Sunday, 28 October 2012

367-50 Week 50

IT'S WEEK 50 - ONLY TWO MORE WEEKS TO GO!
Sorry, don't know if I'm excited or glad to see the end of this. A few things coming up this week some of the them involving Roller Derby. Going to attempt the most complicated shot ever on Tuesday night if the weather stays dry.

22/10/12

It wasn't my idea, but a really helpful suggestion from another photographer (you know who you are) - why not take some shots of the rain drops sitting on spider's webs in the hedges outside my house. That killed an hour of my time this evening and was an antidote to helping children with their homework. I'm not sure what I did here, but this looks like drops of water frozen in mid air as you can't see the web strands holding them up.

23/10/12

Roller Derby photoshoot this evening, ably assisted by my son Conor. It was a Star Wars theme so we were trying to combine fire spinning and light sabres. This was a 25" exposure at f8 and 100 ISO with two remore flashguns set to fire on rear curtain flash. The flashes were set at about 1/8th power (got there by a lot of trial and error). All in all it worked out quite well; a bit of tinkering with exposure and cropping in Lightroom and then a spot of sharpening in Photoshop. Lets see how it goes down with the punters, so to speak. Big thanks to my two lovely and every patient models, McSlay and Chopper.

24/10/12

Halloween disco in school - Sarah decided to go as "Deadward" (i.e. dead Jedward - I wish). I ended up trying to do the hair for her. I'm afraid that it turned out more like Maggie Smyth in Downton Abbey than the annoying Grimes twins.

25/10/12

Another attempt at capturing some autumn colour. I had intended walking the dog in Stormont Estate and taking some pictures. That I did, but I saw this tree on the way there, just round the corner from the house. Fantastic reds and oranges and spiky leaves thrown in for free? Stormont pictures got binned.

26/10/12

I'd seen this type of shot done by a few other people (which were generally better than my attempt). However, in an idle moment this morning and in an attempt to take a break from work stuff I decided to give it a go and see how it worked out. Two shots taken in succession with a self timer lit with one speedlight bounced of a white ceiling. I know I got my hands a little bit out of alignment with my face/eyes, but I was working quickly. Imported both to Photoshop as layers and then rubbed through the "hand" layer to reveal the eyes underneath using a brush set at around 40% hardness.

27/10/12

This is the view from the top of Slieve Croob, one of the smaller Mourne Mountains. It was a cold but bright day and I humped the big camera the whole way up here and wasn't going to leave without a photo. I was able to use the little concrete trig point at the very top to set the camera on and this is taken looking towards Black Mountain and Belfast. You could see the Harland and Wolfe cranes from the top - honest.

28/10/12

Started a big round of head shots for Belfast Roller Derby this afternoon with another batch to come next Thursday evening. As always, they were a great group to work with and the effort they put in for things like this is immense. I took this shot for myself, for the blog. The head shot is every bit as good. I was working on a high-key approach to the shots, and they seem to have worked out well; or at least I'm pretty pleased with them. Big thanks to Dempsey Hammer who organised everyone (excel spreadsheet at the ready!) and to my son Conor for being my assistant yet again.

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