367-50 Week 42

Lets hope for a rant free week this week. In contrast to last week, I received a comment this week from a lady who is interested in buying one of my shots from the blog. That is a little bit of a contrast from last weeks comment. The print was duly ordered and looks really good, so it's heading off on a journey to Canada.

Here goes with week 42.

27/08/12

A romantic scene, or a warning on the perils and evils of drink? Make your own mind up on that one my friend.

28/08/12

I'm not sure what draws me to taking pictures in old graveyards. I always pass this very old one going to and from my house, but have never (in many many years) actually noticed it being open. It's very small and very overgrown with headstones dating back to the early 1800's. Everything seems broken and at some kind of a slant. Having ventured in today, there is really nothing much of great interest, but at least I've managed to get inside.

29/08/12

This is last night's shopping from B&Q (DIY/Hardware Store). These rather fine items are for a photo project which I was hoping to do tonight, but have been stymied by the rain and general bad weather. The metal whisk, chain and caribiners were made by my own fair hands. I'm not saying too much right now, but stay tuned for the results. As soon as I get the right weather, I'm out there.

30/08/12

Took my own advice and got on my feet and went walkabout in Ballyhackamore with my camera at lunchtime for half and hour. Snapped away and found that I quickly switched on in terms of my concentration. I was looking specifically for detail shots and this one presented itself pretty easily (and pretty early in my walk). A single untouched strawberry sitting on a bare table outside a cafe in the sunshine? I couldn't resist. And then I had lunch with my eldest, her treat. A pretty good afternoon all round.

31/08/12

First experiment with burning wire wool as per the photo posted earlier in the week. That's if you don't count trying it in the back garden and setting fire to the neighbour's hedge. I chose this stone bridge because I knew there was nothing that would catch fire and there was water on each side. I set up my camera on a tripod, manually focused on a torch at the spot I was going to stand on and used a ten second self-timer to trigger the camera. Settings were 30" exposure, f11 and 100 ISO. I got around four burns completed before I started attracting attention and had to quit. Either that or I had stumbled into a dogging hotspot, given the cars that started appearing out of nowhere on a dark and previously deserted country road.

1/09/12

Chanced upon the opening of the Art in the Garden sculpture exhibition in the grounds of the Culloden hotel this afternoon. I'd heard about this on Radio Ulster's Arts Extra programme a couple of nights ago and made a mental note that it might be worth checking out. And worth it it was. Some lovely pieces (around 150) set within beautiful gardens. A huge range of sculptures which I had great fun photographing. The exhibition runs until the 23rd of September and I'd recommend a visit for anyone who is looking to spend an enjoyable hour or two. I've posted a few more pictures and a short write up on the Demotix news site and you can check them out here:

Art in the Garden on Demotix

2/09/12

"The Blue Orb" was a result of an expedition last night. I wanted to try out some of the wire wool shots from earlier in the week in a tunnel or somewhere closed in. This was taken in a set of cycle underpasses in East Belfast late at night. The orb was made by swinging a set or battery-operated fairy lights (£4 from Ikea). Settings were the same for the wire wool shots (30" exposure, f11, ISO 100) and the focus was set on a torch placed where I was going to spin the lights. A 50p coin on the ground was sued to centre the swings and give a relatively consistent orb shape. I used a 10-24 wide zoom here to get as much of the underpass in, particularly the graffiti on the walls. Slight cropping in Lightroom and an adjustment to the white balance, setting it to tungsten to get the blue tone to the picture.

367-50 Week 8

Welcome to 2012. Been a funny old week - had a few days off work, giving me time to do some photography but I seemed to run out of inspiration. I ended up spending a lot of time on-line and trawling through books to see if that would spark me. By the middle of the week, I was starting to fire creatively again (I think) and I got off my arse and went to shoot some pics of the Belfast Roller Derby Girls at a training session. Looking at this week's selection of shots, it's a wee bit diverse. No bad thing.

2/01/12

Here's the wee hoes as they quickly got labelled, shot with some out of focus xmas lights behind them. These figures are even smaller than the usual sets I have and they really don't like to stand up. It took ages to get the two of them standing at the same time. Usual drill, 105mm Sigma macro lens, tripod and remote release.

3/01/12

This was fun. I decided to Google "indoor photography projects" and the concpet of dropping fruit into water seemed to be near the top of everyone's lists. I made the mistake of reading a couple of "how to" articles which appeared to involved massive glass fish tanks, five strobe heads, pocket wizard triggers and a few dancing girls. OK - I made up the dancing girls. I thought it should be possible to do this without all the fancy gear. I used the biggest cylindrical glass vase we have with a sheet of white paper taped to the back of it. I light the water/fruit with two speedlights (triggered with ultra cheap yung nuo triggers) positioned below and pointing slighting upwards and with a slight angle into the vase. This gave me a reasonable depth of field at a fast shutter speed (1/200 at f10) and allowed me to keep the ISO at 200. I shot over 200 pics on continuous mode - strangely this was the second shot I took. In case you haven't worked it out, I flipped the picture, so it is upside down. Do a headstand or turn your monitor upside down - you'll see what I mean.

4/01/12

It might be a bit narcissistic of me but I love taking self-portraits. It might be the dressing up thing. The night before I took this shot, my good lady and I were pressed into service as private eyes and ended up doing a bone fide stakeout. Strange, but true. In the dark and everything. It was really quite exhilerating in a strange and almost creepy way. I did feel a little guilty afterwards, but what the hell. That gave me the idea of doing a film noire style private eye self-portrait. The hat and coat were defintiely the look I was after - peeking through the blinds with binoculars was an afterthrought.

5/01/12

I blagged the chance to shoot the Thursday evening training session for the ladies of Belfast Roller Derby. I have to be honest and say that I love shooting them - they're an almost perfect mixture of fun and dedication. They train pretty hard, although not quite as hard as they compete in bouts. I wanted to try out the new 24-70 Nikon f2.8 lens and see how it compared to my last set of shots using the 18-70 f3.5 lens. I have to say the new lens was impressive but with the limited zoom, you need to get close to the action. Got a load of great shots and their presence on Flickr pushed my view count over the 40,000 mark. Any opportunity to shoot the Roller Derby, I'll take it. I think they need to be persuaded to get some good head shots for player profiles on their website.

6/01/12

I kept thinking about this building - it's in the world's dearest car park (North Street, Belfast - £2.20 per hour) and I've taken a few shots of the external stairs before with no success. This time I shot for black and white and cropped in as tightly on the stairs as I could go. I liked the lines and the way the pattern of stairs and handrails repeats.

7/01/12

This is the sculpture outside the new library at Queens University. Again, I've taken shots of it before with little success and again I was thinking in advance about texture, colours and contrast (i.e. the things that made me want to photograph it in the first place.) and this time it worked out the way I had visualised it. Pushed the colours a bit in Lightroom and burned the contours and features of the face a little to make it stand out and was pretty happy with the result.

8/01/12

The Japanese Garden at Dixon park seems to make nice photographs. Set out early on Sunday morning but ended up with one of those grey, overcast days that meant that the sky was awful in any shots. I decided to focus more on the details and the little stone thingy in the middle of the pond. The colour version had some nice grrens and oranges in the foliage but it took away from the focal point of the shot. I wanted texture and contrast, so HDR'ed the shot with Photomatix Pro and then imported it into Lightroom, converted it to black and white, bumped the blacks up and incresed the contrast and clarity. Turned out pretty well.