Fionas First Float

Fionas First Float
Originally uploaded by Mark1970Vintage

....alternative title suggested by my other daughter is "Wingardium Leviosa".

When I joined Flickr over 2 years ago one of the first photos I faved was this levitation shot by Miss Aniela http://www.flickr.com/photos/ndybisz/2915848831/in/faves-marklandon/

I'd told my girls about how I could make them "float in mid air" and so on rainy saturday evening we gave it a try and this is the result. Here's a basic overview of what you'll need to do

Set the camera to manual and dial in an appropriate shutter speed, aperture and ISO to get a well lit background. Using a tripod is critical to avoid movement between shots. A remote release is also useful or you could get by with the self timer. If using flash, also set that to maual too, so that the results are consistent. Take a shot of the background with no subject. This is the image that you will have at the bottom of the layer stack in photoshop, so that when you erase things later the background will show through.

Next introduce your subject and have them lie down on a chair or similar (in this case I was actually holding her up by lying underneath. Take a second shot with the subject and support in frame. You'll later remove the support in photoshop to create the illusion of levitation.

Load your images into photoshop and using a layer mask (allows for non destructive erasing) paint over the support area to allow the background to show through. You may have to do a bit of cloning to ensure that fabrics and hair appear normal vs creased/obscured and heh presto you have a levitiation shot.

I'll be doing more of these with the girls as they thought it was great fun.

Fractalius Fireworks : How to Create the Effect..

Fractalius Fireworks.
Originally uploaded by Mark1970Vintage

To create a similar dreamy/ethereal firework photoy ou'll need a good base image to start with. Some advice for shooting fireworks can be found here. http://marklandon.blogspot.com/2010/11/watching-in-awe.html

This image was from the Legoland Windsor, fireworks display last weekend, which was truly spectacular.

You'll also need the Fractalius plug in for Photoshop to create the dreamy effect. Read more here. http://www.redfieldplugins.com/filterFractalius.htm

As you can see from some of the fractalius images at the above link I toned the effect down a bit by having it as a duplicate layer with reduced opacity.

Create a duplicate layer of your image and run the fractalius plug in on it and play with the sliders/experiment until you find an effect you like. There is a back button that reloads previous settings so you can find your way back if you continue to explore settings. Once you have an effect you like save the changes and let your computer churn away and then change the blend mode opacity of the fractalius layer until you have the look you want. Save and post to your favourite photosharing site.

Have fun.

Watching In Awe

Watching In Awe
Originally uploaded by Mark1970Vintage

This was one of many shots I got from yesterday evening at the Legoland Fireworkds display.

The others can be seen here. http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#!/album.php?id=542234067&aid=260216

To get decent shots of fireworks you need to use a tripod and use "bulb" mode, and ideally a remote release. I only had a small tripod which is really for a compact camera vs a big bulky 40D but it worked OK.

Mount your camera on the tripod. Turn image stabilisation and auto focus off. Using IS on a tripod is not necessary and can even create negative results as the camera tries to remove shake that isn't there. You need to use manual focus as the light levels are so low auto won;t work and your lens will "hunt" trying to lock focus. Manually focus on a distant object and check againt hat your lens is set to manual focus.

Set the camera to manual (or bulb if you have that setting) and dial up the shutter speed to 30sec ... the next click after this should be BULB. This means that the shutter will remain open for as long as you keep the shutter release pressed down... this could be 1 second or 1 minute.

Set the aperture to a noimal value of f/8 and ISO to 100. If you press the shutter release now you'll get pretty much a black frame as light levels are so low but a firework will have anough light to give a good exposure.

Set the widest angle you can (ulktrawide zooms would give a great creative effect but the max I have in my lens is 17mm) and create a composition for where you think the fireworks will go off. Connect your shutter/cable release if you have one.

When the fireworks start to go off use the cable release to start and end the exposure. the longer you leave the shutter open the more light trails you'll get. Experiment with differnt times until you get an effect you are pleased with.

Outdoor Autumn Portrait : Tutorial

Find a location that has some nice coloured foliage in the background.I used some stunning red acers in Windsor great park. The place where your subject is positioned should ideally be shaded from direct sun to give a more flattering/softer light. Use the aperture priority setting on your camera and set the Aperture as large as possible. The aperture is lens dependant. Remember a large f nmber = small aperture, so you want a small f number to have as large an aperture as possible. A large aperture lets in more light giving a faster shutter speed and creates a more limted depth of field. It's the limted depth of field which will give the bokeh/blurry background... and if you have chosen well you'll get some lovely colours blurring into each other.

Zoom in (the higher the level of zoom the more the background will blur) and compose your shot. Remember to position your main subject off centre rather than in the middle. Think of the rule of thirds and position key elements on or near intersecting points of the 1/3 lines.

Set your ISO as low as possible to maximise image quality but keep your eye on the shutter speed. In this case the shutter speed at ISO 100 was too low and would have resulted in camera shake ( I didn't have a tripod with me) so I ramped up the ISO to 400 to give a shutter speed of 1/80 allowing me to comfotably hand hold the shot.

Fire off a few shots and remember to keep the camera ready as you quite often get t he best shot when your subject thinks you've finished and relaxes. The most natural expressions, especially in kids can't be forced or requested, they just happen and you need to be ready.

A selection of Halloween portraits. These were all taken with a bare Canon 580EXII flash @1/4 power triggered by a cactus wireless trigger. All processed in Lightroom 3 with use of the local adjustment brush to paint in more shadows and colour the eyes.

Egham From the Rooftops

Egham From the Rooftops
Originally uploaded by Mark1970Vintage

This photo opportunity was enabled by the scaffolding currently around the rear of our house This allowed me to climb onto our new flat dormer roof (part of our loft conversion) and set up a tripod to capture the sunset. I took three bracketed exposures (-2,0, +2 EV) and then merged them in Photomatix to create an HDR image.... with which I'm very pleased.

I don't do HDR very much and some of the examples I've seen give HDR a bad reputation as very over processed, I especially don't like the halo effects around high contrast edges. With a little bit of effort these downsides are avoidable.

Bob Macdonald P&G CEO

Bob Macdonald P&G CEO
Originally uploaded by Mark1970Vintage

Last week I was in Cincinnati with some colleagues to receive an award from our CEO, Bob Macdonald. It's not every day a mere minion gets to meet a king pin, responsible for running an $80 Billion company...

Geronimo....

Geronimo....
Originally uploaded by Mark1970Vintage

Geronimo....

At the start of the week he wouldn't even let go of us in the shallow end but after a few days he was happily jumping into the deep end on his own with a cry of "Geronimo"

Technical bit. The shots were taken in manual mode to ensure even exposaure between frames. I had prefocussed and switched to manual focus to avoid any hunting between shots. I was in high speed burst mode which on my 40D means 6 frames per second.

The composite was ll put together in Lightroom's print module and exported to jpeg instead of printing.

Slide Show

This is a slide show of the pick of my holiday photos.

Rule Of Thirds

Rule Of Thirds
Originally uploaded by Mark1970Vintage

The rule of thirds is a classic photography technique. Using an ND110 filter (that you can't see through) really makes you think about the whole photographic process, framing, composition focus, exposure etc before you attach the filter, switch to maual and bulb mode and open the shutter for several minutes.

Rave Run...

Rave Run...
Originally uploaded by Mark1970Vintage

Two of my friends from the running club, Sally and Helle, asked me to do an action shoot for them. This is one of the results. We're going to try and submit this to Runners World magazine for inclusion int heir monthly "Rave Run" feature.

Strobist info. Bare 580EXII @ 1/2 power camera right just out of shot set to wide angle and triggered with Cactus V4's.

The Light was failing rapidly so to balance sky and get a decent shutter speed I had to ramp the ISO up to 800 and do some noise reduction later.

They've got 17 shots to choose from (this is my fave) so I've not done any post processing other than raw conversion until I hear back from them.

A great learning experience... including don;t shoot with a polarising filter on as a 2 stop reduction sucks up the power of small strobes.

Heavily Textured Bluebell

Heavily Textured Bluebell
Originally uploaded by Mark1970Vintage

I've not posted much recently but have been playing with textrues... with what I think is a great result.

I'm thinking about having this printed out onto a canvas to grace our hallway.

Spelbound Win Britain's Got Talent

The Gymnastics group, "Spelbound" have won, in spectacular fashion, the Britains Got Talent TV show.

I feel very privileged to have seen some of these performances in the groups Christmas display before they "hit the big time" and acheived countrywide recognition, through the auditions, the live semi an then the final itself.

As a result of their success my Flickr stream, with a set of photos documenting their Christmas display, has got lots of hits due to the Spelbound tags.



You can see their winning performance from Britiains got talent below, it is truly amazing !!

Watching the World Go By

Watching the World Go By
Originally uploaded by Mark1970Vintage

An ND110 (10stop) filter can turn a mundane garden scene into a spectacular array of streaky clouds on a windy day.

@f/22 this was a 1/15 second exposure but add the 10 stop ND110 and a 2 stop polariser and it added up to a 3 minute exposure in broad daylight.

Just Chillin

Just Chillin
Originally uploaded by Mark1970Vintage

More fun with a borrowed wide angle lens. It's a Tamron 10-24mm. I attached a circular polariser witht eh deliberate intent of getting a close up portrait to distort the legs, making them look even longer and having a super satureated blue sky and grass (courtesy of the polariser) I used some fill flash to lighten the harsh shadows from the direct sun.

Valley Gardens, Punch Bowl Panorama.

Valley Gardens, Punch Bowl Panorama.
Originally uploaded by Mark1970Vintage

I've been meaning to get this shot for the last 3 years.... but have always been foiled by arriving too late in the season or bad weather. I'd have liked a wider angle lens to have done it more justice.... but resorted to a stitched panorama.

This is a panorma stitched from 7 shots. The "Punch Bowl" in Valley Gardens (Windsor Great park) is full of amazing colours at t he moment as you can see.

The stitch was done in Photoshop and then the blown out white sky was replaced for a more dramatic sky from a streaky cloud shot with an ND110 filter.

The sky was replaced using alpha chanel layer masks and a refine edge plus multiply layer blend mode to ensure the detail around the trees, leaves and twigs was not haloed. I'm quite pleased with the result.

I also added a velvia film effect using the channel mixer upping each channel individually to 130% whilst compensating the other two by -15% to give a balanced tone with no colour cast.

Surreal Santa wishes You a Happy Fractalius Friday ... Ho Ho Ho

Surreal Santa wishes You a Happy Fractalius Friday ... Ho Ho Ho
Originally uploaded by Mark1970Vintage

I've recently been playing with a new Photoshop plug in called Fractalius. It has many different effects to pull out the natural "fractal" nature of many things. This is a shot of Father Christmas that I reworked with the plug in.

“The miracles of nature do not seem miracles because they are socommon. If no one had ever seen a flower, even a dandelion would be themost startling event in the world.”

“The miracles of nature do not seem miracles because they are so common. If no one had ever seen a flower, even a dandelion would be the most startling event in the world.”
Originally uploaded by Mark1970Vintage

Despite Dandelions being the bane of any lawn they are pretty to photograph... and I took pleasure in plucking out the seeds to leave only one using tweezers. (does hurting flowers/plants make me a masochist ??)

There are several quotes I liked about Dandelions that didn't make the title. “Oh, hardy flower, disdained as weed,
Despised for head of feathery seed,
Your unsung virtues rate a ballad,
Choice roots for wine, crisp leaves for salad.”

With Spring rapidly springing all around there are a wealth of Photographic Opportunities. This little flower is a Grape Hyacinth from my garden, they're really cheery little flowers. I picked it, put it in a small glass, repositioned it to a shady spot out of the direct sun and made sure I had a nice uniform background. The background was a holly bush in the direct sun and the light glinting off the leaves has given the circular "bokeh" effect. To acheive a similar effect use a lens with a "long" focal length (say>50mm). Shoot in aperture priority mode with a wide aperture f/5.6 - f/2.8 or even f/1.8 if you have a lens that'll open that wide. Finally ensure that the camera - subject distance is << than subject to background distance. Having a background that has very bright specular highlights will give the best bokeh. The light in the shaded area was still sufficient to hand hold the shot without resorting to a tripod but if your shutter speed starts to drop below 1/focal lenth then think about using a tripod or resting your camera on a solid surface to avoid shake.



In terms of post processing. This was done entirely in Lightroom 2 as part of the raw conversion. I boosted the colours slightly with Vibrance and an increase in the blacks. Clarity was increased and then some further sharpening. I played with the tone curve to increase the highlights and lights and decrease the shadows and darks to give a further contrast boost. Exported to my flickr stream using Jeffry Friedl's excellent lightroom plug in (Jeffrey Friedl's Blog » Jeffrey’s Lightroom Goodies (Plugins and Tools)) and also using the LR2 Mogrify plug in from Timothy Armes to provide the borders and signature direct from ligthroom on export. Photographer's toolbox - Best Plugins and Web Engines for Adobe Lightroom

My flickr stream showed a bizzarre anomoly today.. views were trickling along nicely and it was looking like anothe rday with 200+ views and then BANG it shoots up to 900 in literally minutes. No single photo was the culprit but it looks like someone viewed pretty much very photo I have. A quick google showed that doing this in slideshow mode doesn't increment the counter so they must have looked at every single shot.... how bizzarre.... and no faves or comments in the process.

I'm also trying something else... embeding my most popular shots here as a slideshow.

Sycamore Bud

Sycamore Bud
Originally uploaded by Mark1970Vintage

This was a very bland, flat and boring shot so I gave it some textrue treatment in photoshop and heh presto... something far more interesting and visually appealing.

Thanks to skeletalmess for the following textures (bokah2, ageing effects5 and painted canvas) I applied a layer mask to delete the bokah2 texture from over the bud itself.

Epiphany....

I'm on a mission to reach Flickr's Explore. This is a portfolio of the top 500 shots uploaded to Flickr each day. There are something like 5000+ uploads a minute but only 500 make it into explore each day. It's an honour to have your shot chosen.

The exact algorythm they use to reflect "interestingness" is highly secret but it's common knowlege that it's based on number of views, faves, comments etc so having a lot of people looking at your shot and leaving comments and faving it is good, as is the speed with which it gernates those views/comments/faves.... but. You can't go pimping your shot to many many groups, spreading your next wide... as this goes against the interestingness rating. Keeping it to 5, certainly less than `0 groups is supposed to help.

Over the last week I've consistently been doing unto others as I would have them do unto me. I've been visiting more contacts home pages, commenting and faving their stuff.. but still only stuff that I truly like and I've been getting the same in return. more comments, more faves, more contact requests and a lot more views. My views have gone from an average of < 75/day to over 200 for the last 6 days with some simple yet seemingly effective behaviour changes on my part.

Next I need a stonking great photo at the top of my stream and then go faving, commenting a lot of other people's photos. I'll only post it to a few of my best groups that I know gives me a lot of views (probably strobist).. and we'll see how we go !!

Happy Easter.

Happy Easter.
Originally uploaded by Mark1970Vintage

From our Easter Egg hunt at Robin and Liz's today. 3 familes (4 if you count the dogs... mother, father daughter) and 10 kids so it was a bit manic but great fun. The kids loved hte Easter Egg hunt and despite the dad's thinking they were being devious it only took the little blighters about 10 mins to find them all.

I learned a new trick in lightroom today. You can add a title and caption to the metadata and when you upload it to Flickr or facebook it's there automatically in the right fields. This will save me a lot of time in the future.

Long Exposure

Bollard
Originally uploaded by Mark1970Vintage

A very long exposure in broad daylight using my ND110 (10 stop filter) to give a streaky effect to the clouds. This shot is of one of the ball bollards at the side of the access road at Guards Polo Club on Smiths Lawn in windsor great park. This is the first time i've had my ND110 out to play in a while and I'd forgotten how difficult it was to use. You need to take a meter reading with it off, focus, switch to manual focus, (autofocus doesn't work when you screw it back on as the viewfinder is virtually black) screw the filter on. Switch to maual mode, dial in +10 stops (e.g. 1/15 second becomes 2 minutes) hit the remote release, start the stop watch, keep the kids amused for 2 mins or so and then go and turn the bulb remote release off. As you cans ee it's quite involved.... but worth it I think for the efefcts you get.

Processed in lightroom with the Alice in Wonderland "Creative catalyst 19" preset.

see here for other ND110 shots from today

www.flickr.com/photos/marklandon/sets/72157623151244607/

April Fool..... unfortunately.

April Fool..... unfortunately.
Originally uploaded by Mark1970Vintage

So I got well and truly April fooled today. I usually visit Flickr in the morning to check out the Explore section (it's a great way of seeing some great photos and getting inspiration for my own shots) Every single shot on the first 5 pages was either rainbows or pandas !! What the .... ??

I thought nothing of it but when I checked back a few hours later it was still all pandas and rainbows. I left a few comments to that effect (there were still some great shots) and then based on another comment above mine I twigged !! It's an April fool. Flickr uses an algorythm (affectionaltely called the "magic donkey" to define interestingness and choose 500 photos it rates as the best (most interesting) to put on explore. Getting on Explore is a real honour as there are only 500 each day and flickr has something like 5000 uploads a second !!

The second part of the April fool was from "Big Huge Labs" and their flickrscout application. This is a tool whereby you can search for your own photos and find if they have been or are currently in "explore". Scout had been set up to show all of your photos... making it look like all of your stream had made it into explore.

I couldn't resist making a Poster of this. If only it were true though !!

In reality only 2 of my shots have made it into explore.. although obviously I thinkl I deserve more.

The Wonder of FLICKR

...and now textured
Originally uploaded by Mark1970Vintage

It's amazing where Flickr can take you... I'd commented on some textured shots from http://www.flickr.com/people/augcott/ and she replied with some comments about the textures and how good they were as they were free.... I checked them out and they were excellent. They're from "skeletall mess" (strange name) on Flickr http://www.flickr.com/photos/skeletalmess/

So I had a play with one of my most recet uploads, a shot of Ben winning his race int he Cubs Swimming gala (we're now the district champions) and this is the end result of applying 3 textures at varying opacities and blending modes. I like the effect.

Mexican Jumping Bean.... Hatched

Mexican Jumping Bean.... Hatched
Originally uploaded by Mark1970Vintage

The Mexican jumping bean I've had on my desk for the last 5 months (bought as a souvenir when I was re-routed home from Cincinnati via Dallas, Texas) finally hatched... the little moth flew off when I opened the lid, circled a light bulb and then got zapped by the insecticutor !! 5 months in a bean 30 seconds flying and then a milisecond of a million volts !!

I love the perfect little hole that he dug out of the bean.

When I brought htis back home my kids (and wife didn't believe me that there was anything in side., but there again I am known for practical jokes) I had to show them this Wikipedia article for them to believe me... nad now with it hatching out it proves the point !!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jumping_bean

Green

Green
Originally uploaded by Mark1970Vintage

From my recent trip to Germany. The Green of the Europcar desk at Frankfurt airport was so vibrant I had to take a shot of it.

The other shots from my trip are here.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/marklandon/sets/72157623681000324/

My particular favourite is the 5 second exposure on the travelator at Heathrow giving a "warp effect"

Lines

Lines
Originally uploaded by Mark1970Vintage

I just loved the symetry and contrast of this view from my front door. I find myslef looking at scenes and thinking that'd make a great photo.

I need to start carrying my camera with me more to take opportunistic shots like this more often.... this time I was lucky as I only had to go inside and get it out of the dining room.

40 Today !! (well last week)

40 Today !!
Originally uploaded by Mark1970Vintage

I'm behind on my blog as can be seen by the fact that my 40th was actually over a week ago but it's been a whirlwind !!

I was made to wear a flashing badge to work by my cruel kids to proclaim to all I'm past it !! (but secretly I enjoyed the attention) then it was a family meal and cake that evening.

I already had my main present (me to me) from a few weeks back !!
http://www.flickr.com/photos/marklandon/4279405334/ but there were still a few nice present to open.

Friday saw the celebrations continue with a day off and a fantastic surprise from my gorgeous wife. Lunch at the fantastic 3 michelin star restaurant "The Waterside". I can do nothing other than rave about it and thoroughly recommend it. http://www.waterside-inn.co.uk/

Then on saturday it was mountain biking in the morning, joint 40th birthday party with my best friend int he evening with fine wines and entertainment round at his house.... followed by some brilliant chinese lanterns.

I've been playing with proshow producer software recently and this is the result posted to you tube. It's a really incredible peice of software, really easy to use and create some stunning results. I look forwards to playing with it more in the future

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=La5uelflZF0

Red or Blue ?

Red or Blue ?
Originally uploaded by Mark1970Vintage

If you are ever in need of inspiration for a theme or a shot just use flickr to get some ideas.

The February theme for our work Photo competition was Red. I use Flickriver (http://flickriver.com/photos/tags/red/interesting/) to search for tags and inteesting photos of "red" and heh presto loads of ideas. I finally went with this shot becasue it was so simple.

The depth of field and bokeh was easy to produce with a 100mm macro lens fully open @ f/2.8 and the shooting on a tripod made composition easy to set up with the rule of thirds in mind.

I found out yesterday that I placed third in the competition.

As always the procesing was done from RAW in Lightroom 2 with some simple exposure adjustemnts and increase in clarity and blacks to give a snap to the red colour.

Carnedd Llewellyn Summit Ridge HDR

Carnedd Llewellyn Summit Ridge HDR
Originally uploaded by Mark1970Vintage

For my annual climbing trip I decided to take my big hefty SLR with me to get some nice mountain shots. I was inspired by reading this article.... http://www.alexandrebuisse.org/writings/articles/A-guide-to-digital-mountain-climbing-photography

Whilst my picture isn't quite up to the same standard as some of these it did do justice to a fantastic day out int he mountains, climbing Broad Gully on Pen Yr Ole Wen in Snowdonia followed by a brillaint ridge walk in perfect Alpine conditions along the Carneddau.

The other shots from the trip can be seen here.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/marklandon/sets/72157623447587058/

Textures, Shapes, Colours : A Photowalk Montage

Textures, Shapes, Colours : A Photowalk Montage
Originally uploaded by Mark1970Vintage

It's been a while since I've blogged and am trying to catch up.....This montage is from a lunchtime photowalk in February around my work with the Photography club. There were various themes and I chose to focus (pun intended) on shapes/patterns, colours and textures. This is the result compiled together as a montage.

I've had lots of positive comments from people at work about it :-)

Air Force Memorial meets new Recruit ND110 Filter

Air Force Memorial ... alternative processing
Originally uploaded by Mark1970Vintage

It's been crazy busy at work (and play) and has therefore been a while since I blogged. I've missed the therapy of writing stuff down.

Anyhow, this is currently my best shot with my new toy. I got me a B&W ND110 filter and i'm sure I'm going to love it.

Inspiration for getting this came from some of my flickr contacts the the great shots they're produced with it. It basically reduces the light by 10 stops so there is 1000 less times light reaching the sensor. It's so dark it's almost black to look through, so dark that autofocus and metering don't work. You need to set the shot up, focus, take a meter reading and then screw the filter on. Switch to manual focus and bulb mode and leave the shutter open for the amount of time you calculate (+10 stops + a bit for good measure) based off of the original meter reading.

This is the same shot of the Airforce memorial in Englefield Green as the others in this set www.flickr.com/photos/marklandon/sets/72157623151244607/ but with processing done in Photoshop after the basic RAW conversion in Lightroom. (the others were just lightroom)

So we start with a 5 minute exposure using an ND110 filter to give the streaked clouds. Basic raw conversion in LR, import to Photoshop, a bit of healing to remove a few dust spots, noise reduction, conversion to mono using a gradient map, convert to grayscale from RGB then change to duotone and apply a quadtone (richer B&W's) (tutorial from Scott Kelby) . I think I then did a curves adjustment layer to fine tune contrast then convert back to LAB colour and then a large amount of unsharpmask shapening on the lightness only channel which avoids halo's and artefacts. the Original shots for comparison can be seen below. I think I much prefer the richness and sharpness of this one.

New Toy ....

My new toy has just arrived today, a B+W ND110 filter. This has the effect of cutting hte light by 1000 times (log factor 3) to create long exposures even in Broad daylight. This has the creative effect of rendering wavy water flat, giving clouds a streaked, smudged look.

The BWVision website (Joel Tjintjelaar) is is a great website for some info about long exposure photography using ND110 filters. See Joel's work on Flickr

I just hope the weather is kind this weekend so that I can experiment. I also hope that I can aspire to some shots like these guys... watch this space.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/tjintjelaar/4106459317/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/27595401@N08/4271558172/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/37151423@N05/4230896521/in/pool-nd110-filter-group

Alternative Nativity Scene

Alternative Nativity Scene
Originally uploaded by Mark1970Vintage

This is my "fastest viewed" flickr photo to date. Achieving 300 views in a single day. It got picked up by a "Lego" Blogger and that generated a lot of views. I also joined and posted to a few new flicker groups.. secret life of toys and lego. Both of which seem to have a more active following than some of the groups I usually post to.

About the photo.

This is an alternative nativity scene I put together for a photo compeition with a theme of "The Festive Period" with the help of my kids. You can spot the influence of the girls with the animlas and my eldest boy with dinosaurs and his lego figures. Unfortunately he didn't have a darth vader other wise the scene would have been much simpler with a caption of "the force is strong in this one"

strobist info 580EXII into shoot through brolley @ full power about 2ft above scene. Seemless white background. Triggered by cactus V4's

Snowy Frozen Washing Line

Snowy Frozen Washing Line
Originally uploaded by Mark1970Vintage

Been quite a while since a blog post. Been too busy over Xmas New Year to spend much time on the computer..... but taken a lot of shots and now just need to clear the back log and do some processing.

Here's hoping 2010 is a great year photographically. My New Years resolutions... photographically speaking are....

1. Create a website
2. Do some paid shoots.
3. Develop my style further, focussing on portraits.
4. Complete my 100 strangers project.
5. Teach a few classes/seminars at my work photography club.

Happy New Year to everyone.