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)
A little part of the web for me to talk about Photography, what I'm up to, share experiments, recent shots, hints and tips. To share my (limited) experience with others and to gain further skills myself.
Showing posts with label photography. Show all posts
Showing posts with label photography. Show all posts
Thursday, July 4, 2013
Wednesday, August 3, 2011
Alps Climbing 2011
Alps Climbing 2011, a set on Flickr.
Some photos from my recent climbing trip to the Alps. I'm particularly plased with teh sunset shot as that made it into Flickr's EXPLOPRE @ #229. My best showing yet.
Despite a couple of bad weather days we managed to get a lot done and I got some great photos with a borrowed Canon G12. We didn't achieve our main objective of Mont Blanc due to the weather, but thats just an excuse to go back next year.
We climbed ...
Petite Aiguille Verte
Traverse of the Valle Blanche
Cosmiques Arete
Mont Blanc du Tacul
Gran Paradiso
Sunday, February 27, 2011
Three from Four ?
I've not been taking many photos over the last 3 months or so due to a severe outbreak of decorating in the house !! But what I have shot has been very purposeful and specific. This last week I shot based on the theme of the number 3 ( a competition at work) and these 4 shots are the results.
2 out of the 4 are water drops on a DVD. one is treated with a quadtone conversion (a speciality of mine) to give a really rich B&W. The colours on the other one were just spectacular so I left them be and enhanced them some.
The third shot is a digital recreation of a film effect called the "Harris Shutter". Read here for more details. http://www.flickr.com/photos/marklandon/5464828842/in/set-72157626028668207/
The final shot is the word three from the Oxford English Dictionary with a heavily processed texturisation in photoshop.
I've also finally got around to creating my 2011 signature.... and it's already nearly march !!
2 out of the 4 are water drops on a DVD. one is treated with a quadtone conversion (a speciality of mine) to give a really rich B&W. The colours on the other one were just spectacular so I left them be and enhanced them some.
The third shot is a digital recreation of a film effect called the "Harris Shutter". Read here for more details. http://www.flickr.com/photos/marklandon/5464828842/in/set-72157626028668207/
The final shot is the word three from the Oxford English Dictionary with a heavily processed texturisation in photoshop.
I've also finally got around to creating my 2011 signature.... and it's already nearly march !!
Sunday, November 14, 2010
Fionas First Float
....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.
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.
Saturday, September 25, 2010
Bob Macdonald P&G CEO
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...
Tuesday, June 8, 2010
Rave Run...
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.
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.
Monday, May 31, 2010
Watching the World Go By
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.
@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.
Monday, May 10, 2010
“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
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.”
Tuesday, April 13, 2010
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
Wednesday, April 7, 2010
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.
I'm also trying something else... embeding my most popular shots here as a slideshow.
Friday, April 2, 2010
Long Exposure
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/
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/
Thursday, March 25, 2010
Green
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"
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"
Thursday, March 11, 2010
Lines
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.
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)
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 ?
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.
Textures, Shapes, Colours : A Photowalk Montage
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 :-)
I've had lots of positive comments from people at work about it :-)
Friday, January 29, 2010
Air Force Memorial meets new Recruit ND110 Filter
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.
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.
Thursday, January 14, 2010
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
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
Friday, December 18, 2009
Santas Little Helper
I couldn't resist getting a shot of Santas Little Helper from our weekend away at Ribby Hall IN Lancashire.
The rest of the shots fromt he wekeend can be seen here on my flickr stream.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/marklandon/sets/72157622890714809/
The rest of the shots fromt he wekeend can be seen here on my flickr stream.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/marklandon/sets/72157622890714809/
Monday, December 7, 2009
Inspiration....
I stumbled across this today and found it really inspiring. I'm still struggling to find my style and as a result probably putting too much pressure on myself to improve vs just enjoy the process and let it come naturallly.
http://www.zarias.com/?p=284
This second video http://www.zarias.com/?p=465 about street portraiture also reminded me to get my ass into gear again regarding my own 100 strangers project. I'm currently on 17/100 (as I have been for several months)
http://www.flickr.com/photos/marklandon/sets/72157611320280959/
http://www.zarias.com/?p=284
This second video http://www.zarias.com/?p=465 about street portraiture also reminded me to get my ass into gear again regarding my own 100 strangers project. I'm currently on 17/100 (as I have been for several months)
http://www.flickr.com/photos/marklandon/sets/72157611320280959/
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