367-50 Week 12

Greetings blog readers. Another week and another seven photos. City of Belfast Photographic Society is part of NIPA (Northern Ireland Photographic Association) and NIPA run a number of competitions each year. We're coming up the last round, which is a themed round with the subject "shadows." It's hard to guess what they're looking for here, and if the "reflections" round was anything to go by, what I think is good and relevant will not be seen as either good or relevant by a NIPA judge. Apologies to anyone associated with NIPA reading this, but honestly, a little more direction or guidance would be handy. Anyway, I'm thinking shadows at the moment and bouncing some ideas around in my head this week.

30/01/12

One photo filter and a wee man from my set of photographers. Definitely got the shadows here big time although the introduction of wee men to NIPA judges has not been a great success so far. Actually it's been a dismal failure thus far and I've thrown some of my good stuff at them. Won't stop me trying 'though.

31/01/12

When opportunities fail to present themselves, one resorts to the wee men or in this case, my wee nuns. These are three particularly tough looking sisters (or sistas) backlit and shot with the Sigma 105mm macro lens. Close Encounters of the Nun Kind?

1/02/12

Getting jiggy with the shadow thing now. Put a metal colander in front of the desk lamp and artistically place......an egg! This felt a wee bit daft, but was worth it I think. It produced a strange kind of look with the lighting and the shadows, and the egg turned out to be a good choice of subject.

2/02/12

This evenings shot was a bit of a rush. It was Trish's birthday and we were going out for a surprise dinner at Cafe Vaudeville. I had about five minutes to set up white card, a flower, the desk lamp and try to get this shot. Shutter priority on 1/60, 200ISO and half a dozen shots to get one that was sharp. A wee touch of processing on the flower to bring out colour/clarity/sharpness and a little blast of black for the shadow.

3/02/12

Again, searching for some table-top shadows projects. Myself and my dark apprentice were playing around with some bits and pieces when I got the idea of creating something that looked a bit like a city skyline out of a box of screws. It's OK I suppose, although the cropping and processing weren't perfect even after a number of tries. However, shadows project keeps on rolling and I've now got quite a few "usable" shots together for the competition round. It's starting to look like I might have a problem choosing which shots I put in.

4/02/12

Ok - this is a wee bit off the track. Saturday afternoon, blue sky and there was the moon as bright as anything. I fantasise about being able to take a good shot of the moon. When I bought my first DSLR I got one of the those pretty shite 70-300mm zoom lenses and spent several nights trying to shoot the moon. All were crap. I've tried on various occasions since, guess what? Crap. Yesterday I shot with my longest lens (70-200mm nikon zoom). I locked up the mirror, bumped the ISO down and then forgot to switch off the Vibration Reduction, which I had intended to do. This was the result - there's a bit of shadow, so it counts in this week's theme.

5/02/12

OK - a wee bit of a ringer here. I've been busy with work all evening and watching Ireland get mugged by Wales in the Six Nations. I took this shot earlier in the week and didn't want to ignore it. This was a nice little set-up using a wooden artists dummy, a desk lamp and a sheet of white card as the background. The dummy's metal stand (and it's shadow) were cloned out in Lightroom and I used a little burn on the dummy to bring out the grain and also to darken the shadow down a little. I'm well chuffed with this.