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.