2013 365-5

Week five and no shoots worth talking about this week. Guess it's time to fall back on mooching around the house and trying to be creative. Small things, small places.

28/01/13

Damn but I just love this little sock rabbit. My daughter Katie bought the kit for my youngest, Sarah and Katie came round on Sunday to help Sarah make it. This seemed to involve (to an objective observer) Katie making the sock rabbit while Sarah tried to distract her with an amazing repertoire of pointless questions. I'm tempted to say that it was the ruin of a good pair of socks, but how could you not love that little face? It has taken pride of place on the mantlepiece, at least temporarily.

29/01/13

This is a close-up of a little light-up snow globe given to Sarah by the two elderly sisters who live next door. The actual snow flake is tiny and the halo of light is the macro ring light I was using to take the shot.

30/01/13

Sarah's feet. Not actually that little - but then big feet run in the family (see what I did there?) Sarah has a real penchant for going bare-footed around the house. So far, no nasty accidents involving trips to A&E.

31/01/13

Got out orbing tonight for the first time in months. This was taken on the footbridge over Parkway that links the two halves of Belmont Park. Thanks to the kind driver who tooted their horn at me - I'm wondering if it was someone who knew what lights being swung around on a footbridge bridge meant. Or just someone who thought the aliens had landed.

1/02/13

Stuck in the house, very bored, so decided to start working on single flash lighting set ups. This was "clam-shell" lighting with an SB-700 above the camera shooting down and fitted with a softbox. I was holding a  large gold reflector under my face angled up to bounce light back into my face and hopefully kill some shadows. Pretty decent results for a relatively simple set-up - I'm going to keep working at this, time permitting.

02/02/13

This was the big kids' Xmas present - a morning's go-karting at Raceview in Broughshane. Eight of us in total and I was going great guns until i managed to crash in the semi-final race (spectacularly) and put myself out of the final. Here's the winners podium, with Will (right) in third, Siobhan (left) in second and Si in the middle hugging his trophy. It should have been mine - next time, next time......

03/02/13

David Millar has featured on the blog before. He is my aikido mentor and the man who took an interest in me when I started training in aikido 14 years ago. Davy went out of his way to teach me and has never stopped offering suggestions and critique when it was needed. He is a man with a wealth of stories and who loves to tell them, about aikido and his life. He is an avid reader who I've swapped books with over the years, mainly on boxing which is one of his passions. Last night was Davy's 75th birthday and it was an honour to attend his surprise party. I'm hoping he'll be around for many years to come.

367-50 Week 32

Here we go with another week. I've been finding it harder to keep going taking a picture every day for some time now and I feel that I've lost inspiration somewhere or at least that very few of my ideas translate into half-decent pics. I'm keeping going, though, but right now it feels like I'm going through the motions. Or to be more accurate, it feels like I'm trying to run a marathon through quicksand with concrete blocks strapped to me. Backwards. And uphill.

18/06/12

So. my Monday ends up in Glengall Street in Belfast. There are few things of interest in Glengall Street although there was a lot of action at the stage door of the Opera House with a few massive trailers being unloaded. I was here for my first counselling appointment with Relate - it's in the big glass building. My stress levels were pretty high going in and being my normal 10 minutes early for any appointment, I had plenty of time to get even more anxious. The counsellor was very good; she let me talk and brought me back on track when I started to lose focus and ramble on. She asked some good questions and made some interesting and quite challenging suggestions and observations. I left with things to think about, and with much less anxiety than when I went in.

19/06/12

Another Tuesday Aikido picture. I'm wondering how many of these I've taken so far? This is my club badge, and my belt. I've never been 100% sure what the symbols on my belt translate as, but here's my interpretation. On the right side, the top three kanji are the symbols for Ai-Ki-Do; that I'm sure of. I think the bottom two are the symbols for "shodokan" - the style of Aikido I practice. On the left hand side I think the kanji are the phonetic Japanese version of my name. I stand to be corrected by anyone who can read Japanese. On a tangent, getting on the mats and practising has always been a way for me to forget about whatever else is going on and concentrate only on moving and on technique. There have been times in my life when Aikido kept me sane, that's all I'm saying. And yes, I admit that I've not been doing any serious training lately. Last summer I said that over the summer I was going to stop smoking, get fit and lose weight. I've lost weight, gotten a lot fitter but am still smoking too much. I think it's about time I got back to proper training. August/September should be interesting.

20/06/12

Another day's work in Glenarm and another chance to visit the old factory. I had put some wee men in place last week (my last visit) and wanted to see if they were still in place. They were and I took some half decent shots. However, I got sidetracked by the factory stuff - it's not the first time that has happened. The rust fascinates me - the colours and patterns make a lovely abstract image, although I realise that it's probably only me that looks at this lovingly. This is my favourite shot, but perhaps not the best technically.

21/06/12

OK, I'm well aware that my hands are not the prettiest in the world, even under the best of circumstances. Like an old friend, my pompholyx eczema returned this week after approximately 6 months. I can't say I've missed it. But, given that this is a year long project, odds were it was going to happen and when it does, it really messes me about. This was a relatively small outbreak, just affecting the index finger and thumb of my right hand but christ it is sore. Blisters followed by raw skin for a couple of weeks, and itching that would drive you mental plus tightening of the fingers, making my index finger look like a hook. Hard to work a camera, impossible to play the guitar, can't hold a pen, and so on. The worst outbreaks of this I've had involved not being to drive (couldn't hold the wheel/change gear), not being to dress myself (buttons and laces? Give me a break) and not being able to cook. Be thankful for small mercies.

22/06/12

And then the rain came down in a seven plagues of Egypt way. All day. Stuck in the house, I decided to have a crack at taking a half decent photo of my wee dog, Muffin. I set up a backdrop, speeedlites and brollies. I tried to get Muffin to sit still. To lie down. All with no success until my little assistant turned up and got Muffin to sit and look in various directions. I thought that this might be a more fitting shot. I'm not working with dogs again. Children yes, dogs no.

23/06/12

I never thought I'd see the day when I'm actually providing a cucumber update. Went in this morning to water the plants in the greenhouse to discover a load of little yellow flowers on the two cucumber plants. There does seem to be quite a lot of them - I'm suspecting they may need to be thinned out a little when the actual cucumbers start to appear. A little on-line research is needed I think. Stay tuned for further cucumber updates.

24/06/12

Big snail on the bin this morning. Totally the wrong lens for this sort of shot, but I couldn't be bothered running upstairs to get a macro lens on the camera. I'm in a moral dilemma - something has been eating the pepper plants in the greenhouse and I suspect it's either snails or slugs. There are also a couple of frogs living in the greenhouse and I was hoping that they would keep the snails and slugs under control. To nuke them or not. I'd prefer not to.

Anyhow, that's this week. I have a photo safari lined up tomorrow, to visit a couple of places I've never photographed and probably everyone else has. Next weekend is a visit to my son in Nottingham and there's a rumour of a work outing to go Karting on Thursday. Shouldn't be a problem filling the photography week.

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367-50 Week 29

I'm going to take a break from self-flagellation this week. If your not sure, look it up. Looks like I'm off to the Pigstock music festival at the weekend (against my better judgement and after being effectively bullied by my children) so don't be surprised if a few shots from there turn up.

28/05/12

I went on a spider hunt this afternoon in my newly acquired greenhouse. I was amazed at how many different types of spider I saw in there. I was hoping for a shot of a zebra jumping spider, the extremely aggressive little striped spider. I'd seen a couple but sadly none came out to play today. This fine fellow was sitting happy as a clam on the inside of one of the glass panes. The old Sigma 105mm macro was pressed into service but the shallow depth of field doesn't quite work for me in this shot. If he had stayed still long enough I'd have liked to try focus stacking. He didn't.

Kids aikido class as usual this evening with the amazing Lance attempting his 8th kyu grading. I'll let you into a secret - when Lance started aged 8, he was dreadful to teach. Poor concentration, never listened, always looking somewhere other that where he should have been. That and doing head spins when my back was turned. So, I had a quite word with him, of the "health and safety" type. Since then he has been the model pupil and tonight turned in one of the best 8kyu demonstrations I've seen in almost 14 years of practising aikido, either from a child or from an adult. I know my own wasn't that good. Excellent attitude, posture, balance and timing. I was well chuffed for him. He's a great kid. As his his older brother Daryl - the one on the end of the arm lock.

30/05/12

I promised no self-flagellation this week but I end up having to do some work in Carrickfergus today. Those of you who know me will know that I have some history with the place, having lived there for just under two years. I make no secret of the fact that it's a place I could never warm to and moving back to Belfast was one the best things I ever did, particularly in terms of being geographically closer to my children. I did feel oddly compelled to take some sort of photograph today while passing through. In the end, I went for a very dull black and white shot of the castle. My creative juices have shrivelled up right now. I need something to come along and give my photography a good kick up the hole.

31/05/12

Out with some of the Aikido club tonight for dinner. I had taken to the camera to get a group shot, but that went on Facebook, This was the keeper - and taken almost accidentally while trying to get the light levels right. Daphne is the club's first ever lady/female/non-male black belt and she's really rather good and very dedicated. She also takes a good picture - it's the bone structure in my humble opinion. Now to persuade her to do a proper portrait shoot. This shot was taken at way too high an ISO so it doesn't bear close inspection, but it's not bad for all that.

1/06/12

So, after a long day working in Dungannon and the most expensive half hour of my life to date in Kwik Fit at Ballyhackamore I got home and opened a solitary bottle of beer that had been hiding in the fridge. While opening it, I noticed this little chap lying on his back. Being the good Samaritan that I am, I naturally tried to poke him with my finger to get him the right way up. The little fecker clicked and leapt a good foot into the air, making me spill the solitary beer and scaring the crap out of me and the dog. Next time, he can stay on his back.

2/06/12

I spent all of today shooting bands at the Engine Room Stage at Pigstock, yet this is my shot of the day - these two guys just summed up everything that's great about the festival.  It was strange this year not being there as part of a couple, but I have to say that it was great to meet some old friends and make some new friends. Katie and Conor were fabulous craic and there was a smidgeon of beer and red wine consumed. I also think that the crowd seemed smaller this year that last - especially around the main stage. Recession? Or maybe it was that the Download Festival is next week and people have chosen to go to it. Anyway - more pics from Pigstock can be found here:

Pigstock 2012

3/06/12

A spider at the start of the week, a beetle in the middle and a snail to finish it off. Saw this wee fellow this morning at around 7am as I was having a smoke at the back door. The light was just lovely on the leaves and the background blurred really nicely at f2.8. 

367-50 Week 18

Don't ask me why but out of the blue I decided to declare this week "50mm week" on the blog. I have attached my trusty Nikon 50mm f1.8 lens to the camera and will only be taking shots with it this week. I haven't discussed this with Trish yet, and we're shooting a wedding on Saturday. Might have to take the boss's instructions on board for that gig and then get back to the 50mm afterwards. Highlights of this week will be the wedding on Saturday plus the walk up Slemish mountain in the morning to celebrate St Patrick's  Day.

12/03/12

12th March is my number two daughter's birthday, and she was 21 this year. That's Katie in the middle, with Sarah and Ellen on either side after I had cooked dinner for everyone. As Trish pointed out, Katie will be 33 when Sarah celebrates her 21st birthday - that wasn't very well received. Mind you, I'll be 61. If I live that long. The 50mm f1.8 is a cracking little lens for portraits. Sharp, great colours and excellent depth of field.

13/03/12

This is the basil growing in my kitchen, against the kitchen window. This does show off the excellent colour reproduction of the 50mm lens (especially when attached to a Nikon camera) and the superb depth of field. Look at the bokeh on that shot!

14/03/12

Saw this as I drove through Antrim. It's along Stiles Way and there are three of these little bunches, all identical and tied to the fence. Shot this through the car window. I think I had been dealing with death and dying too much in work this week - hence the pre-occupation with this. Although I now realise that I'm, assuming it is some kind of tribute or shrine to someone who died when it might not be. Although it would be my experience that people in Antrim rarely put up flowers on fences for fun.

15/03/12

This is the kind of shot that the 50mm was made for. As in the past few weeks, I took my camera along to Aikido training and the 50mm coped with the low light better than any other lens I own. Again, sharp where it needs to be and nice fall-off in focus into the background. Love the colours, even under fluorescent lights.

16/03/12

A wee bit of cheating/time travel required here. This was taken tomorrow, at the top of Slemish mountain in County Antrim. I knew I was doing the Slemish walk and shooting a wedding on St Patrick's day and wanted to use both in my 367-50 project. We left Belfast at 8am, got the shuttle bus from Buckna to Slemish and were standing on top at around 10.30am. There was heavy, low-lying fog the whole way there but the top of Slemish was bright and clear. This is St Patrick's cross at the very top, looking down onto the fog below. Another advantage of the 50mm - it was light and easy to carry up a mountain. In bright sunlight it gives fantastic depth of field - shot this at f22, 1/125 and ISO 200.

17/03/12

Straight off Slemish, home and shower, bite of lunch then off to shoot a wedding at Ten Square with Trish. As usual, I was doing some shots with the groom's party before Trish arrived with the bride. This is the standard "Reservoir Dogs" shot. It came out well (apart from a slightly grumpy looking best man) and I included it because I was able to clone out a road sign above the heads of the two people on the right using nothing but Lightroom. I surprised myself. It was a lovely wedding shoot - nice couple, lovely guests, a really eccentric priest, great staff in Ten Square and we had dinner laid on for us. Cracking.

I'm heading off to Cuba on Thursday of this week, camera in hand. There may well not be an update on this blog for a couple of weeks, but I'm hoping to have some good shots of Havana to post when I return. Stay tuned!

367-50 Week 17

Survived another weekend in Donegal (just) and am now back to porridge. Highlight of this week should be shooting the Belfast Roller Derby ladies as they take on a team from Cardiff on Saturday night.

5/03/12

Came out this morning to find Sooty sun-bathing on the roof of Lynsey's car. Sooty has begun behaving strangely since Lynsey went on holiday to Australia. She has taken to sleeping on the settee in the back room, sitting on my knee and climbing on the table to bump heads with me. Perhaps she is developing a liking for me or perhaps she's missing Lynsey.

6/03/12

This is an old graveyard on the Old Glenarm Road in Larne. It sits halfway between the two schools in Larne that I work with, so I drive past it quite a lot. I've always thought about trying to get a shot of the little building in the middle of the graveyard and today I deliberately took my camera with the intention of getting my shot. I wanted to get the path leading to the building, but keep the focus on the building. The sky was darkened a little in Lightroom before I applied a tilt-shift effect in Topaz Lens Effects.

7/03/12

Sarah arrived home from school with homework on the subject of lines of symmetry. Homework came complete with a mirror for testing symmetry. I couldn't resist.

8/03/12

Same story as last week - gets to Thursday evening and no picture taken today. As with last week my excuse was the amount of work I had to do today. Therefore, take camera to Aikido. This is my aiki training buddy Dave being nearly struck on the head by my son Conor with a wooden sword or Bokken. I hate shooting in the Courtney Hall due to the fluorescent lights. That has to be my least favourite type of lighting condition to shoot under.

9/03/12

This is  a bit of a weird one. Everybody kept telling me I should watch "Breaking Bad" as I would really like it. I started with the pilot and found it.......strange and slightly unsettling. Most unsettling of all was the lead character, a chemistry teacher who finds out he has lung cancer and who decides to make as much money as he can making and selling crystal meth. He was played by Malcolm in the Middle's dad and that really freaked me out. I will persevere through series one and make my mind up after that. This is a shot off the screen of my MacBook involving a bunsen burner.

10/03/12

Saturday was Roller Derby Day. The Belfast Banshees up against the Cardiff Roller Cooperative and no prisoners were taken. Exciting and very physical - this ended up in a very close bout with Belfast closing Cardiff's huge lead down in the dying minutes, with Cardiff just holding on by a handful of points. I love shooting the Roller Derby Ladies and I couldn't pick out one picture that would sum up the evening. Therefore, I've taken the cowards way out and put in the picture that has absolutely everyone in it. Here's a link to the finished set of shots on Flickr:

Belfast Roller Derby Set on Flickr

11/03/12

Belfast's Holi festival today and it was moved from St George's Market to the Kings Hall. Not a good move in my opinion; too cramped, less atmosphere. Too many bloody photographers - was there a sale on in enormous lenses that I missed? Holi is great for getting striking shots at - you can't really go wrong. The new venue was a lot darker than St George's so I ended up shooting with flash. Cons were I was limited to a narrow range in front of me and I ran the risk of getting too harsh a light on people's faces. Pros were low ISO and higher shutter speed. It worked out pretty well. You'll find a few more here:

Holi Festival Set on Flickr

Good week of photography for me. Also bought a book on portrait photography which I'm going to start reading before heading off to Cuba at the end of the month. I'll let you know how I get on with it. Ciao!

367-50 Week 16

Into week number 16. Nearly forgot to take at least one shot this week and ended up coming up with something in something of a hurry - can you guess which one it is?

27/02/12

So, I put my camera on the floor near my feet, pulled it put to a nice wide angle (24mm) and used a cable release to takes pictures of my socks. This should confirm two things for everyone; I have big feet and I have terrible taste in socks.

28/02/12

I had read about camera tossing a while back and tonight I decided to give it a try. After some experimentation, I found that setting the camera on shutter priority and using a shutter speed of 0.5" gave me some nice shapes. The camera was set on a 10" self timer and the trick seemed to be getting the camera in the air and spinning just as the shutter opened. I would like to point out that I wasn't using my big camera and the really expensive lens. Instead I was throwing my daughter's second-hand D-60 in the air. Over a tiled floor. With no safety.

29/02/12

Shadows round at the City of Belfast Photographic Society. This is the one that I didn't produce during my week of table-top shots with my desk lamp. Taken in the holiday chalets at Cloughglass in Donegal, this was a grab shot of my friend Damien sitting inside the house, with the sun sinking and his shadow projected onto the white wall of the fireplace. Damien's face is sharp, as is the shadow. His nose is really that shape.

1/03/12

Welcome to March! Busy day today and I ended up at Aikido training without having taken my photo for the day. I took my camera into the dojo (it's actually a scout hall) in the hope that an opportunity might present itself. At the end of the class, I grabbed Shihan Millar for a quick portrait. I love taking Davy's picture as his face has fantastic character. It's also worth noting that 14 years ago when I started out on my own Aiki journey, Davy was the man who had patience with my inability to learn anything. Many a Saturday morning was spent with Davy trying to teach me how to stand, never mind move or do a technique. 74 years young and still has it on the Aikido mats.

2/03/12

This would be the empties after Friday night's debauchery. Two bottles of Whiskey (the Crested Ten was superb) and a bottle of wine each. I have a serious blank in my memory between the hours of midnight and 3am.

3/03/12

I think I made Colin look almost angelic this shot. After our walk and couple of pints in an empty bar in Glen we repaired to The Rusty pub in Teelin. The sun was going down and was shining through the windows of the bar. The light was lovely.

4/03/12

Sunday morning - up early to fall on my arse at Muckross and return with no photo's worth talking about. I took this out the back of Damien's house, looking towards Slieve League. The right-of-way along the side of the house has recently been cleared and the removal of the old trees and bushes has improved the view immensely. 

Stealing Ideas and Reverse Engineering

So, I saw a cracking set of shots of people in their martial arts outfits/uniforms. Dark, shadows, highlights picked out to one side. Loved them. Loved them so much I decided I would try to reverse engineer the lighting set up with my training buddies from the Aikido club.

 I'd spent some time thinking about the physical set up and was fairly sure that it was a single light off to the right and relatively high up onto a plain black background. That was the easy part. I was shooting in a well lit hall with big banks of florescent lights overhead and was unsure as to how to get the "blacks" in the pictures really black.

My light was a single studio light, shooting thorugh an umbrella onto the subject. I also used my old dawg of a Nikon flashgun to give a little gentle fill in (dialled down to 1/8 power - learned that from the Strobist stuff). The solution to "black" blackswas to ramp the aperture down as small as possible (f22) and keep my ISo at 200. With the studio light and the fill flash, that gave me a  shutter speed of between 1/60 and 1/80 which worked fine for static portrait shots. The big f-stop also gave me the accidental benefit of good depth of field - see the picture of Dave holding the jo (wooden staff) where the jo is in focus from front to back.

Post-processing was done in Lightroom 3. Slight increases in exposure, brghtness and fill light and another slight tickle upwards of the blacks slider. Used the Punch preset to bring out the details on the badges, belts etc.