Prom Strobist #2

Prom Strobist #2
Originally uploaded by MarkLandonPhotography

I've been taking a lot more portraits again recently... partly facilitated by being invited to shoot a friends daughter's pre-prom party.

It all started out with the teenagers being very shy and self conscious and not wanting to pose in the garden in view of all the others.

It started to rain so we had to move inside and as soon as they had a bit of privacy in the dining room, away from all of their friends they soon loosened up and we go some great shots.

It was nice to get the flash/umbrella/cactus trigger combo out again for some "strobist" action.

Processed in LR4 with the B&W Look 5 pre-set for a high key effect. I also added some more clarity, as unusually for teenagers, their complexions were flawless and their skin could handle having more mid tone contract (clarity slider)

Sea & Waves Intentional Camera Motion

Sea & Waves ICM (HSS)
Originally uploaded by Mark1970Vintage

Intentional Camera Motion (ICM) does exactly what the name suggests.

Instead of holding the camera steady to have a sharp image, the camera is deliberately moved during the exposure to distort the image.

This is different to panning the camera to follow a moving object as for ICM the object is usually stationary and so moving the camera creates a blurring or streaking effect depending on the motion and the object.

In this case the object was a stormy sea. The camera was panned during a 1/25 second exposure to give the effect of streaking horizontal lines.

This image was then processed in lightroom to level the horizon, brighten it slightly and then apply a blue/purple duotone.

The outcome is an abstract image that I am planning on printing as a panoramic canvas for display in my bathroom.

Slide Show

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

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.

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.

I'm helping to set up a photography group at work and it's great to see that there is so much interest ranging from complete beginners to seasoned experts. There will be a range of themed monthly competitions and regular seminars, tutorials etc. It's the subject of this first tutorial that I'm blogging about today. I've always suspected I was a bit of a geek when it comes to gear and kowing how to use it but this was confirmed on Wednesday lunchtime when I took a few fellow Canon DSLR owners "under my wing" for some basic training on their camera. I take my own level of knowledge forgranted and was very pelased to be able to share some basic information with the group that they just didn't know and were very grateful for. This was as simple as focus screen adjustment using the dioptre dial. Focus point selection using the quick slect wheel. SHutter half press to focus and recompose. (I know... I was amazed they didn't know how to use this either... does noone read the manual ?) They were basically using their expensive DSLr's as point and shoots and not venturing off the green "auto" function. We went into the basics of aperture and shutter speed and how to control DOF using aperture. I think shutter speeds was also a n insight for them too and made them realise why they were getting blured shots in low light. Basically theu were expecting this "majic" expensice DSLR to do everything for them without understanding the how and what limitations it has. In all we made good progress, I enjoyed teaching and they took a lot away and have some new skills to practice. Next time I think I'll use the camera tethered to a lap top so that we can get input from the group on how to change settings for a particular situation or effect, change them, and see the results straight away on the screen.