367-50 Week 47

The weather was definitely starting to turn. Lots of rain and few opportunities to get out and about, but it is the start of October I suppose. Lets see what we can come up with this week, dodging the showers.

1/10/12

So the mystery plants in the garden finally flowered today - at the start of October? What self-respecting flower comes out in October? I had thought that I'd killed this plant when it suddenly died back and vanished but then it put out a dozen of these remarkable pods which today began to open and produce long purple flowers this morning. Hurrah! It's not dead and I didn't kill it. At least not yet.

2/10/12

A fairground up the road? Why not? Pity the place was empty and closed down for the night half and hour after I arrived because of the lack of trade. I got a few shots - this one taken with the Lensbaby Composer with a start-shaped aperture disc. I played around with it and got some very impressionistic shots of star-shaped bokeh. I liked this one, although it is a bit if a mess compositionally.

3/10/12

Sarah and I went to this footbridge in Dundonald over the dual carriageway to Newtownards in order to ger her taking some long exposure shots of car tail lights. It seemed a shame not to try out and orb while we were there and we got some nice shots. While working at these shots, a man appeared from no-where and asked to check out what we were doing - or more exactly he knew what we were doing and wanted to have a look. Got chatting to Andy, swapped details, ended up being ten minutes later picking my other daughter up from Guides. Whoops.

4/10/12

Got bitten by the light painting bug this week without a doubt. Wanted to try this shot, thanks to some of Denis Smith's stuff (if you want to see his shots, check last week's blog post). Taken at 8.30pm with a six minute exposure and a 30 second orb.

5/10/12

Love this shot. Took my two youngest daughters down to the Titanic building to try out some light painting and on the way back to the car saw this shot as being very possible. Tramped over some waste ground, famed it up using the same settings as we had used over at the Titanic building and (more by chance) this was the second shot out of the camera. Not much post-processing on this other that cropping in lightroom. 30 second exposure seemed to work well for both the cranes and the orb. Got a really nice glow under the orb too. This would look good printed and mounted. Any takers?

6/10/12

Two flower shots in the same week! Have I gone mad? I just couldn't resist this. When I moved into this house in May under what could best be described as difficult circumstances, there was a pot on the kitchen window sill with what looked like two dried onions in it. I watered them and they put out a couple of leaves. I kept watering them through the summer and nothing happened. Then suddenly, about two weeks ago, one of them produced a shoot which turned into this. I'm a sucker for growing stuff and seeing something like this come from what looked like a lifeless lump does cheer me up. I pulled the muslin curtain behind the flower and shot it with my 60mm macro and an f-stop of 3.5.

7/10/12

Went to the Belfast Roller Derby new skater recruitment evening today to take some shots. This isn't really a new skater, it's my derby daughter Katie. Katie has been training hard over the last number of months and is about to do her minimums and move up. She was also asked to talk to the new skaters about what it's like being "fresh meat" in the derby team. It was a brief chat, but informative. Amazing to see how much more confident she is on skates now - only a matter of time before I'm shooting her in a bout for the Banshees.

My Bag

Photographers seem a wee bit obsessed with the contents of their camera bags. Being stuck in bed with the 'flu today I thought I'd take a rattle through the contents of my own bag of tricks.

Camera
I've just upgraded from the Nikon D90 to the Nikon D800. I loved my D90 having had both the D40 and D80 before it. It was like an old friend and I knew it inside out. The D800 is a beast of a camera, high resolution and full frame. It is amazing in controlled light situations (still life, portraiture, studio work) but also copes admirable with the other things I like to shoot (street photography, sports, night shots/light painting). Big file sizes but amazing performance when shooting in raw. I'm getting to grips with some of the many built-in features such as an intervaluometer, time lapse, HDR and so on. It's going to take years to get to the same level of comfort as I had with the D90.
My back up camera remains a little old reliable D60. Unfortunately it doesn't autofocus with most of the lenses listed below, but I can live with that.

Lenses
My go-to lens is the Nikon 24-70 f2.8. Sharp as a tack, fast and versatile. If I had only one lens, this would be the one.
For sports and street stuff, I often use the Tamron 70-200 f2.8 which is not quite as sharp or fast as the Nikon equivalent but does a pretty good job.
I use a Tamron 10-24 f3.5 for my wide angle stuff such as landscapes
I use two primes, the Nikon 50mm f1.8 and the Nikon 60mm f2.8. Both are lovely lenses for portraits and the Nikon 60mm is a superb little macro lens.
I also use the Lensbaby composer, and have tele/wide lenses for it as well as a set of macro filters.

Tripod
A Vanguard Alto Pro with a Vanguard ball head. Solid, stable and easy to use.

Other Stuff
Two cheap and nasty flashguns, a Nikon SB-28 which is older than me and a Nissin 644i. Both can be set on manual which is why I got them.
YungNuo wireless flash triggers. One of the cheapest wireless trigger sets around but they are simple to use and reliable 99.9% of the time with only the odd mis-fire.
Microfibre towel for wiping camera/lenses in the damp
Lenspen and wet/dry cleaning wipes
Torch for night shooting and light painting
Cards. I have had to invest in bigger and faster cards since getting the D800. Mostly 32Gb/16Gb cards in both CF and SD formats for the dual slots in the D800. Depending on what I'm shooting I have my camera set to use the second card as overflow or as a JPG backup to the RAW files on the primary card slot.
Spare battery. Never leave home without making sure I have a fully charged battery in my bag just in case.

367-50 Week 38

And we're off on week 38, although I'll be hard pushed to come up with the shots I did last week. Off on holidays to Donegal with the kids this weekend, so I'll maybe give my old nemesis, the landscape shot, another try up round the coast.

30/07/12

I did a model shoot last night with the newbies in the camera club I've been involved with over the last few weeks. The members got some really nice shots, which I hope will encourage them to take more photos. It was tricky getting the lighting right for all the different shapes and sizes of cameras involved, but we got there in the end. Our model, Holly was a really lovely girl who was also extremely patient. That came in handy given the amount of messing about with settings that was needed. I was very taken with her eyes and took this hot when she was wearing a large hat to cover one side of her face. It's heavily cropped, but I think it looks pretty well and does her justice.

31/07/12

Another in the recurring series entitled "things I see when standing smoking at the back door." You may recall other favourites such as "blackbird on the greenhouse," "leaves," "snail on the bin" and so on. This is, I suspect, a weed, but it was rather lovely nonetheless - a single yellow flower (god but I love yellow in photos) among green leaves. Narrow depth of focus and Bob's your uncle.

1/08/12

Tonight was wet and there was nothing but very dull Olympic coverage on TV and not much else on besides. I made a rather nice salad for dinner and that made me think of the lightbox in my back bedroom. I sharpened a knife and very thinly sliced some cucumber, tomatoes and the little spring onions (or scallions here in N.I.) shown above. These cam out quite well and there was something mildly therapeutic about pushing pieces of food around a sheet of perspex. I'm quite pleased with the amount of detail on these, even when zoomed in quite close and also cropped.

2/08/12

I've made a decision to get more intimately acquainted with my Lensbaby Composer and the accessories kit that came with it. I've had this piece of kit since March and haven't really got to grips with using it, never mind the assortment of wide angle lenses, macro lens, telephoto lenses etc. I'm going to try to take a few more shots with it and am planning on taking it on holiday to Donegal at the weekend. This was taken with the Composer and a x10 macro lens attachment which seems to allow very close working and as always a nice bit of blur round the edges. The watch is my great-grandfather's half hunter pocket watch which was passed on to me by my own grandfather shortly before he passed away in late 1999. The watch still runs, although it needs a bit if a clean. One day, when I own a waistcoat, I will get a chain and wear this watch like a real dandy.

3/08/12

Another picture of the Northern Irish summer. Saw these while bringing in the washing from the line before it started chucking it down again and dashed inside to get the camera. This was taken with the Lensbaby Composer with a macro lens attached. It's one of the few shots taken with the Lensbaby that is really sharp where it needs to be and the nice fall-off in depth of field towards the corners is pretty pleasing.

4/08/12

First day in Donegal, sun shining and time for a walk on Marble Hill Strand. This is a grab shot of my son Conor and I just love it. Lensbaby Composer again but sharp on the face and lovely colours. It has rained pretty much since this.

5/08/12

Couldn't resist this - Mark's little wind up skeleton toy was sitting like this on his bed this morning as I wandered past on the way to the shower. I took loads of other shots, but this was the one that stuck in my head.

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.

367-50 Week 21

Back to butts this week. Not much of an exotic nature to share this week but some strange happenings indeed to recount.

2/04/12

Today was our first wedding anniversary. I came home to find this rather excellent toilet paper installation in the living room, courtesy of Lynsey, Hannah, Maud and Roy. It was then I figured out that the first wedding anniversary is "paper" and realised that I'd got Trish a bunch of flowers. Whoops.

3/04/12

And here are the flowers in question. I started playing about with my Lensbaby although the light was very limited in the kitchen. I'm not always sure when using manual focus if my shots are sharp - part of being a little short-sighted I suppose. Even with the dioptre on my camera set properly it can still be a little hit and miss. The ability to shift the sweet spot on the Lensbaby Composer is a nice feature and I pushed it over the the left of the frame for this short. I think there might be some fun to be had with this little bit of kit. Perhaps a themed week on the blog is in the works?

4/04/12

I knew that going to camera club AGM was a bad idea. Trish had indicated that after 3 years that she wanted to step down as President. I knew that no-one else would want to do it but wasn't expected to be ambushed into standing for the post. So there we have it - I am now President of the City of Belfast Photographic Society and here's my chain of office to prove it. In reality this means that the above item has moved from Trish's underwear drawer to my underwear drawer. I'm still in shock.

5/04/12

After last night's AGM at the camera club and my shock investiture as El Presidente I decided that it would only be right to have a presidential portrait taken. I made an effort and put on a shirt and tie and felt that the cigar and trust-worthy expression would be just the ticket.

6/04/12

Keeping the theme of self-portraits, I shot this today after picking up a second hand Nikon 60mm f2.8D lens. Supposed to be very sharp and good for portraits and macro work. Been playing about with it this afternoon. The depth of field is a little out in this shot - My eye is sharp but the camera is way too soft for my liking - but then again I was shooting it "wide open" at f2.8 into a mirror. More playing to come. The  lens is really solid and seems very well-built. Autofocus is fast and accurate but doesn't have full-time manual over-ride and getting in into manual mode is fiddly. It also claims to close down to an f-stop of f32 which I've never seen before. I shall give it a try.

7/04/12

Still playing about with the new 60mm micro lens. There are two of these novelty bottles sitting on the kitchen window sill and I was just shooting close up with the new lens to see how it performed in terms of macro work. It does pretty well, although you do need to get very close with a 60mm my 105mm macro lens gives a bit more room to work in. Anyhow - nice and sharp and the colours are good.