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 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.