

Well, it's the last day of the year again so as usual I've done a quick video recap of the year of 2011 on the fototastic blog.

Happy New Year everyone and I hope you all enjoy seeing in the new year with style ;-)

...See you all in 2012

Getting Creative For Christmas

2011-12-29T14:17:00.006Z

Hope that you all had a fantastic Christmas. I had an excellent one and am lucky enough to have the whole 2 weeks off work so am enjoying the relaxation.

I always think that it's a nice touch to give something personal and creative for Christmas (or birthdays) and although I have gifted a number of framed pictures, photo mosaics, etc over the years sometimes you can't beat a hand drawn picture.

As it was my good friends baby's first Christmas (featured in a previous post), I decided to create a drawing from one of the photos that I took from when she was 2 weeks old.

A few months back, I dug out and dusted off a drawing pad then set to work using fine liners. A long long time ago, back when I was at school, I created a series of portraits using just dots on paper. This is a very time consuming method but I like the way that you can get the required shading just by increasing the consistency of the dots and you can't really go wrong - Well, that's not strictly true but it is easier to cover any mistakes!

Anyway, 2 pens and thousands of dots later, here is the resulting picture....

As usual, click on the image to enlarge and I think this looks better if you view from slightly further away from the screen ;-)

Christmas 2011

2011-12-20T22:21:00.006Z

Right folks, it's that time of year again when I post the obligatory photo of the Christmas tree and wonder where the past 12 months have gone!

No where near as large and bushy as last years effort but it was a lot more manageable to put up and cost almost half the price!

Like last year I got bored of the standard shot and started experimenting with movement as you can see in the second shot.

I found some old lights (which only work when they want to), an inexpensive fish bowl vase and some cheap ball balls for this new edition to the Xmas decorations!

Merry Christmas...

Baby's First Christmas

2011-12-10T20:30:00.006Z

My good friend's baby will be having their first Christmas this year and the grandparents requested a picture of her in festive attire so they could send out some personalised Xmas cards to friends and family.

I volunteered my services and we had some fun last Sunday afternoon rearranging their lounge and setting up some shots then trying to keep the baby amused and looking in (roughly) the right direction!

Here are a few of favourites from the day.

As usual, click on the images to enlarge.

Wireless

2011-12-05T21:36:00.004Z

Wireless is everywhere these days from tv remotes to keyboards and now even wireless energy transfer.

If you were born around the end of the 1970s or start of the 80s then you, like me will remember when a lot of TV's didn't even have remote controls (or not even colour screens in some cases!). How times have changed!

Fovant Badges

2011-11-13T20:48:00.003Z

As it is Remembrance Sunday here in the UK, I thought I'd post a picture I recently took of the Fovant Badges which were featured on last weeks BBC's Countryfile programme.

The first badges appeared in 1916 and were created by soldiers garrisoned nearby who were waiting to go to France and fight in the hell of the First World War.

Lest We Forget.

Two Faced

2011-11-06T12:47:00.005Z

Inspired by Venezuelan artist Jesús González Rodríguez and his project called 1/2 I thought I would have a go and combining a face on portrait with a side profile.

I just took 2 quick snaps, edited them together using Photoshop then added a texture. The whole process took less than 15 minutes.

Lake District Waterfalls

2011-11-03T21:05:00.011Z

Here are the waterfall pictures promised on my last post from my recent trip to the Lake District.

I have always wanted to have a go at capturing flowing water so that I appears almost mist / fog like. What better place to try this than on the various waterfalls that I came across during my visit to the lakes.

To capture these types of images you need to use slower shutter speeds and smaller apertures (higher f/stop numbers) and have your camera on a tripod or another sturdy surface.

Anyway, here are some of my results whilst attempting this technique.

As usual, click on the images to enlarge.

Lake District Landscapes

2011-10-13T22:36:00.010+01:00

I recently travelled up t'north to the Lake District for a few days away.

That area of the UK has stunning scenery so I took my camera gear with with me and in between the seasonal downpours, snapped a few shots.

Here are a few of the landscape shots that I took.

There will be a follow up post entitled, Lake District Waterfalls so watch out for that!

As usual, click on the images to enlarge.

Human Rights

2011-09-19T18:02:00.003+01:00

It says......"HEALTH AND SAFETY IS AN INFRINGEMENT OF OUR HUMAN RIGHTS"

Surprised to see something like this on a wall in a lay by in the countryside so I took a quick snap.

Haven't seen too much stencil work around Salisbury since 2008 when I posted this

Digital Age

2011-09-12T22:13:00.004+01:00

Digital television, digital radio, digital music and of course digital photographs have all become the norm in my lifetime but I can't help but reminisce about all things analogue. There was something about loading a camera with film or putting on a vinyl record that makes things seem somehow more substantial.

Of course, everything being digital makes things a lot quicker, cheaper and easier so I'm not complaining but I guess it's just an age thing that gives you fond memories of old technology.

I found this roll of 35mm film recently and thought I'd take some shots but then give it a digital twist...

As usual, click on the image to enlarge

Flip Flops Flipped

2011-08-20T13:51:00.004+01:00

I have a dark frosted glass computer desk and cleaned it for the first time in a while yesterday and thought "hey, I could get some good reflections in that now it's clean"!!

I looked around the room for something to try it out with and spotted my new North Face flip flops.

Here is the resulting picture...

As usual, click on the image to enlarge

Camping - Back To Basics

2011-08-17T19:13:00.004+01:00

I recently went camping with a group of friends down in Swanage. I took my trusty S2 but the rechargeable batteries which I juiced up before the trip appear to have given up the ghost :(

I therefore, had to rely on my iPhone 4! I haven't taken many camera phone pictures recently as I had an iPhone 3G for 2 years and the camera was really awful so got out the habit of taking quick snaps with the phone. The iPhone 4 is OK during the day and the HD video is pretty good but the camera does struggle in low light and the flash isn't anything to write home about.

Anyway, here is a quick compilation all my iPhone pictures and videos from the weekend.

Night Light Fun

2011-08-14T17:08:00.007+01:00

I went out yesterday evening to do some night photography with Jez from jezwhitworth.co.uk. We had planned to do some night sky / lunar photography but as usual the British weather was a let down and it was over cast.

But, not ones to be beaten we still headed out with our kit to the Clarendon Palace Ruins just outside Salisbury.

Had a really enjoyable evening playing around with cameras, flashguns, torches and LED rings. We did most of the shots on Jez's camera so look forward to seeing how they turned out but here are a few that I did take.

This is me on the DIY LED ring and Jez light painting the flowers

Another shot with the DIY LED ring

A quick shot of the Cathedral captured from the lookout on the way back home

As usual, click on the images to enlarge

Sea Sunday

2011-07-18T20:46:00.007+01:00

A couple of photos taken on a recent Sunday walk along the beach down at Hengistbury Head.

Light Painting - Behind The Scenes

2011-06-28T21:06:00.008+01:00

I said back in my LED Lamp post that I would knock up a quick guide on how to create those types of images and as promised, here we are!

Before we get started, here are a few things that you'll need:-

-Camera :)

-Tripod - Not essential but if you haven't got one then you'll need to put the camera on a firm surface and make sure that it does not move between shots

-Subject matter (for this purposes of this guide, I used a Champagne bottle

-Torch or other light source

Right, now we can get started

1. Set up your shot with the elements that you want to include. I just went for the bottle with a plain black background.

2. With the room lights on, focus on your image (I just used auto focus). Once focused switch the lens to manual focus - This will stop it trying to focus once the lights are out.
Switch the camera to a long exposure mode. I used the camera in manual (M) and set it to bulb mode with the largest aperture.

3. Switch off the lights and take some shots while illuminating the subject matter with with your light source. I used a home made UV light as seen below.

Here is my image of the Champagne bottle lit by the UV light

(3 second exposure at f/4.5)

4. Right, with that shot in the bag you now can now take the light painting arty shot. I swirled my light around the bottle but you can do anything that you fancy.

Here is my image of the UV pointer swirling around the bottle

(2 second exposure at f/4.5)

5. You now have to combine the 2 images using your image editing software. There are various ways that you can do this but I followed the simple steps below...

-Open both the images in your preferred image editing software

-Copy the second image that was created (light painting one)

-Paste this as a new layer in the first image that was created

-Set the layer blending mode to Screen

This is basically it - You may want to make many other adjustments to the image but this is a simple guide to the fundamentals of creating this sort of merged light painting image.

Here is my final image

I hope I have been fairly clear in this tutorial and it all makes sense! If there are any glaring mistakes or you're having trouble following the steps then please comment and I will rectify / give you some pointers.

Cherry Picking

2011-06-06T21:33:00.001+01:00

No particular theme to this picture. Was just enjoying some black cherries the other day and had the camera to hand so took a few pictures.

As usual, click on the image to enlarge

LED Lamp

2011-05-26T22:22:00.008+01:00

Merging an old light source with a modern LED.

I created this image using a home made UV LED pointer and merging a couple of photos.

These types of shots are very quick and easy to do. I will post a quick guide on how to create these sort of images soon.

As usual, click on the image to enlarge (It looks a bit better too!).

Light Painting & Out Takes

2011-05-21T13:23:00.002+01:00

I enjoy a bit of light painting and within this age of digital photography you can take shot after shot without worrying about the cost of developing etc

Here is a video containing a few light painting and long exposure photographs that I have taken and the large number of out takes created whilst shooting them!

Light Painting & Out Takes from Steve Murrell on Vimeo.

Quackers

2011-05-19T23:01:00.005+01:00

A family of ducks enjoying the sunshine.

Taken recently in my local park using the telephoto

Oil Painting

2011-04-19T20:18:00.006+01:00

Had an idea for a photo whilst cooking dinner last night....Mix some water with oil and see what patterns you can make.

I had some chilli oil laying around (as you do) so put some in to a glass and here are a few of the resulting pictures.

As usual, click on the images to enlarge.

Spring Is Here

2011-04-12T22:11:00.003+01:00

A bit lacking on posts recently as I have been busy and haven't had much time to get out and about with the camera.

Well, the clocks have changed and the weather has taken a turn for the better (although I hear it's going to start to get worse again now!!) and spring is definitely here as my body has informed me with the sneezing and runny nose - how I love hay fever!!

Here are a couple of spring time photos that I managed to catch in between the sneezes!!

As usual, click on the images to enlarge.

Light A Candle, Say A Prayer

2011-03-15T21:15:00.006Z

With the earthquake in New Zealand and then more recently in Japan and the devastation caused by the ensuing tsunami and nuclear power station problems, not to mention the virtual civil war in Libya and other civil struggles throughout north Africa, it really does make you sit back sometimes and see how well off we are.

A friend recently summed it up in one of their status updates on Facebook....."my god we are so lucky to live where we do. god bless all you who are going through tsunamis, earthquakes, civil war and starvation. and we worry about the fuel costs"

Mirror Me

2011-03-10T22:06:00.005Z

Been taking a few more black and white photographs recently as I really like the strong contrast between highlights and shadows.

Have been thinking of some subjects for this monochrome photography but in the meantime, here is a self portrait of me taken in a mirror.

As usual, click on the image to enlarge.

Light Installation

2011-03-02T18:26:00.009Z

I went along to the last viewing of Bruce Munro's light installation at Salisbury Cathedral.

This installation, made from 16,000 recycled bottles featured in the Cathedral's Cloisters. Each water-tower of bottles changed colour to choral music - Very soothing :)

Not too bad considering they were all taken hand held.

As usual, click the images to enlarge

This Season I Shall Mostly Be Using My 50mm

2011-02-20T22:26:00.005Z

Have been using the Nifty Fifty a lot recently. It has been used for the majority of pictures featured on the blog so far this year.

I really love it's low light and shallow depth of field capabilities and the fact that it's a 50mm prime lens means that you have to move around a lot more to get the shot that you want. All this for under £100 - In my view, a must for any amateur photographer.

Here are a couple of quick examples of the shallow depth of field that can be achieved using this lens.

As usual, click the images to enlarge

Music For Love

2011-02-14T22:32:00.005Z

OK, so I had been planning on a love / romance based photograph for today (Valentine's Day) but I've been too busy to come up with anything :(

So not to disappoint, here is a photograph from my archive entitled - Love the Mixtape

Let There Be Light

2011-02-13T22:25:00.004Z

I am currently giving my bathroom a new lease of life as it's one of the few rooms that I have never done anything with since buying the house. So far this project has included putting in a new (and much bigger) shower and enclosure, re-plastering and decoration.

Today was the day when the new lighting was put in. The old ceiling rose (and bare bulb) was removed to make way for some new down lights.

With lighting on the mind I thought the other day that I'd never taken a picture of a naked bulb so thought I'd give it a quick go! Here's how it turned out.

As usual, click the image to enlarge

I Love Cake

2011-02-07T22:40:00.004Z

It was my birthday last week and I went out with some friends for a meal and some drinks to celebrate the occasion.

Two good friends got me a lovely Belgian chocolate cake and it was so nice I thought I'd capture it in a photo before I polished it all off!

The picture is actually made up of 3 photographs merged together within Photoshop.

As usual, click the image to enlarge

Oh Lord, won't you buy me a Mercedes Benz!

2011-02-03T21:31:00.005Z

Driving back through the fog in to Salisbury the other night I made a quick pit stop at the Mercedes Benz garage to take a couple of quick snaps.

With the fog, it was quite an eriee night and I was trying to capture that in photos. That didn't really work but here are a few of the shots anyway!

Looks like their fancy lights need a bit of a clean!

As usual, click the images to enlarge

Tunnel Through The Trees

2011-02-02T15:02:00.001Z

This tunnel through the trees is located on the road to Grately.

I drove down there a few times recently and thought it would make a good photograph as the road is really straight, it seems to go on forever and the trees really do resemble a tunnel when driving through.

As usual, click the image to enlarge

Facebook Photo Merge

2011-01-27T21:10:00.006Z

A few months back, I read online (can't remember the site at the moment) about taking long exposure photographs of your computer monitor whilst scrolling through a series of photos within a Facebook album. Guess the idea is to somehow merge a few photos to give you the general theme of the album within one image.

Thought it was an interesting idea so had a quick go to see how it would turn out.

Here are some of my test shots. They are all made up of 2-3 photographs from the same Facebook album.

As usual, click the images to enlarge

Spire View

2011-01-24T22:15:00.005Z

For something a little different, here is a close up view of Salisbury Cathedral's 404 ft spire using the telephoto lens

As usual, click the image to enlarge

Winter Walk

2011-01-19T18:52:00.004Z

After the festive season excesses, I really needed to get out for some exercise. Thought about going for a run and then decided on a nice walk in the country instead ;-)

Here are some of the pictures that I took on my travels.

As usual, click the images to enlarge

Happy 2011

2011-01-10T22:01:00.004Z

Happy New Year and hope that you all enjoyed the festive period. Lets hope that 2011 is a good one for all of us.

What better way to start the year than some seasonal light painting.

Amazing what you can do with a couple of £1 solar garden lights!!

Fototastic 2010

2010-12-21T20:57:00.004Z

Well, it's nearly Christmas and another year gone by in a flash.

Merry Christmas and a happy new year to you all and many thanks for your support over the past 12 months. I hope you all enjoy the festive period and look forward to seeing you here again next year.

Like last year I have compiled all of my 2010 posts in to quick video recap.

Oh Christmas Tree Oh Christmas Tree!

2010-12-16T22:31:00.001Z

So here we are again...Christmas time. Thought I'd better take the mandatory shot of the Christmas tree as I do every year! It's a big one this year - I swear it looked smaller when I bought it!

Just for a change, I took another shot with the camera still on the tripod and zoomed out during the exposure - It created a nice little effect.

As usual, click the images to enlarge

Christmas Lights?

2010-12-14T22:36:00.005Z

Here is a different way of capturing the local Christmas lights! These were taken using long exposure whilst driving past.

Salisbury Market Square

Salisbury Street

Wilton Christmas Tree

As usual, click the images to enlarge

Random Self Portrait

2010-12-14T22:30:00.003Z

Haven't used my camera much recently so took it along on a trip to see some family at the weekend.

Took this random self portrait in the wing mirror on the way!

Malta Wedding

2010-12-06T22:07:00.003Z

Here is a video compilation of the wedding pictures taken in Malta. They are a mixture of the photos I took and the ones from the professional photographer

More Malta Moments

2010-11-21T21:50:00.005Z

A few more pictures from my recent visit to Malta. See previous post here.

As usual, click the images to enlarge.

Vimeo Video Awards

2010-11-17T00:11:00.005Z

Received an email from Vimeo with a link to their recent awards.

I especially liked the one below which won the Narrative category, It gives a little insight in to the way we treat modern digital photography and depicts "An entire relationship told through photos in four minutes"

Enjoy...

Thrush from Gabriel Bisset-Smith on Vimeo.

Remembrance Day 2010

2010-11-11T23:02:00.003Z

A quick post to show my support for Remembrance Day.

Lest we forget

Time Lapse Video

2010-11-11T18:29:00.001Z

A fantastic time lapse and video compilation that I could not resist sharing.

TimeScapes: Rapture from Tom Lowe @ Timescapes on Vimeo.

Well worth viewing in HD if you have the tech :)

Decking Light Trails

2010-11-10T17:00:00.002Z

Whilst out in the back garden taking shots for The Darkness Descents post, I was playing around a bit and managed to capture these long exposure light trails of my decking lights!

The Darkness Descends

2010-10-30T16:44:00.004+01:00

The nights are really starting to draw in now and will soon be dark when I go and come back from work (even after the clocks change).

Still, autumn is not all doom and gloom - with all the leaves falling from the trees the streets really are paved with gold (and brown, green, etc!)

Messing around the other night, I took some shots of these leaves which had landed on my decking covering some of the lights. Thought it was a bit different from the usual shots of autumn leaves.

As usual, click the images to enlarge.

Malta Moments

2010-10-25T22:43:00.006+01:00

At the end of last month, I headed over to Malta for a wedding and a well received break. Two good friends were getting married over there and a contingent of family and friends all went over for the occasion.

Other than a few pre wedding shots that the bride had requested and a few snaps of the wedding, I barely touched my camera for the rest of the week but here are a few Malta moments that I did catch.

View from my hotel

Malta sunrise

Boats

Malta Sunset

As usual, click the images to enlarge.

Wedding Day

2010-10-17T20:22:00.007+01:00

Back in August I did another wedding shoot for a friend. This time I got paid which was nice and gave me a bit more spending money when I went on holiday recently :)

After the wedding I did earlier in the year I found this one a lot easier and knowing less people I felt that I could be a lot more assertive in telling people what to do, where to stand etc!

I also did the pre wedding shots for the bride to be which I enjoyed as I could be a bit more creative (see the first picture below).

I managed to save a lot of time post wedding with the processing of the photos as I had learnt from previous mistakes!

Anyway, here are a few shots from the day...

As usual, click the images to enlarge.

And Relax!

2010-10-17T20:16:00.003+01:00

A hectic summer for me is now coming to an end and it's time to relax a bit and try and post a bit more to this blog. Have been a little useless with only 3 posts in the past 2 months which I will try and rectify in the coming weeks / months :)

Makeup - A Girls 2nd Best Friend!

2010-09-16T21:22:00.007+01:00

Had a really hectic month or so hence the severe lack of posts.

Attended 4 weddings in the past 6 weeks and was the official photographer at one for some friends (photos to follow on a later post) so been busy busy with all that and life in general.

Anyway, I have also recently helped out a friend of a friend with a few pictures as she is starting up as a beauty therapist and wedding makeup artist and needed a few shots for her website and advertising.

Here a a few shots from the day...

As usual, click the images to enlarge.

Shoes - A Girls Best Friend!

2010-08-07T19:42:00.004+01:00

On the evening when I took the photos in the Foxy Lady post I stayed the night in a bedroom that would be better described as the girls walk in wardrobe as it was full of clothes, shoes etc.

Personally, I'm not in to women's shoes (and don't really see what the fuss is about!) but thought the shoe rack on the back of the bedroom wall might make an original photo so took a quick snap before heading to bed.

I had a bit of a play around with the image, adding a little colour etc.

As usual, click on the image to enlarge.

New Moon

2010-08-02T23:16:00.006+01:00

I was driving through a village called Nunton the other evening and noticed a full moon rising over some trees.

I happened to have the camera with me so thought I'd pull over to get some shots. When I first stopped, there was some clouds partially covering the moon which would have made a really good photo (like something from a horror film) but by the time I got the camera and tripod out of the boot it had passed :(

Still managed to get this one though...

As usual, click on the image to enlarge.

Red Sky at Night....

2010-08-01T21:11:00.002+01:00

....shepherd's delight

The view from my bedroom window this evening.

Spider Food

2010-07-22T21:35:00.004+01:00

Taken in my garden yesterday evening - A quick catch of a spider tucking in to an unfortunate bug that managed to get itself caught up in the web.

Painting the Darkness

2010-07-19T23:00:00.009+01:00

When looking at Google Analytics recently I noticed that I've been getting a lot of hits on my various light painting posts.

With this in mind and having just completed soldering up my new and improved LED ring light I thought I'd revisit this popular topic by playing around with a few shots.

I started simply by rolling the LED ring light along my bed.

This created quite a cool geometric pattern so I then started to play around a bit more.

Followed by going along the floor, up the wall and across the ceiling!

Then I ran out of ideas!!

I think I will revisit this but am thinking of getting hold of (or making) a wheel with LEDs attached as rolling the ring light along smoothly is pretty difficult. Anyway...watch this space.

By the way, if you fancy trying out some light painting and your camera has manual settings then you don't need to make anything. As I've shown before in this post you can just use a phone as your light source or any old torch etc. Below is a quick shot that I took using my iPhone.

As usual, click on the images to enlarge.

Macro Drive

2010-07-18T17:53:00.003+01:00

More experimentation with the Macro Lens Adapters.

I really like the depth of field in this close up picture of an external hard drive.

Lonely Little Tree

2010-07-13T19:58:00.002+01:00

Just looking through some old memory cards and found this shot on one of them.

The tree looks a bit lonely sat on the top of a hill all alone!

Foxy Lady

2010-07-05T22:12:00.008+01:00

I went to a friends place in Weybridge at the weekend and had heard beforehand that they had a fox which frequented their garden - so much so that they've named it Stella! So I took along a camera to see if I could get a couple of snaps of the foxy lady!

I have only seen a couple of foxes close up and it's generally just a glimpse as they dart off so was surprised about how close this one was happy to get to us all as we sat in the garden and enjoyed a few drinks.

Foxes (especially urban ones) have had a lot of bad press in England recently but I for one like the furry little critters!

As usual, click the images to enlarge...

Wedding Shoot Tips

2010-06-28T22:18:00.001+01:00

As promised in my Wedding Shoot post, here is a follow up.

This might be useful to you if you are thinking of doing your first wedding shoot.

Venue - I found that it was well worth visiting the venue before the wedding day to take some sample shots (of the bride and groom if possible). This will give you some idea of the space available and the different backgrounds that can be utilised. It will also give the prospective bride and groom a chance to see how the scene looks in pictures and make choices on where they would like the photos taken. Also, think about where the photographs will be taken if the weather is bad on the wedding day as it was on the wedding shoot that I did (it rained for most of the day)!

Tripod - If you have one then it's worth using. I had to do most of the formal shots indoors. Also a quick tip - make sure you set it up and it's level before you start taking the shots. Mine was slightly off level and although it's easy enough to straighten up the pictures whilst processing it will save you a job if it's right at the time!

Lenses - You're more than likely not going to have time to change lenses, especially during the formal shoot so go with a good all rounder.

Cropping - If you're like me and most of your photographs are used online then you'd probably be more used to cropping to common screen resolution sizes rather than print sizes. I spent a lot of time re-converting my original RAW images and re-cropping photos after making this error initially! Photos that are likely to be printed need to be cropped to a print size ratio (such as 7x5"). If you just hand a printer a copy of all your shots straight from the camera then they will be cropped during the printing process and you may end up with important bits missing!

File Format - If you have a camera which will shoot in RAW format then that's the way to go. The photographs will take up more space on your memory cards and will take longer to process after the day but you will be able to make many more adjustments after the event which is great as you probably will not have time to review each shot in great detail in real time.

I hope that this post has been of use to any prospective amateur wedding photographers. I've got another wedding to shoot later in the year so I will be putting these things in to practice then.

Here are a few photos from my first wedding shoot...

Starry Eyed Surprise

2010-06-14T22:15:00.004+01:00

I have been meaning to try out a close up of a human eye since I got the Macro Lens Adapters. I know that getting the light right can be difficult with reflections etc to contend with and wanted to try out something a little different.

I quite like the effect you get from ring flashes so started thinking about making one. After a bit of thought, I purchased some bright white LED lights from a well known auction website. I then mounted these on an old bit of ply board with a cut out for the camera lens and soldered it all up. I thought I'd start small with just 8 LEDs but will be attempting some more ambitious LED projects soon (I have another 92 LEDs to use up after all!).

Here is one of my shots with the DIY ring flash / light.

By the way, it is my bloodshot eye in the picture - Must have been a heavy one the night before :-)

Shuffle Up and Deal

2010-06-01T20:24:00.002+01:00

I have made an adaptation to my DIY macro-light which I used with the old Canon Powershot S2 to try out with my Canon Speedlite on the dSLR. I basically used a bigger bit of tin foil and added an elastic band!

I was just wondering what to test it out on when I saw a pack of cards on the side.

Here is a shot of my camera with the hi-tech device attached and the results of a couple of test shots. The second one really captures the action of the shuffle and the merging of the cards (click to enlarge as always).

Product Shots

2010-05-27T22:35:00.000+01:00

A while back I did a load of product shots for the Beautiful You website.

It is nice to see that they have now started using some of them.

Wedding Shoot

2010-05-25T20:10:00.005+01:00

So, it's has been a while since I posted. It's actually been over a month so I've really been slipping this time....sorry folks. I aim to start posting a bit more regularly again (time permitting!).

Anyway, along with work and the other things that keep most of us busy, I have recently done my first wedding shoot! It was for some good friends and although somewhat stressful at times during the day and a lot of work on the computer after the event I have learnt a lot and hopefully ended up with a good album of pictures that they will like.

I'm not going to post any pictures of the actual wedding here until the happy couple have seen them (they are still off enjoying their honeymoon) but I did take the shot below of the invitation to use as a Wedding photo DVD cover so will share that one.

For any of you who are thinking (or have been asked) to do your first wedding shoot I will follow this post up in the next week or so with some of the problems I had, mistakes I made and tips that may be useful so watch this space.

Is Spring Finally Here?

2010-04-13T22:21:00.006+01:00

After what seems like a very long winter, is spring now finally here? The flowers below seem to think so! It has started to warm up and we've even had a few days of sunshine in the south of England so it all looks promising :-)

The photos below were taken in my back garden at home. The first 2 were shot using the Macro Lens Adapters.

Hope the sun is shining wherever you are...

Getting Creative

2010-04-05T22:27:00.009+01:00

I take quite a few photos (although regular readers of this blog may notice that I haven't taken too many recently!!) and rather than them just sitting idle on my hard drive I have recently been looking at creative ways in which to use photographs.

I have made a couple of videos using animoto but have always been really interested in photo mosaics so I thought I would give it a go. So far I have produced a framed Christmas present for a couple of good friends and also a birthday card for another friend.

Unfortunately, I did not have enough of my own photos for the 2 projects below but a quick browse of Facebook gave me plenty to work with. These both have a resolution suitable for printing out in A4 so luckily the photos that you use to make up the mosaic don't need to be a very high resolution.

Original Photo

End Result

Original Photo

End Result

Light Drink

2010-03-29T22:46:00.003+01:00

In place of a decent fact filled post (I've been busy!) here is another shot from my archives.

This one is of my bedside reading lamp!

Website Plug

2010-03-16T22:07:00.004Z

Thought I would have a go at some more black and white photography of everyday objects.

The plug photo below was taken with the macro adapters and then I ran a high pass filter in post processing.

What Could This Be?

2010-03-04T23:27:00.004Z

Random object that I was given as it would make a somewhat interesting photo.

Any ideas what it could be? Answers on a postcard...or just leave a comment!

The Art of Folding

2010-02-18T22:46:00.008Z

I always find it strange that this photo is my most popular flickr picture. I'm not sure why as it's not a very good photograph so I guess it must be because origami is popular on the net. With this in mind, I thought I would take a couple of pictures of some other modular origami that I knocked up the other evening.

Ladies in Red

2010-02-11T21:58:00.004Z

I am back from an excellent skiing trip, fully refreshed and raring to go! Unfortunately, I didn't take many pictures at all this year as I spent all my time out on the piste! (read that whichever way you like!!)

However, seeing as it is Valentines day on Sunday I thought I'd post my latest installment of the girls from Beautiful You.

Here is their Valentines inspired shot.

2010 Skiing Intermission

2010-01-30T13:31:00.003Z

Heading to La Plagne in French Alps later today for a skiing holiday so there will be no blog updates for a week or so.

We've had a fair bit of snow here in England over the past month or so but it will be make a nice change to go and ski in it rather than trying to battle to work through it!

Here is a shot of me from last years ski trip.

State of the Union

2010-01-29T12:00:00.003Z

Another photo from my archives. Taken using the macro light

Must Have Gadget

2010-01-26T01:04:00.005Z

I reloaded my main computer last week and am now finally getting around to creating a better filing system for my 10,000+ photos.

As with all tidying, you come across things which were long forgotten and for me these are random photos of random items!

This is a macro shot of a Bang & Olufsen Beocom 2 taken on 16 December 2005 with my trusty Canon Powershot S2. Over 4 years later and you still see these phones on TV shows all the time so it must be a bit of a degign icon.

Watch this space for other old photos from my collection.

Dark Religion

2010-01-21T17:49:00.003Z

Came across a couple of night shots of Salisbury Cathedral on my computer.

They were taken around the same time as the Comic Relief Cathedral shots.

More Beautiful You

2010-01-13T20:44:00.009Z

Back a month or so ago, I blogged about some friends that were starting up a website. I had helped them out with some seasonal photos.

Now that the site has been up for a while, I thought I would post a few more of the pictures from the photo shoot.

Why not have a look at their site at www.beautyu.co.uk and take a look.

It's Snow Time

2010-01-07T21:39:00.003Z

Well, it's that time of year again when England gets some snow and the whole country grinds to a standstill!

Really want to get out in the snow with my camera and take some winter shots but unfortunately I am one of the ones who can actually make it in to work so haven't (so far) had the chance.

Just in case I don't get the chance, here is my view of the virgin snow on Tuesday morning just before driving in to work. Not a great image as it was taken on the iPhone's rubbish camera but you get the picture!

Another Year Gone

2010-01-03T20:32:00.004Z

So that's it then...the festive period is over. It's official now in my house as the tree and decorations came down yesterday and it's back to work tomorrow!!

Hope that you all had a good New Year and now we can look forward to what 2010 has to offer.

Here is my naked tree shortly before being dragged outside then chopped, drawn and quartered!

Fototastic 2009

2009-12-31T15:57:00.006Z

Well, it's the last day of the year (and the decade) so I hope that you have all had a good one and are planning to see in 2010 in style.

Many thanks for your support over the past 12 months and I look forward to seeing you all here again in 2010.

Just as a quick recap, here is a compilation of the 2009 posts all neatly packaged in to a video for your viewing pleasure!

HAPPY NEW YEAR to you all.

Water Art

2009-12-29T22:16:00.006Z

I hope that you all had an excellent Christmas and are looking forward to the New Year celebrations.

I have had a bit of time off work over the festive period and after watching this interesting video I thought I would have another go at photographing water droplets.

You can see my first attempt earlier in the year here.

I took so many photos so it has taken a while to trawl through them but here are the 3 that I think came out best.

If you fancy having a go at this then there is plenty of help at hand on the web. I found that this video was pretty helpful.

Cathedral Light Trails

2009-12-14T22:40:00.004Z

Following on my obsession with light thought I would post another light trail picture.

Took this one a few months back but stumbled across it this evening whilst looking for something else.

Beautiful You

2009-12-03T22:33:00.003Z

I mentioned in this post a while back that I was doing some photography for some friends that were starting up a website.

Well, Stace & Mags now have the site up and running. Please support them by going to www.beautyu.co.uk and taking a look.

Airbrushing - Because You're Worth It!

2009-12-01T22:10:00.008Z

I have been doing a few projects recently that have involved some requested photo retouching / airbrushing. I use both Photoshop and Paintshop Pro so experimented with different techniques in each until I came up with something that I was fairly happy with.

This process does differ depending on the photo but I now use a general routine for the smoothing out of skin without making the subject look fake and also trying to keep the important details.

I was looking for a model but as no one was available I had to take a quick snapshot of myself to work on. After a long weekend and lots of late nights, a retouch was just what I needed!!!

Here is the before shot, straight out of the camera.

Here is the same shot again after some retouching.

Click on the images to enlarge as the differences are more noticeable.

================================================

Here are the steps that I look to achieve this.

Opened the original image in Photoshop and removed any blemishes with the spot healing tool

Duplicated the background layer and applied the dust and scratches filter with a radius of about 3 pixels and a threshold of 0

Applied a gaussian blur with a radius of about 1.4 pixels

Applied some texture to the image by using the add noise filter (1%)

Added a layer mask revealing all and filled the mask with black

Set the colour to white and used a paintbrush to brush in the new smooth skin

Lightened up the areas around the eyes and brightened up the eyes themselves

Applied some adjustment layers (curves and colour balance)

This technique does seem to work better on photos of women but then we are used to them having much smoother skin than us guys anyway :)

Lady In Red

2009-11-17T21:54:00.005Z

......This lady is dead!

Found this dead Coccinellidae (ladybird) at home.

Thought I would capture it on camera as I've done previously with:-

The Fly

and Spiderman Part 3

Graffiti

2009-11-13T20:04:00.005Z

Came across some old Facebook Graffiti of mine and noticed that you can now embed the replays. Here are few of my Star Wars inspired graffiti pictures...

Vitamin Shot

2009-10-31T17:33:00.001Z

With the weather getting colder and Swine Flu still hanging around, it might be time for a vitamin shot!

Website Photoshoot

2009-10-15T22:04:00.003+01:00

Some friends of mine are starting up a website and asked if I could take a few pictures for the site so I spent an enjoyable evening on Monday taking a variety of shots for them.

As you'll notice from my blog, I don't take a great amount of people shots so it was really good practice for me, especially with a wedding shoot coming up next year. There were a fair few shots that went straight to the recycle bin (the beauty of digital!) but we did end up with some good results and they were both pleased so all is good.

Here is one of the shots taken during the evening. I will post more after their site goes live.

Stop Motion Miniatures

2009-10-06T23:17:00.004+01:00

Following on from my Life in Miniature post, I stumbled across this stop motion video which I thought was really good.

Bathtub IV from Keith Loutit on Vimeo.

Up Up and Away

2009-09-29T22:44:00.004+01:00

Caught a few shots of this passing hot air balloon passing over my house.

I bet they got some good pictures from up there!

Reading Companion

2009-09-21T22:55:00.007+01:00

Since we have been getting a bit of September sun recently, I have been making the most of my back garden. Generally just been there chilling out in the sun and reading a good book or the paper and it seems like one of the local cats has taken a shine to my garden as well.

He quite happily basks in the sun or rolls around on the decking and seems to appear whenever I am out there for more than a few minutes and makes himself at home.

As you can see, he is not camera shy either!

Life in Miniature

2009-09-15T22:27:00.007+01:00

Tilt-Shift miniature faking is a process in which a life-size pictures are manipulated (using an image editor) to give the impression of a scale model.

I have seen a number of really good ones online and thought I'd give it a quick try. Click on the images to enlarge as they look better in that size.

They are not fantastic but for 5mins effort who am I to complain! I think that finding the right photograph is the hardest part of this process.

To see more of these images, why not visit the Tilt-Shift Miniature Fakes group on Flickr

Zoom Zoom Zoom

2009-09-12T10:24:00.003+01:00

Having another quick comparison between Flickr and Zooomr for photo views & stats. An earlier post on this subject can be found here.

The photo below was posted to both Flickr and Zooomr on 10 September 2008. So after one year, how do the stats compare.

Flickr Stats
Views: 153
Favorite: 5

Zooomr Stats
Views: 1275
Favorite: 29

As you can see, Zooomr still generates more interest in my photography and this picture is currently listed as my most awesome shot on Zooomr.