367-50 Week 22

Week 22. Who would have thought it. It's the Easter holidays - dead space. I'm looking forward to seeing some prints I've ordered, with one eye on the judging for the City of Belfast Photographic Society annual exhibition. I fear that I have way too many portrait shots and not enough for the landscape and general sections and too many colour shots, not enough black and white. Anyhow.....here's this week's shots.

9/04/12

It was a very dull Easter Monday for the annual jaunt to Donaghadee. Old home town and all that. Except there's a reason why I only visit once a year. I think the notion of retiring there has gone off me. I couldn't stand it. Or perhaps Donaghadee couldn't stand me. Either way, the only way I could make the trip (and the photo's) look interesting way to resort to cheap post-processing trickery. Or HDR as it's also known.

10/04/12

Easter Tuesday and yet another dull and grey day. We took advantage of a free photoshoot at the new studio in Jessops (although studio is a bit of a grand title for a room with a light box set-up) and then headed off for a bite of lunch. Outside the cafe was the "pop up" MAC with it's rainbow coloured shutters. I hung about for a while but didn't get too many decent shots. This is maybe the best of a poor selection. One to bear in mind perhaps for a rainy day.

11/04/12

This is the engine of my car. It's still quite nice and new under the bonnet, not that I'm under there that often. Today's excuse was getting a small boy to fit a new headlight bulb - way to go Halfords, Boucher Road. I keep forgetting that for some strange Scandinavian reason, my car has five cylinders - that's right - count them. 5. God knows why.

12/04/12

Miniature daffodils shot with the Lensbaby with a 0.4 macro lens screwed on the front. A package of Lensbaby accessories arrived today via Amazon. Macro lenses, wide-angle lens, telephoto lens and a creative aperture kit. Lots of playing ahead. I'm liking the Lensbaby but suspect there's a lot more practice needed due to the hit and miss and fully manual nature of the Lensbaby.

13/04/12

Three small girls on a trampoline - who could resist that sort of photo opportunity? Given that I'd spent the whole day getting prints ready for our annula exhibition judging tomorrow morning I was fairly hacked off with photos. But, as I said, who could resist?

14/04/12

This was the picture which did best for me today at the exhibition judging. I had entered this in a competition last year to be included alongside some of Carrie Davenport's music photography at the Ulster Hall and was chuffed to have it chosen. I then submitted in in a NIPA round and had it rubbished by a very conservative judge. Anyhow, I thought I'd give it a rattle again for the exhibition since it's a shot that I have a lot of affection for. It's actually an old picture, taken in 2010 with my previous camera (Nikon D80). I reprocessed the shot using a few more tweaks to convert it to black and white, which gave it a fuller range of tones than in the original version.

15/04/12

This was supposed to be a ladybird. I was working in the front garden when I spotted the first ladybird of the year. I dashed inside for my camera but by the time I got the Lensbaby attached and screwed in the x4 and x10 macro lenses the ladybird had (quite literally) flown away home. However, a rather large bumble bee arrived and was happy to pose for a few shots. More entertainment for the neighbours who found me lying face down on the lawn apparently pointing my camera at the grass.