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.

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.

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/

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.

Pro-Bono PhotoShoot for local School.

I had a great time this morning doing a "proper" photoshoot for a local school. The brief was to create some simple head and shoulders shots to update their website and school notice boards.

I spent a fun hour putting a lot of what I have learned into practice and look forwards to posting more of the resulting photos to my Flickr account soon.

This experience was invaluable and helped me to learn a lot including..... how difficult it can be to get some people smile.

• Knowing your gear, how it works, dialing in settings gives you confidence.


• Checking and readying gear (according to a checklist) the night before gives you peace of mind and lets you focus on the creative process vs technical issues.


• Turn off ambient lighting sources to avoid colour casts.


• Having a few poses in mind prior to shooting saves time and puts you in control.


• "Narrow" lighting is more flattering than broad.


• Interact with your models to make it less scary (for them) and a fun experience.


• Seperate the subject from the background more (difficult due to space limitation)


• Show people the shots you got on the camera LCD to get initial feedback.


• Some people just don't like being photographed OR the result... even if others love it.


• The strobist website has been invaluable in my learning experience.


• I am able to turn theory into practice and get a pretty good result.... judge for yourself when I post the images.


• A large school whiteboard makes a great background.


• I need more lighting gear !! (to blow out aforementioned white background)