Category Archives: Photography

Bedford Photowalk

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This was me well and truly out of my comfort zone, no motorsport, or pre planned landscape shots, just a post lunch wander along the river with the cameras, which is a nice way to spend a sunny January afternoon with an old friend.

With the sun being quite low and directional getting the sun in the right position was crucial, I liked this image of the two swans, with the light coming in from the front right and semi back lighting the swans, although I’m less than happy that I cropped off the tail of the nearest swan.

I also liked this footbridge for portraits, my portrait style is heading very much towards straight lines heading off into the background drawing the viewers eyes into the subject at the centre of the frame, I need to try a few with off camera flash too, but for the meantime, here is a shot of Elaine on the bridge.

Merry Xmas

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A belated Merry Xmas to all my followers!

This shot was taken on Xmas day on the North Inch park in Perth while I was out for a pre Xmas dinner stroll in the snow, I did try a black and white conversion, but felt that this colour version worked the best.

Waiting for Xmas

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Those of you following my Twitter may realise that I am up at my family’s place in Perth (Scotland, not Australia), we’re just chilling out waiting for Santa to arrive, so I grabbed my Dad’s new lens (Canon EF 85 f1.8) and shot this image of Simon, my little brother, doing what he does best.

I shot it wide open and the quality of the lens really shines through, hopefully I’ll be able to borrow it more over the next few days!

Flickr Day of the donut

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I’d heard that yesterday was “Flickr day of the donut”, so while buying Autosport (see next blog post) I decided to pick up some tasty looking ring doughnuts (for photographic purposes only of course).

The shot I had in my head, was that the top/front doughnut should have the sprinkles in focus, but that the second doughnut should be blurred. The shot below was my favourite from the brief shoot (and the doughnuts were yummy).

Donuts

Braunston Canal

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This is the first of my posts featuring shots of canals, I’m not sure what it is about canals, I’ve only ever spent one cold weekend on a narrow boat, but there is something about canals that pulls me to them, the colours of the boats, the people but mostly it is the relaxed vibe that is always there, nothing needs to happen fast, I find that refreshing.

This morning I was travelling light, just one body with the 50mm mounted, no camera bag, no tripod etc, it made a nice change. A few shots were missed due to the lack of a wide angle, but that just means I have an excuse to go back.

 

Braunston Canal 1

Braunston Canal 1

Braunston Canal 2

Braunston Canal 2

Braunston Canal 3

Braunston Canal 3

Gone fishing

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Well, not me, but the other weekend I met my good friend (and very good angler) Dan Webb at Packington Fisheries, between Coventry and Birmingham. It was something that we had been meaning to arrange for quite a while, eventually our schedules matched and luckily it wasn’t raining that day.

Going back about 10 years I used to go fishing with Dan, but got fed up sitting out in the cold not catching any fish, but at least this time I had my camera so even if the fish weren’t biting I could still take photos, much more fun!

Here are a few of my shots:

 

 

Dan Webb fishing

Dan Webb fishing

Dan Webb fishing

Dan Webb fishing

 

Dan Webb fishing

Dan Webb fishing

Landscape print

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Yesterday I made a large format print of one of my favourite landscape photos from 2008, this view across Derwent Water taken in December.

Derwent Water Print Mockup

The detail in the full size print is incredible,  it will be hung in a 70×50 frame and has been mounted with proportions similar to the mock up above (when it is hanging I will post a photo of the real thing).

To get to the required file size at 360 dpi for the printer we needed to create extra pixels, Lightroom 2.2 seemed to do this very well and quickly, however for the file we printed Genuine Fractals was used, this is a plug-in for Photoshop and is the industry standard for enlarging images. It had more controls than Lightroom (an took much longer to generate the file), but to my eyes the resulting 192Mb tiff files looked the same.

New Years Eve

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While my blog was updating itself at the start of 2009, I was at a party with some of my closest friends from school. I took advantage of the lowered inhibitions to take some candid portraits, all were taken using my 50mm f1.4 lens and flash bounced off the ceiling.

Ali

Dan

Thanks must go out to Bec & Dan for stepping in at the last minute and hosting a great party.