2013 365-24

Back to basics this week, and it looks very like summer has been and gone here. The rain descended yet again, forcing the cancelation of at least one outdoor photo project.

10/06/13

I did the third in a series of "bump" shoots this evening with the amazing Ell'o and Pier. We had planned to visit Belfast's Botanic Gardens this evening; I had anticipated sunshine but got overcast and cloudy instead. I ended up using some flash for a dramatic effect (?) and can't say i'm totally happy with some of the results. We had about four different set-ups around Botanic, this was outside the Palm House and I picked it because it's a good shot of Ell'o's bump.

11/06/13

Responsible pet ownership, rural style. I was going to say "Ahoghill style" or "Tyrone style" but chickened out in case I offended anyone reading my posts who lived in either of these places.

12/06/13

I was working in Glenarm today and had a strange notion to check out some wee men that I had put in place in an abandoned factory outside the town. Of the four original wee men, only one remained, looking as fresh and as well as the day I placed him there. His female companion had long since vanished.

13/06/13

The angriest robot in the world. Found this guy in a classroom I was working in this morning and he looked so fearsome I just had to take a shot of him.

14/06/13

I was doing some cleaning and tidying this evening when I found a handful of big elastic bands. One thing led to another. I took about six different shots with different arrangements of the bands. I think I need more bands and stronger bands -  I'm coming back to this one.

15/06/13

Thanks to the unrelenting rain, we were stuck indoors all day and decided to convert the kitchen into a mini studio. This was my favourite shot of Sarah, and it really needed minimal processing. Sarah then got her own camera and took some of me. They weren't half bad - she has a real talent but is way too bossy when directing her models.

16/06/13

Sarah again, riding through the new bike trails at the Mary Peters Track. Second time we've visited these and they're pretty fun. A nice way to spend a Sunday morning and get some exercise. Not bad way to spend father's day either come to think of it.

2013 365-20

Ah, week 20 lands like a big wet thing in my lap. Happily though, there's plenty to take photos of this week, including roller derby. Hooray!

13/05/13

Nice to see Lilly Zom Bee back on the track and even nicer to catch such an unexpectedly nice shot of her. I was in completely the wrong place, facing down the track and straight into my own speedlight - that's the big flare in the top right corner. The rim lighting works and the other two speedlights lit Lilly pretty well.

14/05/13

These hay bales were parked in a field near Scrabo Tower in Newtownards (the tower is directly behind them. I tried out a very mild HDR preset in Lightroom to see what it would do and this is the result.

15/05/13

Abstract, but I was drawn to the patterns made by the vertical blinds on the window sill this afternoon as the sun started to set at the front of the house. I'm not sure what else I can say about this, other than I really liked the regularity of the pattern and the mix of lines/semi-circles.

16/05/13

It must be my week for abstract stuff. I called up to Roller Derby training this evening and tried out a few slower speed, rear flash sync shots. None of which worked the way I wanted, including this one. I suppose it would be classed as the best of a very mediocre bunch. I do kinda like it.

17/05/13

So, today was officially the one day in Belfast when the sun shone. I spent the day working in the garden and felt strangely compelled to try a flying shot at the front of the house. The problem is, that this looks wrong and I'm not sure why. I think the shadows are all wrong and my outline just looks too sharp.

18/05/13

Good weather meant the chance to try out some portrait techniques with Sarah, my ever willing model. I took quite a few using a mix of ambient sunlight and a very low powered speedlight. Started processing these today and was quite pleased with how they turned out. I had also worked out a very simple user preset in lightroom to give a nice boost to raw files at the time of import and make them less flat. This was pretty much the way the shot was imported into Lightroom with only a very slight crop applied.

19/05/13

I went to town a wee bit more on this shot, trying to produce a softer, fader look while keeping detail in Sarah's freckles and keeping the blue of her eyes. Very pleased with the final look of this one.

2013 365-6

Week six it is then.

04/02/13

A pack of little skaters and skateboarders arrived today in the post. This was quick try at getting something with one of them, using a bit of black string and a fruit bowl. With the aperture set at 3.5  the background came out black and covered up the string from which the wee man was suspended. Lost detail in the oranges though.

05/02/13

Still cracking on with single light flash portraits. This is my daughter Ellen taken using an SB-700 flash unit fitted with a small softbox and was fired on high speed sync (auto FP on Nikon) with a shutter speed of 1/2000. Nice shot of Ellen - even she liked it and she's a hard audience to please. She was delighted that a lot of her friends saw it on Facebook and complimented her on it. Result all round.

06/02/13

I returned to Belmont Park this evening to try out one very long exposure shot of the wooden statues there. I was aiming for 20-30 minutes in order to get some star trails, but sadly there was too much cloud cover to pick these out . I did capture one star trail in the top right-hand corner but it really just looks out of place. The statues themselves came out pretty well on a 30 minute exposure although I noted some "hot pixels" when zoomed in. Probably why it's recommended to take a large number of shorter shots (i.e. 200-250 30" exposures) and combine them in the appropriate software in post production. We live and learn.

07/02/13

A long time ago, I ordered some business cards in an attempt to promote my photography. People always ask me if I have a card, website, etc. The cards were, frankly, rubbish and I never actually handed any of them out because I was a little embarrassed by them. This week I finally bit the bullet and sat down to do it properly and that meant researching print firms and thinking about the design of the cards. Moo Print seemed to come out on tops in terms of quality and service, so I went for them. I used one of their existing designs, modified it to suit me and uploaded five high quality jpegs. The cards arrived today (five day turnaround) beautifully packaged and presented. They look (and feel) really high quality, complete with a funky case than fans out to display your cards in all their glory. I love these and definitely won't be embarrassed to hand them out.

08/02/13

Half price Haribo sweets? I'll be having some of these. The fantasy mix seemed to be the most promising in photographic terms - big and colourful. This is my packet of sweets set on a sheet of perspex, suspended between two chairs in the kitchen with a flashgun placed directly underneath.  Colourful enough, almost in a stained-glass window way.

09/02/13

More single flash portrait practice this week. This time using a honeycomb grid to modify the flash and make the light more directional. No backdrop used here - the highly directional light wiped the background out (my cluttered living room) and there was very little post-processing needed with any of these shots.

10/02/13

Fresh meat session (i.e. newbies) with Belfast Roller Derby this afternoon. Always fun to see new people on skates and there was a big crowd turned up today. I was shuttling between the fresh meat session and the intermediates/advanced training. I think I'm now about 95% sorted in terms of using lights with roller derby. This rear view belongs to the fantastic Rosa "Sigourney Cleaver" Hughes.

One Light portraits

I've started working on using my off-camera flashes to take portraits - this is, I have to admit, very much a learning process for me but I do feel like I'm getting somewhere with it. This week, I tried out two different set ups and techniques which give very different results. Shots 1,2 and 3 were taken on a Nikon D800 with a Nikkor 60mm f2.8 lens

The first set-up was using a basic clam-shell approach to lighting.

1

Self Portrait

This used a black backdrop. The lighting was one Nikon SB-700 flash above the camera and pointed down onto the face at roughly a 45 degree angle. An Interfit Strobies softbox was used to modify the flash. Underneath was a gold reflector also angled at 45 degrees towards the face. This was shot with the flash on TTL mode and camera settings were 1/160, f8 and ISO 100. Plus points about this approach are the even lighting, lack of shadows, catchlights in the eyes and making the subject "pop" from the background. This is very easy to do and produces very pleasing results.

The second approach I wanted to try was using high-speed flash sync (or auto fp on Nikon cameras) to take some more contrasty black and white shots.

2

 Ellen

This shot used the flash as in the first shot - up above the camera pointing down onto the face (but with no reflector underneath). The flash was set slightly further back to "feather" the light falling on Ellen's face. As I understand it, feathering reduces the light as you're only getting the reduced light from the edge of the flash burst. Interestingly, this was taken in my rather cluttered and untidy living room, with no backdrop used. The very short burst of flash was enough to light Ellen's face but the light fell off very sharply, leaving the background under-exposed. The camera was set to 1/2000 f8 and ISO 100.

3

Sarah

The same camera settings, with the light placed up high to the left and again pointing down. As above, the face is lit really well, but the background is pretty much pure black.

The plus points with this approach are more dramatic shots, greater contrast between light/dark areas, no softness (due to high shutter speed) and it means you might not actually need to use a backdrop.

The next evening, I broke out a nifty little honeycomb grid for my flashgun. I've never used one of these before and wasn't sure what to expect. Just to add to the "let's see what we get" approach, I also stuck my 70-200mm f2.8 lens on the camera. The shots below were all taken with the flash and honeycomb slightly above Sarah and off the the left of the camera. Settings were 1/250, f5.6 and ISO 100 with the flash on TTL mode. Again, I wasn't using any backdrop here - the highly directional nature of the honeycomb seemed to light the subject (Sarah's face) with no spill over onto the background, probably because of the angle of the flash.

4

5

6

7

367-50 Week 35

Something very different this week. I've been reading a lot on some photo blogs about the possibilities of the new generation of mirrorless cameras with APS-C sensors. This combined with a chance to get my hands on one of these cameras made me think about setting down the big Nikon and using this smaller camera for a whole week. The camera I'll be using is the Sony NEX-C3. It's not the newest version (the NEX-5 and NEX-7 series have superseded it) but it's still pretty representative of the newer breed of more compact cameras. With a 16.2 megapixel sensor, it should have a noticeably higher resolution than my D90. I think (and I'm happy to be told otherwise) that this camera has the same Sony sensor used in the Nikon D7000 dslr. The kit I've borrowed is the NEX-C3 camera with the standard 18-55mm f3.5 lens.

9/07/12

There's a host of quite neat built-in tricks with the C3, including the ability to take panorama shots straight in the camera with no need for stitching shots together later in Photoshop. The camera did a really good job of this. My only quibble would be that it is quite tricky to pan the camera at the right speed to get the shot. Go too fast and the camera gives up and you have to start again. This is my quite small back garden taken from the back door. Conclusion - I like this panorama feature.

10/07/12

Getting down and shooting low is also pretty easy with the C3. The screen tilts (90 degrees up, 45 degrees down) so you can see what you're doing. The 18-55mm lens seems pretty sharp at mid ranges and colour reproduction is good. Muffin doesn't like to pose for photos, but she didn't seem to mind this time. Conclusion - tilting screens are a good idea, mainly for small dogs.

11/07/12

This was taken at Stormont using the built-in HDR function. This function appears to take three bracketed shots and then combines them in-camera to produce an HDR image. I wasn't impressed with the results and the end product was quite a bland picture. Being honest, the sky was washed out and had to be tweaked in Lightroom and the colours just don't pop as they should in a true HDR shot. I suspect that this function might work better if you are shooting at night or at least not shooting with a lot of sky in the middle of the day. Conclusion - in camera HDR on this camera doesn't seem to be worth it.

11/07/12

"This is me doing my Ellen pose." That kinda says it all. Ok - the reason for this was to see how the NEX coped with a portrait. I had figured a way of making the camera fire my flash guns, but couldn't be bothered actually setting up the whole mobile studio thing. Taken in the back garden in shade with a  little ( and well-judged by the camera) fill-in flash this worked quite well. The little plug-in flash looks a wee bit like it's fallen off a child's toy but it copes well for fill-in purposes. I've done a little bit of jiggery-pokery in Lightroom with this shot, but not too much. The photo is pretty sharp and the colours were very well rendered. Conclusion - the NEX copes well with with portraits especially at around the 35-40mm range of the kit zoom lens.

12/07/12

Being the 12th of July, it was necessary to escape Belfast for the day. A walk up Slieve Donard was arranged by Dave (on the left) and it was fairly tough going. I've been up Donard a few times before but never on the route that Dave took us on. After a lot of pain and picking up two cracking blisters on my heels, we reached the top and Dave and Conor climbed the cairn at the summit. I pretended that I wanted to take their photo - really I was so knackered and sore I couldn't face going up the cairn. I foolishly told them to "do something manly" and this is the result. The sheer manliness is almost overpowering. The Sony NEX-C3 was a star on this trip - lots of well exposed sharp shots and it weighed about 1/5 of my D90 and lens. A real pleasure for this kind of trip and again the panorama mode worked really well with the beautiful views on the way up and at the top.

13/07/12

This was a bit of an adventure for me today. I was offered the chance to do a boudoir shoot in a beautifully equipped studio, specifically set up for boudoir photography. I was also able to shoot alongside an experienced and pretty skilled photographer, in the hope that I might actually learn something. I learned a great deal today, mainly from working alongside someone who knew what they were doing - probably my favourite way of learning anything to do with photography - and was able to produce a few shots that I was very happy with. The main thing that I learned was that shooting boudoir is very difficult and quite complicated - I guess I'm not that used to taking shots where the main thrust is to make someone look as good as it's possible to do. That was a major piece of learning for me. I didn't shoot with the Sony, instead using my D90 coupled with the nikkor 24-70 f2.8 and also took some shots with my Lensbaby composer. I'm still at the stage with the Lensbaby where I can see the potential it has but can't just get the technique 100% right to actually produce the shots. The shot above was taken with the Sony, and I'm not sure whether to call it a detail shot or just admit that I'd forgotten to take any shots with it until the end of the shoot and everything was being tidied up. Again, can't fault the Sony here - shot indoors with ambient lighting only and it's sharp front-to-back with good colour and contrast.

14/07/12

Again, this is more a photo taken with the Sony of a set of photos taken with my D90. I couldn't really ignore the project I did with the Belfast Roller Derby crew when I was asked to take the headshots for their upcoming bout at the end of the month. Spread over two shoots, they were an absolute joy to take and process, mainly because of the fun attitude that the Roller Derby folk bring to everything they do. Shot with two speedlights (one high, one low - both placed at 45 degrees to the subject - through umbrellas and triggered wirelessly) and given a lot of punch in Lightroom before being processed through the Camera Bag app for the MacBook. I'm really looking forward to seeing these printed in the bout programme and also got the shots processed into the correct resolution for the programme today. Disc burned and ready to go. I also have to admit to really enjoying seeing shots as prints, rather than on screen.

15/07/12

Went for a walk on the beach this afternoon and took the NEX-C3 with me. There wasn't too much to take but this kinda looked interesting - the bottle isn't mine, I hasten to add. I think that this shot from the NEX-C3 is about as good as what I would get in the same conditions with my D90. If anything, the depth of field in this shot is just a wee bit better with the blurring at the front and rear of the frame really helping the shot. Colours and sharpness (as noted previously) are excellent.


Conclusions about the NEX-C3, after spending a week in it's company?

Pros
Sharp shots and good colour reproduction
Easily set to P,S,A and full manual modes
Will shoot in RAW
Kit lens is pretty sharp in it's mid ranges (around 30-40mm seems best)
There are loads of built in effects, some good - some not so good
The panorama feature is excellent
It's really light and suitable for really long walks up mountains

Cons
The 18-55 kit lens is bulky and makes the camera feel like it's all lens and no body
The in-camera HDR is poor
It's just not quite as good as my D90
Functions are accessed through a slightly confusing menu system as compared with the multitude of easily accessible buttons on the D90

367-50 Week 31

Boredom, ennui and lethargy are my enemies as I start this week. Routines are what's keeping me going but days are starting to feel the same - I need to find something to lift me a bit; something to get lost in for a while. Gotta keep looking for it - I'm sure it'll turn up eventually.

I'm supposed to be going to Donegal at the weekend and am not really feeling like it but have been being bullied mercilessly by my friends to go, regardless of how I'm feeling. Damien and Colin, my two closest friends have been very good with me over the last month and I guess I feel that I owe them something. Still not looking forward to it.

On a different note, I've added a button on the page (lower down and on the right hand side) that allows anyone reading this to share the blog via Facebook. If you like what you see, please share it - you'll be making an old man very happy.

11/06/12

 More by luck than design I had booked a place on a workshop at Townhouse Gallery in Belfast - my first time shooting with a "real" model. Met some really nice people at the session and it was pretty good fun although I'm still not convinced that I can't get the same lighting effects with two speedlights, wireless triggers, stands and umbrellas all within the confines of my back bedroom. Anyway, Sandra was a fantastic model and George was an excellent host. This is my favourite shot of the evening; mainly because I did a sneaky bit of homework beforehand on the model and on different poses.

12/06/12

So, Sister Mary Agnes - is the hereafter what you'd imagined it to be?

No, Sister Assumpta, I hadn't thought it would be so feckin' dull

Ok - it was late (10pm by the time I got round to taking a shot today). I have just come into possession of an ex-hospital lightbox (Ta, Coly - you're a star) and started playing with it tonight. A box of miniature nuns was at hand - it's complicated - and voila. Sister Mary Agnes and Sr Assumpta in the afterlife. Again, apologies to any of my religious readers, but it's not as bad as the wee nuns entering a beach volleyball tournament.

13/06/12

This my daughter Ellen doing the same pose as my picture from Monday. The only difference was that this was taken in my spare bedroom. I set up a pop-up studio in exactly 15 minutes. The gear was as follows:

Backdrop: 1 Tesco double bed sheet, white - £4.97
Lights: 2 cheap flashguns with manual settings (total cost £100)
2 light stands and umbrellas - £20 from Amazon
1 set of Yongnuo wireless triggers - £45 from Amazon

Total = £169.97

14/06/12

This is one of the pair of cucumber plants I've grown from seed in the greenhouse. It looks like they're starting to flower, so I'm hopeful we might get to see some cucumbers in a month or two. Having never grown cucumbers, I'm not sure what I should or shouldn't be doing with them.

15/06/12

Friday night, the Lobster Bar in Burtonport. Alex attempts to lift my spirits by strangling Colin. Having spent four hours travelling with Colin, I wasn't sure if I wanted to kill myself or just give him a hug. This is turning out to be the wettest gentlemen's weekend ever. I have to return to Belfast tomorrow for what can best be described as "personal reasons" and the guys were very understanding. Even to the point of two of them offering to break my legs if I didn't go.

16/06/12

9.30 on a very rainy Donegal morning. Packed and ready to head back to Belfast, stomach in knots and nerves jangling. Three hours in the car like that isn't going to be fun. Colin surfaced just as I was getting ready to leave. There's some thing quite surreal about your best friend hugging you while he's wearing blue stripy pyjamas as the rain pours down.

17/06/12

Woke this morning (4.30am) feeling wasted and drained. Getting out of bed was an achievement and even a fag and cup of coffee didn't perk me up. After wandering round the house aimlessly, I went back to the lightbox. I bought a bag of fruit yesterday and got stuck in this morning. I found that it was tricky getting sharp shots, but the colours are really nice. I also forgot to set my white balance for the fluorescent lights but was able to correct it later in Lightroom. Might play some more with this later. There's a watermelon and a grapefruit that might be pressed into service.

367-50 Week 28

Week 28 has arrived. It's funny to think that there are over 700 views each months on this blog and no-one bothers to leave a comment. This is, after all, the internet where opinions are like assholes - everybody has one. I thank you.

Things continue to be fraught and I continue to be a mess. I start back to work on Wednesday and am not sure if I'm ready for it or fit for it. Hopefully I'll get at least a day of mooching around the office answering e-mails and catching up on 'phone messages before I have to go near other human beings. I'm going to concentrate on portraits this week, and specifically family portraits. For reasons that I'm sure I don't need to explain.

21/05/12

Monday morning - I had suggested to my sister that she might like to get some shots of her on her big flash 500cc motorbike. We tried some panning shots on a country road and some posed shots in a car park.  I liked this one - it's less about the motorbike and more about my sister. It was hell getting her look at or near the camera and stop blinking.
Since the shit hit the fan (so to speak) Sharon has amazed me - she stopped talking long enough to listen, understood why I was so worked up (today particularly), sympathised and generally stepped up to the plate for me. Given that we generally can't stand to be around each other for too long, that was pretty amazing. She's not a bad spud, once she stops talking.

22/05/12

I loved this shot of Conor the moment I saw it on my computer screen. He's a talented young man, a wonderful artist, smart, funny as hell and great fun to have around. He's also miserable and spends a lot of time feeling down, unhappy and anxious. Today it was anger and anxiety, the splint being a result of the former. I've always felt that I've failed Conor in so many respects, and never felt like he got enough of my time. Now when he needs someone to lean on, I'm so messed up with my own problems I feel like I can't give him the time and attention he needs. He's a sensitive lad and I think he's soaking up my low mood like a son-shaped sponge. He's trying to talk and I need to try to listen. I wonder how much of Conor's unhappiness is a result of things I have done or failed to do?

23/05/12

My eldest, Siobhan, who is now 23. I was married and had Siobhan by the time I was 26. That's scary. Siobhan has been a rock for me lately, always there to listen to my shite, prop me up when I needed it and tell me the hard truth when it was required. She's made sure I'm not on my own too much but gives me space. I've missed seeing as much of Siobhan as I have recently. She's always been special - some of my fondest memories are of looking after her when she was tiny and her mum was back at work. God but I loved that time when it was just her and me and there wasn't a problem in the world couldn't be solved by a story or a song - usually about dinosaurs. She's now in the position of trying to look after her father. She doesn't like photos of herself, by and large. I hope she likes that one.

24/05/12

One of the strangest requests when taking a shot of someone has to be "don't make me look like a chipmunk." This is daughter the second, Katie. Katie and I lived together through thin and thinner for just over four years. We haven't been talking too much (or maybe at all) for a while but this evening we made a start on at least flagging up the sore points. And smoking rollies in the back garden. Katie has a sharp tongue but a good heart. Katie is also a stunningly beautiful girl who does not look like a chipmunk. She's smart and studies stuff at QUB that I can't even spell. Internal parasites anyone? Of all my children she's the one who looks most like her mother and least like me, but hey, you can't have everything.

25/05/12

My youngest child, and a little ray of sunshine in my life. Sarah is possibly the most resilient child in the world. Alway cheerful (although that worries me at times) and always wanting to talk and do stuff. She keeps me busy, keeps me on my toes and is always ready with a hug.

26/05/12

This is a slightly off-centre portrait of s slightly off-centre lady. My auntie Carole is a bone fide one-of-a-kind. One of the most generous people you'll ever meet, always looks out for those close to her and always tries to do the right thing. Carole is my late mum's younger sister - she left the little town we all grew up in to join the RAF and saw the world at least three times. Failed relationshops, divorces, deaths - she took it all as life threw it at her. As Uncle Colin would put it, she is a "card carrying alcoholic" who represents the drinking gene in our family as passed down by my grandfather, through Carole, to me. Shapeless and very bad drunks all of us.
Carole cares, and her flamboyance can put people off at times, but she was one of the few people who understand what I was saying to her and could actually empathise with what I was saying without taking sides or making judgements. All before the sun had gotten above the yard arm. Who else would hand you an envelope containing 100 brand new and sequential £5 notes on a whim?

27/05/12

Last shot of the week meant a trip to visit my dad. When the sun comes out, my father wastes no time and strips off, sits in the sun and burns himself until he is the colour of a lobster. Since the football season has ended, we were actually able to talk about stuff. He liked the copy of Sarah's school photo I'd sent him and was keen to hear about our stall at the car boor sale this morning. I joke about my dad because he doesn't like to talk about sensitive or difficult things that involve feelings. Partly that's down to his personality (quiet, taciturn and solitary) and partly due to him being a product of his generation. Born in the 1940's he (I think) is one of a genration of men who simply don't talk about they feel or like to listen to someone else talk about they'e feeling. However, he's always constant and you always know what to expect. There have been times in my adult life where he was quick to offer a bed when it was needed, and he adores all his grandchildren, even if he does have a tendency to sign birthday and xmas cards "W Barbour." He also was wonderful when my mum was terminally ill, looking after her right to the end. And he still wears the wedding ring round his neck on a chain.

So - there you have it. seven family portraits. I've missed Ellen (due to a combination of her still being angry with me and revising for exams) and Rory (due to him living in England. I'll get Ellen next week by hook or by crook and Conor and I will be visiting Rory at the end of June for a weekend in Nottingham.