267-50 Week 51

Penultimate week of the project and Monday ended up being one of those last-minute "shit I have to take a shot" days. More Roller Derby head shots to do this week on Thursday; already pretty pleased with Sunday's set of shots and the high key approach seemed to have worked well. Anyhow, on with this week's update.

29/10/12

Peas. Hand-shelled garden peas to be precise that were on their way into a pea and porcini mushroom risotto I was concocting for dinner with my eldest daughter. As always, I had to buy a bottle of white wine for cooking risotto. Half a glass into the dinner, the rest into Vonnie and me.

30/10/12

Time to use that word "autumnal" again. Dog walking in Stormont again and took the Lensbaby with me. Completely the wrong lens when I was confronted with a huge leaf blower in the estate and children running through the clouds of leaves. The shots were crap. Got this though, which is a typical Lensbaby shot - sharp point of interest, lots of blurring. I had the f8 aperture disc in and found that I had to crank the ISO up to around 800 in the poor afternoon light.

31/10/12

Hallowe'en night and it was off with the girls to Mount Stewart for their Enchanted Garden and other stuff. Tour of the house, walk round the lake. Performers were in abundance, plenty of food stalls. It was a nice evening, if a little cold. Parking was in a muddy field a couple of miles away, and I guess that would be my only gripe. That and a lack of fireworks.

1/11/12

One thing begats another and my Roller Derby stuff led to me being asked to do a shoot for a local charity. The NI Cancer Fund for Children were launching their magic reindeer dust appeal and I had the honour of getting to take the pics. This involved some formal shots of the sponsors and some rather fun shots with this delightful young lady, Ellie. Much reindeer dust was thrown and blown around W5 and even after two changes of clothes and two showers, I'm still finding bits of glitter stuck to me. I have to say, I really enjoyed this shoot.

2/11/12

And speaking of Roller Derby, I did the second big batch of head shots last night. This is the wonderful Pusicfer who insisted on pumping iron. This shot probably won't make the final selection for the website but I like it and wouldn't want to leave it sitting on a hard drive somewhere. Sad to report that after this shot was taken, Pus managed to break her collarbone during evening practice. I'm sure she'll be back on skates soon.

3/11/12

When was the last time I posted something from the iphone? Was in Belfast city centre this afternoon - I must learn to stay out of the photography section at Waterstones bookshop. I went in looking for a book on a particular photographer and ended up with three books, none of which were what I'd gone in for. On the way back to the car I bumped into the Master Chief from the Halo computer games. Very convincing suit/uniform and he was quick to stop handing out promo leaflets and strike a pose.

4/11/12

My visit to Waterstones yielded two rather excellent books on lighting for portraits. I was itching to try some out and got stuck into them this morning with my ever willing model Sarah. The outfit was her choice. This is a shot straight out of the camera with no adjustments made to it other than a slight crop and a white balance tweak to the background. I have a bucket-load to process using a basic clam-shell lighting set up and some more like this with a ring flash. Felt like I was getting somewhere with this - now for the step by step processing advice. Lets see what that brings.