Cliche I know but....

Sorry another Baby photograph, I really couldn't resist setting up the very cliche shot below:



Most impressive of all is the fact that my wife took the photograph. I set up the lighting and she took the snap. Great work maybe we should work together more often!!

This was processed using Lightroom 2 to get the desaturated look. The workflow consisted of the following:

• Adjust Brightness and contrast
  
• Correct Exposure
• Adjust Clarity (down slightly)
• Reduce Saturation

Chasing The Light - John Rowell and Marion Waine

Last night at the Mold Camera Club we were given a presentation on AV by John Rowell and Marion Waine (Chasing The Light).

This was excellent, the content and presentation of each video was brilliant and to top things off a majority of the images and subjects were mountains and landscapes (my favourites).

Anyone wanting to see a fine example of exactly what can be done with a visual presentation of images alongside music and voice should look out for John and Marion's next presentation and definitely take a look at some of the images on the website.

It was easily a highlight of the Mold Camera Club for me so far.

Extreme Windburn!! And another lesson learnt

So I finally got to go out again at the weekend and get some use out of my new Manfrotto 055 XDB tripod. The choice was either Llanberis/Snowdonia or New Brighton. On paper there seems no contest however as there were extreme weather warnings I didn't fancy a drive all the way back to Snowdon only to find that the weather was too blustery to do anything. New Brighton was only down the road and for a while I have wanted to go and take a look at Perch Rock Lighthouse.

The new tripod did a great job considering; the wind was pretty relentless but the tripod stayed stable enough (without additional weight) to create sharp images.





It wasn't until later in the day that I realised that I would pay a price for being on the beach in these conditions. Throughout the day my face gradually got redder and redder and hotter and hotter!! By the end of the day it looked like I had been on a tropical holiday not a morning trip to New Brighton.

One more lesson learnt - Always protect face with some form of wind barrier before going out in stormy conditions, either that or stay in bed!!!

Two week whirlwind!!!

Two weeks into being a dad, what a great feeling.... I obviously don't want to change the purpose of this blog by turning it into a lifestyle blog. I promise not to flood this blog with hundreds of baby pictures. That being said having a new baby in the house provides ample oppurtunities to practice some portrait photography.



I am really pleased with my choice of purchasing the 50mm f1.8 lens as the shallow DOF allows for much simpler images with no background distractions.

In addition to the whirlwind of becoming a dad I was also accepted as a contributor to istockphoto.com. This was following a review of three images and a short test (relating to copyright, model release(s), and image quality).

I am not entirely sure what my intentions are with this but I relish the chance of having some of my photographs used for commercial purposes and possibly earning a few extra quid here and there to help fund what is quickly becoming a very expensive interest.

As things are getting back to normal and I am hoping to get out and about this weekend around the Snowdonia area to grab some lanscape shots whilst it is nice and cold. Unfortunately none of this will be of any interest to istock but it will be nice to get out and about again. Watch this space.....

An Incredible December.....

It has been a while since I update my blog, but then I always knew that this month (December) would be all over the place and I would be very lucky to get any photography done.

December was always going to be an exciting month for me. My wife was due to give birth to out first child. She was due on the 20th but didn't actually give birth until the 29th December. It was well worth the wait! Being a father is a better feeling than I could ever have imagined.

At five days old Jacob Rhys is already getting used to the constant glare of daddy's camera.




Oh, and as well an becoming a dad I was accepted to provide images to istockphoto.com. I am not entirely sure if this is a viable outlet for the images that I take, but it was nice to know that the images that I submitted are of a high enough quality/standard to be accepeted.

50mm Nikkor f1.8

I picked up a Nikkor 50mm f1.8 a few weeks ago and although I haven't really used it much I love the shall DoF it provides and think I am going to enjoy using this lots over the next few months.

Here is just a quick 'messing around' shot I grabbed of my wife the other day.



One think I know that I will have to be more conscience of is selecting the point of focus as there is little room for error once you move into the higher apertures.

First 'Solo' Studio Session

After much deliberation I finally plucked up the courage to hire a studio for the day. I had the motivation of only having a few weeks until my first born is due to drive me on. I wanted an image that my wife and I could look at in years to come and cherish. The easy choice would have been to go to somewhere such as 'Venture' and pay through the nose for what would probably be a lovely photograph. The more difficult option but ultimately more rewarding would be to try and create my own photograph.

I hired the studio in Calumet Photographic (Manchester) due to the very reasonable cost of £50.00 per day for the studio & £25.00 per day for lighting (All prices do not include VAT). Not having seen the studio beforehand I didn't know what to expect. On arrival I have to admit I was disappointed. I was shown to a lecture room with studio rigging to one side but the room was cold and untidy. Ten minutes later I was greeted by the rental staff who were very apologetic and immediately offered to discount the cost of hire and get the place tidied immediately. There are a couple of pictures below showing the setup.

http://flickr.com/photos/7358451@N03/3077691333/
http://flickr.com/photos/7358451@N03/3078522622/

I had made it clear when I booked the studio that I wanted to be left to my own devices as much as possible. After a short run through of the two Bowens strobes and the smaller one providing hair light the staff left me to it.

600+ shots later (five hours in total) and I came away a happy man. After much trial and error I came away with a short list of about 40 photographs with about 6 that I would have bought had we have gone to a pro studio.

I went in with the intention of getting lots of Hi-Key images, and although we did do these I think the ones with the grey background (no back light) and the Lo-Key images (black material draped over paper stand) work better.

All in all I walked away from the day having thoroughly enjoyed the experience and with a new found career in mind!!!! Let me know what you think of some of the images below. This represents just a small selection of the images taken.

November Mold Camera Club Competition Results

Whilst felling very sorry for myself (man flu!!) earlier in the month I managed to submit my entries for this months Mold Camera Club Competition. Once again I hadn't managed to get anything mounted therefore all of my entries were into the projected amateur category.

The three images that I submitted where:

Belly Of The Beast
Life's a ball
Parisian Night

The judge was a lady from the Wrexham Camera Club, and she was a real 'detail' person, picking up on lack of sharpness, blacks not being true black, lack of tones etc. I wished that I had not bothered submitting anything!!

Belly of the beast received quite a good mark (15), apparently this is a fine example of tonal range within a B&W image. This image caused quite a bit of intrigue, nobody could quite figure out if it was a prison or a hospital of some sort. I didn't have the heart to tell them it was a hotel!!!

Life's a ball did not score well (13), the colours on the projector really did look dull. The judge likes the candid approach to the photograph. This again proved to me that if you want to know/control exactly how your image is going to look you have to print and mount. When I have printed this the colours have looked quite vivid.

Parisian Night received great remarks from the judge, apparently this was not the image of someone that should be in the amateur category!! This again grabbed me Third place in the amateur category.

Once again beaten to the top spot by an image from Jonathan Frings; in particular this image. It is a great image though!!

Try and try again.... Persistence pays off!!!

OK so I didn't get up at a godly hour again. This time I opted for the sunset rather than sunrise from West Shore, Llandudno. And I was rewarded greatly for my efforts!! At first the sunset didn't look anything too special but for a 20 minute period it was awesome.

Here is the first of many.. This is pretty much straight out of the camera. I have just slightly cropped the left hand side to improve the balance.



And another.... (17/11/08)

Early morning at pastures new!! (Llandudno)

Bright an early this morning I got up (04:45) to get to Llandudno nice and early to give me plenty of time to find a good photo spot. I was there for about 06:00 and things were not great. The met office had got it wrong (which is unusual as they are usually spot on). It was muggy and there was a constant drizzle falling!! Oh well as I was up I thought I would do the best I could.

By 08:15 I had decided that I was fighting a losing battle. It was already too late for a sunrise shot and it was too light for any slow exposures. I made my way back home...

I got two real shots out of about 60.....





There is however lessons to be learnt on all outings. Today I had a list of things I wanted to try.

1. Geo tagging using the iPhone (This worked very well and was extremely accurate - Click to see)
2. Exposure Bracketing (There wasn't really any need to try this out this morning
3. Location spotting (Not too bad found a couple of paths that I wasn't aware of previously)

The biggest lessons I learnt however are:

1. Make sure you always have a good cloth to clear the front of the lens in case of rain/drizzle
2. Always prepare your camera (filters) before stepping foot on a jetty. They are pretty treacherous places to stand!!!
3. Take lots of pebbles with you when trying to get a jetty shot to scare off the birds. Once you are on the jetty there is very little to pick up and throw!!

Oh well, I'll keep trying.....