Festive Bokeh

Happy New Year to everyone :-) I hope that you all enjoy a great New Years Eve and best wishes for 2009.

Seasons Greetings

I hope that you enjoyed a very good and relaxing Christmas. I had a good one although slightly over shadowed by a cold which materialised on Christmas afternoon and is still with me but going to try and subdued it a little with some alcohol tonight as I'm off for drinks round a friends place!

I have got another week off before heading back to work so will just have to make up for lost time :)

Here are a few festive shots...

Flag Silhouette

Firstly, let me apologise with the lack of updates on my blog recently. I have been kept very busy with all things Christmas!

Here is another shot taken on the same evening as the flag waving



Hopefully I will be able to get the camera out a lot over the Christmas period....

Quick Work Time Lapse

A quick time lapse video of me at work a few Fridays ago. You can see a few more of my short time lapse videos here.

More Photoshoot Pictures And Setup

Following on from my Photoshoot With A Friend I thought I would post a photo of some of the kit I used.

I borrowed a couple of large fans and used clamps and cable ties to secure to a step ladder to get the correct height. I was hoping that the fans would be powerful enough to give the impression that some of the shots were taken in high wind but unfortunately they were not! I also attached a lamp to the ladder so I could experiment with the lighting a little.



Here are a few more shots taken on the day using this setup that I have processed. As you can see on the first image I have been experimenting with textures again.

Clever Stuff

Clever video manipulation from Adobe.

Salisbury Savanna

Photoshoot With A Friend

Last Saturday I did a photo shoot at home with a good friend Stace who I coaxed (actually she was really up for doing it) in to being my model for the afternoon. We had a great time and it allowed me to try out various different styles of photography (portrait, action etc).

During the afternoon I took around 400 photos and have only had the chance so far to do a first pass and deleted around half which were unusable due to bad focus, blinking, bad lighting and ones which I knew she would blatantly not like!

Here are just a few of the ones that I have liked so far with more to follow once I've had a chance to sort through them.

Hoverman

After coming across this great work by ec808x on Flickr I have done a little experimenting with taking a long exposure shot whilst using another camera flash to silhouette myself.

It needs a lot more practice and a much larger working environment but here is my first shot using this method. Note the orange glow from the auto focus light!!

Flag Waving

A little bit of flag waving to follow on from the Remembrance Day post.

Remembrance Day

Today is Remembrance Day (Veterans Day in the US). A day to remember all those who have lost their lives fighting for our country both in the World Wars and also in modern conflicts. Today also marks the 90th anniversary of the signing of the Armistice signaling the end of the
First World War.

I feel that it is very important for younger generations to acknowledge and appreciate the sacrifices that were made by previous generations to allow us to live as we do today. Only 3 British World War One veterans remain and they are all well in to their hundreds.

Lest We Forget.


Give Generously, as they did.
A video for the Royal British Legion, Poppy Appeal.




Honor to the Fallen Tribute (past and present)





And not forgetting recent conflicts. Whether we agree with our politicians and their motivations for for sending our troops to these wars, the fallen should always be honored and forever remembered.

Jumping to Conclusions

Finally got around to posting my first picture taken with the Canon RC-1 remote. Thought I'd try a jump / levitation type shot and quite like the result. Who said White Men Can't Jump!!

Oops, you can still actually see the remote in my right hand!! :)

Wetsuit Required

One of the first portrait shots taken with the Nifty Fifty. This is also another example of using textures on my photographs.

Dark Portrait

Experimentation with portrait taken with ambient light.

Shell Shocked

More light box and supermacro shots.

Even More Macro Light Shots

Few more supermacro shots taken at work with the Macro Light

Laptop Keys


Dell Server

The End Of The World Is Nigh!

Some local street art spotted on the way home from work the other day. Apparently there are also some others around the City by the same artist.

Autumn Colours

I have always liked Autumn in the UK with all the variety of colours with leaves on the ground and dramatic skies and sunsets. It almost makes the bleak winter that's approaching a little more bearable.

After a very poor summer weather wise here it's good that we are now getting a bit of sporadic sunshine before the cold sets in.

Nifty Fifty

I've had the 450D for around a month now and taken quite a few shots with it. I have found (as I'd previously read in reviews) that photos taken with the standard lens (Canon EF-S 18-55mm IS lens) are not always that sharp. This is not a huge problem as a little post processing generally solves the issue.

I have also been keen to get more in to portrait photography and am always impressed with shots taken with a very shallow depth of field. With that in mind I had already seen a low cost lens with a fairly wide aperture of f/1.8 and after reading some rave reviews and a sale on Amazon I snapped up a Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 II prime lens.

Yes it has a very plastic feel to it (with plastic mount) and does not seem very strong but a for under £70 I don't think you can go far wrong with this. The fixed focal length does not give you the flexibility of the kit lens so you have to move around a bit to get the composition that you are after but I think the shallow depth of field (see test shot below) and sharpness of images is more than worth a little extra effort. I've barely used the kit lens since getting this nifty fifty!

Red Pen Lightbox

Another light box picture taken with the S2. Red pen....reminds me of school!!!

New Kit

Now that I've splashed out on the 450D I thought it was time to purchase some much needed accessories!

When it came to tripods I have generally gone for cheap and cheerful ones from places like eBay but have always wanted something a little more substantial. After trying out a few in the local camera shops I decided to opt for a Manfrotto Modo 785B at a cost of £50. It's a full height tripod which folds up to be reasonably compact (about 45cm) and fairly light but at the same time it's pretty study. I wasn't too sure about the hybrid joystick head but now I've used it a few times I really like it. It has a thumb lock and an option for video (panning up, down, left, right) then at the flick of a switch goes in to photo mode for full movement on the ball head. It also has 3 leg width settings for different applications which have already come in handy. All in all a nice piece of kit with excellent build quality.



I have also always wanted a shutter release remote (which I couldn't get for my old Powershot S2) as it avoids having to use the 2 second timer for low light shots to prevent camera shake. It's also great for self portrait shots which I've yet to try out! I found a Canon RC-1 in a local camera shop for the same price as they are on the Internet (around £15) so went for that. It's a tiny piece of kit but so far has worked very well. It has a slider switch to select either either 2 second or immediate shutter release and then the shutter release button to take the shot. Have found this very useful so far and can't imagine what I'd do without it now.

Trip To The Sea

Haven't had much of a chance to get out and take pictures recently but did manage to take a few snaps at Ocean Village when I went to Southampton last week.

Landscapes

Couple of landscape shots taken with the 450D.

Infrared With Canon EOS 450D

After enjoying experimenting with infrared photography on my trusty Canon Powershot S2IS and lens adapter kit (see previous post), I decided to try out the 58 mm Kood R72 infrared filter on the 450D.

On the Powershot S2 you just attach the filter and you can see the shot on the screen and adjust the settings before taking the picture. It was more difficult than expected on the 450D as once the filter is attached you can barely see anything through the viewfinder (In hindsight I should have tried it in Live View mode which may have helped!!). I ended up having to compose each shot without the filter, focus then carefully attach the filter to the lens and hope for the best. It was a fairly windy day and as I required about a 15 second exposure I lost a few pictures to blur even though I was using a tripod.

I was using a custom white balance achieved by taking a photo of a white sheet of paper with the filter attached then setting that as the default but you can achieve different results by using the colour of foliage or anything you desire as the custom white balance. Many examples can be see in the Digital Infrared and Infrared groups on Flickr.

In the 2 shots below I swapped the red and blue channels in post processing to improve the colours.





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Here are some of my previous shots taken with the Canon Powershot S2








** Updated 6 April 2009 - See Part 2 **

** Updated 5 June 2009 - See Part 3 **

Light Junkie

I have always enjoyed experimenting with light in its different forms to see what effects you can capture. I spent some time playing around with the camera and using a laser pointer and a mobile phone as the light sources to see what I could produce.

Using a long exposure (generally around 15 seconds) here are some of the photos that I captured.

Using a mobile phone as the light source




Laser pointer going back and forth across stainless steel tea and coffee canisters




Laser pointer on wine glass



Outlining a garden chair with a laser pointer

Flickr v Zooomr - Update

A quick update on yesterdays post.

After posting the blog entry I put a link to it on my Zooomr Zipline and added the photo to a few groups on Flickr.

This propelled the picture on Zooomr to my most popular and the first to reach 10 faves. It also generated more contacts which is always good.

Here are the stats as of this morning...

Flickr Stats (my Flickr pics)
Views: 34
Favorite: 0
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Zooomr Stats (my Zooomr pics)
Views: 64
Favorite: 11
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Flickr v Zooomr

As you can see from my previous post, I've been using Zooomr now for around a month and have been interested to see the different exposure photographs get compared to Flickr so I decided to run a little test.

The test involved uploading the photograph below to both Flickr and Zooomr. The picture had the same title and tags on both sites and was not added to any sets or groups.



A week has now passed so here are the results.

Flickr Stats (my Flickr pics)
Views: 13
Favorite: 0
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Flickr Contacts: 90

Zooomr Stats (my Zooomr pics)
Views: 39
Favorite: 2
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Zooomr Contacts: 30

As you can see I've had 3 times more views on Zooomr even though I've only got of third of the contacts that I have on Flickr. Also, 2 people consider the photo one of their favorites.

I would have thought that the more contacts that you have the more views you would get as I'm always browsing through my contacts photos (especially on Flickr). Apparently that is not so! Either way, 39 views of a picture in a week is pretty poor which ever way you look at it :(

Zooomr does generate more traffic (well, to that picture anyway) but that may just be because the community is smaller or that particular picture was of more interest there than on Flickr. Either way, I will continue to post pictures to both sites and see how it goes.

Sometimes Life Can Be a Blur

Days, months & years seem to go by so quickly the older that you get. The pace of life can sometimes be a blur!

On Flickr I have been following the exceptional work of a photographer called rosiehardy. She produces some amazing and creative work and I wish I had a fraction of her talent. I read this post on her and aknacer's (another exceptional photographer) blog about using textures and was inspired to give it a go.


Here is the finished image - better viewed large (click on image)


Here is the original


It was a bit of a quick basic go at the technique but I am pleased with the results.