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.

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.

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.

Splashing Around

Splashing Around
Originally uploaded by Mark1970Vintage

Splashing Around
I was running out of time to come up with a shot for the Autumn themed monthly photo competition at work . The recent storms and rain have brought most of the foliage down off the trees. There is one nice bit left in Windsor great Park but when I went up there on Saturday it was raining so the camera stayed firmly in the bag... I've learned my lesson about getting it wet (see my star trails photo).

I thought I would take advantage of the rain and the puddles by having some fun with my kids. Dress them up in bright clothes and welies and try to get some frozen water and refelction action going on as they jump up and down in puddles. Half an hour and lots of fun later this was the best shot of the bunch and I have my entry to the autumn competition.

Canon EOS 40D, EFS 17-55mm IS USM, 580EXII strobe.

20mm. 1/250 sec, f/8 +1EV flash. Manual exposire mode to ensure the low lighting di not lead to a slow shutter speed and blur. Using manual means that camera uses the flash to expose the subject vs using ambient to expose for the background with the subject "filled" with flash. Slightly cropped plus boosted exposure, blacks, clarity, saturation and sharpening in lightroom.

I Won a Photography Competition With This Shot !!

If The Pumpkin Closes Her Eyes, the Witch Can't Hypnotize Her !!
Originally uploaded by Mark1970Vintage

OK, so it's no big deal, there was no prize or anything... but the Kudos of being "voted" the winner. Come on, thats big !! Humungous !! ... and reward in enough itself :-) . The competition was in the "Unbearably cute" group on Flickr for their Halloween themed monthly competition.

The title of this shot is "If The Pumpkin Closes Her Eyes, the Witch Can't Hypnotize Her !!"

Here's my "winners notification"

"Kimberly Lynn says:
Congratulations, you are our first place winner of The Cutest Halloween Costume Contest! Unbearably Cute! "

Click on the image to go to my Flickr stream and see the lighting details.