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.

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.

367-50 Week 44

I have a few things planned this week, and my exploits with wire wool have attracted a bit of interest from a couple of different sources. A few people have been in touch for advice/info on how to do these shots and a band have been in touch to ask if I could look at doing a promo shoot for them using the technique. Need to scout some locations over the week or two and see what I can come up with.

10/09/12

It was World Suicide Prevention Day today and I was invited to go along to PIPS on the Antrim Road in Belfast where they were having a chinese lantern launch. I was made to feel very welcome and it was very moving to see individuals and families bereaved by suicide lighting and releasing lanterns into the night sky, many with cards and messages attached. I've sent some images to PIPS in the hope that they can use them for publicity with some of the local newspapers. This is my favourite shot from the evening by a long way. It's also (I just realised) shot number 300 on this project - I'm glad it's something meaningful.

11/09/12

So, a total lack of inspiration this afternoon ended up with me resorting to some cheap camera/iphone trickery just so I could say that I've taken a shot. Urggghhhh. I need to get out and burn something. Soon.

12/09/12

I love this shot. Sarah and I had been talking about trying something like this for ages after seeing a couple of shots that involved rings and hands. First, we had to save up our 20p pieces for a week. Then we had to find a local garage or shop that sold rings (20p each) out of a vending machine. After a couple of attempts and a bit of searching we tracked one down. If only we'd been looking for bouncy balls, temporary tattoos or stick on moustaches. After spending £2.40 we had 8 rings, three bracelets and a necklace. And here's the final shot.

13/09/12

You've just got to love this. My son Conor and I went out for an evening of camera fun and games underneath a big bridge in East Belfast. We did some light painting, made some light spheres and burned some wire wool. I'd seen a shot earlier in the week that made me think of trying something like this out. It worked very well, was reasonably simple to do and just needed the same camera settings as I'd used before (30" exposure, f9 and ISO 200). I like the way the streaks of sparks are coming towards the camera and the light trails made by them bouncing on the ground. More of this is definitely on the cards.

14/09/12

Autumn, I fear, is upon us. Snapped a shot of my little maple tree as the leaves were beginning to wither. Love the colours this tree has all year round although until next spring it's just going to be another twig in a pot.

15/09/12

Travelled to Dublin today for Dublin Roller Girls vs Brighton Rockers. It was my first time shooting in the National Basketball Arena and the lighting is even worse than the Valley Leisure Centre. A couple of things helped - setting my white balance to tungsten to match the overhead lights was very useful and batch processing the raw files through the noise reduction software within Lightroom4 seemed to do a pretty good job. It was certainly faster than individually processing each shot through my normal noise reduction software and produced good enough results for posting on line.

16/09/12

Another form last night, although all my shots were processed this morning due the late hour I got back from Dublin. That and the need for a large Indian take away and a glass of wine. Enjoyed shooting this as the style and approach to the game are very different from in Belfast. Didn't enjoy being offered a photo pass and then being asked to pay to get in or being told where/what I could shoot. Guess I'm just used to the easy-going nature of Belfast Roller Derby. It meant I wasn't able to get shots of the team benches or the penalty boxes, both of which I love to take shots of between jams. Pity about that, but other wise a worthwhile trip.