Posts filed under 'Photography'
During the recent Perseid meteor shower, on a whim I decided to try man hand at Astro Photography for the very first time during which I learned three very important things:
Firstly, it really helps if you take fully charged batteries.
Secondly, where I live it is pretty much impossible to get away from light pollution.
And thirdly, in meteor pictures, size is everything.
Unfortunately, I somewhat failed in the latter by using a relatively wide angle lens.
So, here are three of the pictures taken on the night, somewhat messed about with to hide as much of the light pollution as possible. It seems that green is the in-colour for meteors this year.
Technorati tags:
perseids,
meteors August 19th, 2007
I thought I’d try a new theme for the blog, so I’ve used Dark Blix with a change of the main graphic to a picture of a sunset I shot a few years ago using a Canon PowerShot G2, which harks back to my days when I was just getting back into photography.
Overall, I quite like it, so I think I’ll stick with it a while to see how it comes out in the wash.
PS, here’s a picture from the same shoot, I was going through a phase of photographing churches at the time and I recall it was a bitterly cold November in 2002 and it was blowing a gale. My fingers were quite numb so you’ll have to forgive my chopping the top off the picture, it was a tricky shot to get!
Nice light though, that’s the magic hour for you.
October 12th, 2006
When I got back into photography a few years ago I started to re-train myself from the point-n-shoot mentality and to actually think about what I was shooting. I spent quite some time learning framing, controlling light et al, to get the technical side of photography sorted out so I could concentrate on the creative side without really thinking.
Then, one day, I was firing test shots with a new lens, paying no attention to any of the above, just seeing how it handled. I was shooting through a dirty window, with the curtains in shot most of the time, you know, basically messing about.
And I got this shot.
Many people have told me they really like it, yet there was no thought to any of the technical matters, it was pure luck.
Ok, I did some post-processing, mainly to fix the framing to remove the shadow of the curtain from the right hand side and colour-correct it.
Since then, I've gotten a whole lot better technically, not to mention gotten better equipment, but I still like the shot even given it's completely serendipitous origins.
October 9th, 2006
The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has taken a picture of the Opportunity Rover, which, frankly, I think is an amazing picture. The more we learn about Mars and other planets in our solar system, the more we will learn about the Earth’s history.
No doubt some moron like Greg Hoaxland will deny it ever happened, or that it’s some artifact from a long-dead Martian civilisation, but the day I pay attention to him is the day I will pour my brain out of my ear.
October 8th, 2006
I read on the DSLR Blog about fake Sandisk Ultra II compact flash cards, which are, apparently, rampant on Ebay.
I bought three Ultra IIs off their a few months ago, for a decent price, undercutting other online stores by over £30. Bargain!
Guided by information on this page, I checked them out.
They’re fake.
They’re probably cheap nasty generic compact flash cards with pretty Sandisk logos stuck to them, put in fake packaging. I thought they didn’t feel particularly fast when I was using them, but the type of shooting I do doesn’t normally require fast writes, so I was prepared to put the blame on my 20D and the fact I always use RAW + JPEG, which produces two files per picture taken. They haven't failed in any way, yet, but I will no longer entrust my most important shoots to them.
From now on, I’m spending the extra cash.
Caveat emptor indeed.
July 27th, 2006
Via conscientious a conversation with photographer Jay Parkinson about his aspiring models shoots.
As an aspiring portrait photographer myself, I do admire his aims – his determination to give as little direction as possible to these neophyte models is probably quite disconcerting to them, and this shows in the photos. Many of them look awkward or uncomfortable – indeed there are several I personally wouldn't have chosen to show but Jay aimed to produce non-traditional portraits, and succeeded I feel.
He seems to be consciously trying to sabotage the Maxim / FHM style of photography, and he achieves that, but to my eye the portraits feel cold and detached; in some respect they remind me of the late, great Bob Carlos Clarke's 'Love Dolls Never Die', since those too were devoid of emotion, not unexpectedly since they were made out of pvc.
Out of the series on his website, I only really liked the shots of Hilary and Danielle, the rest left me cold. This is, perhaps, what Jay was aiming for.
May 18th, 2006
