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.