I used to go out drinking, now i just go out thinking (how am i going to take a photo of that)

Only a few years ago i still regularly went out 'clubbing' now i only go to photography club. Oh how my life has changed.

In December i spotted an advert in a local paper advertising a new photography group starting up. Having experienced a fresh spark in interest in photography in the last half a year, due to the recent wedding photographer role, i thought id give it a try.

The group has been limited, i guess due to winter, to taking pictures inside, i personally can't wait for some warmer weather so we can go out exploring local spots together. 

Each person has been asked to bring in items they would like to photograph as well as including suitable back drops. Themes have been set, each member is able to interpret the theme and create images around the theme. Thinking of and finding objects to photograph is quite difficult in my opinion as, being honest, i have no interest in photographing objects on a table top.

Although the previous paragraph sounds negative, a positive point for the sessions is that i am learning to create images of items, objects, scenes etc that i wouldn't of previously took photos of. I suppose a professional photographer working on a job may not always be enthusiastic about the subject but they still have to create a quality piece of work regardless.

Working on a table top does test the skills; creating a scene worth capturing, finding the best composition, adjusting camera settings to capture details and to not capture others like gaps and seams in the background and finding a suitable white balance due to overhead lighting.

Most recently i was having difficulty focusing on an object using my 50mm lens. I only wanted one small object in focus however i had reached the limit of the lens and couldn't focus close enough. I had to change to a longer focal length lens and step back a bit to create the same composition. I used knowledge of how focal length affects depth of field/perspective as well as aperture to allow the desired object to be in focus and to to cause the rest to be out of focus.

There's an example of how attending the group and doing something i don't like has been an advantage of refreshing skills.

On to some of my favourite images from the sessions in December and January.

ISO 1600 f/4 1/100

ISO 1600 f/5.6 1/40 

The reflections is the ball is my favourite part of the above image.

ISO 200 f/8 1/200

The shot above was created by using the built in flash to expose the figures and my Nissin flashgun to expose the background. The reason I'm so please with the above image is that the white background was made up of many A4 pieces of paper which had horrible joins everywhere, i used my flashgun to over expose/blow out the white to create the flat background. This was my intention on the night and i was very pleased to have succeeded. The image is slightly over saturated though......my bad.

ISO 400 f/7.1 1/200

It took many attempts to achieve focus in the desired place. The image has had the contrast increased to create a harder edge between the subjects and the background.

I hope you continue to enjoy my images and honest approach.

Thanks.

Ben

Day tripping in the big smoke

Just days after New Years i received an email at work offering return travel to London and back for £5 each. So that weekend myself and Laura got up early Saturday morning and by car,coach and train went to London.

Although i have visited London numerous times as a teenager and in my early 20's i hadn't ever done much sight seeing, so armed with my trusty Canon, sight seeing was the aim of a long and tiring day.

Here are my favourite images of the day.

 

Ive been wanting to practice street photography for some while. I think it takes real guts to step out in front of someone you don't know and photograph them candidly. From what i read, new starters to the genre tend to use a zoom lens/long focal length in order to stay incognito, this wasn't a choice to me as i only had my kit and 50mm prime lens with me on the day.

In the first and second image i like the motion captured (particularly in the second image) and how people are crossing the image in different directions.

When walking close to the London Eye, there are a lot of street performers, i noticed the performer creating large bubbles and a child jumping to touch them before they burst. As i got close enough to take the third image, the child made his last and not so spectacular attempt.........damn!

Graffiti found on the embankment.

The third image was difficult to expose due to the different lighting sources; daylight and artificial from the overhead lights. I really like the depth of field captured by using an aperture of f/7.1 and the hard lines and angles of the different walls.

Landscape in portrait orientation of the river Thames with St. Pauls Cathedral. I was first drawn to the scene by the detail on the street lamps, i then noticed the river and buildings in the background.

Before we left for the trip i had planned to get this shot of the London Eye. In my mind this has came out better than i expected. i had originally planned for the shot to be the opposite of this but when comparing both images i much preferred this composition. I like the empty space on the left compared to the circular shape of the wheel and the diagonal lines of the cables and support structure.

Thanks for looking.

Stepping up to the challenge! My first wedding.

I thought it was about time i updated my blog.

Since my last post i have bought 2 new cameras and a new phone, joined a photography club, been sight seeing in London; all of which will receive more detail in future posts.

Most importantly i was asked to and shot a wedding.

I was asked approximately 6 months ago to play wedding photographer in December. In between the proposition and the event i went through stages of acceptance, joy, denial, worry, nervousness and im sure many more emotional states.

At times i doubted my ability and although the people closest to me, always assured me i could perform and achieve results.

I found myself at night thinking about lighting, white balance, apertures.......what if it rains, what if my camera stops working etc etc.

Closer to big day i started to prepare by scouting the church in view of finding the best locations and camera settings needed. As the wedding was in December available light was minimal, not helped by an afternoon ceremony, i knew that time would be short to get the list of photos agreed.

Winter afternoon sun is low in the sky and can make beautiful golden glow images providing you can find a location that lets the light shine onto the subject. At the church i knew available light was going to be issue, the best locations were on the wrong side of the church where the sun was blocked by the church itself.

Fortunately using my head i looked around the church grounds at the time of day i knew i would be doing the real shoot. I found a spot on the edge of the grounds where the last bit of sun sines through some trees and an old brick building. Bang! here's the spot to get the bride and grooms shots.

So on to the day.

Batteries were charged, lenses cleaned, camera bag packed, shirt ironed, Laura had a new dress, the sun was out and it wasn't raining....................however it was freezing cold! In the end it was the temperature that applied the most pressure on the day; the bride and groom were cold, families and friends were cold and my hands were cold holding the camera.

I decided on aperture's to use, so when it was time for the photo's outside; they were done in approx 15 minutes from beginning to end. Not so good when i had loads of nice ideas to try out.

On to some of my favourite photos from the day.

 

Great golden light.

I over exposed the background and use fill flash to create this high key image.

I love how they're are looking in opposite directions deep in thought.

A happy lady!

Lloyd, the groom, loves toys, cartoons and comics, so i knew they would love this high contrast image that has a real comic feel

This has a timeless feel to it thanks to the sepia filter that i applied.

I hope you enjoyed my write up and viewing my some of my favourite images of my good friends wedding.

Sunset at Port Sutton Bridge

I wanted to try out HDR.

After approx 4 years of practicing photography i had never created a HDR image.

HDR or High Dynamic Range images are typically created by merging 3 or more photos together. In order to the create the images attached and HDR images in general;

I took the first photo exposing the light parts of the photo such as the sky, doing this leaves the darker parts such as the foreground or subject underexposed/dark, if this photo was the finished image it would be a silhouette

The 2nd photo was exposed for the darker elements of the photo, in the images attached this would of been the river, river bank etc doing this over exposes the sky to an usable level (this is known as blown out)

The 3rd photo taken was exposed in the middle for both light and dark parts of the scene.

The composition was the original purpose for the image; i wanted capture the port, bridge and power station  in one scene.

I love the sky and how it and the cranes are reflected in the water.

I hope you enjoy.

A Holga, Halo and Hunstanton all in one day

Picture a cold, very cold, Saturday afternoon on the deserted Norfolk coast of England, now picture a setting sun and a cold face, you've now got the gist of this post.

I decided to limit myself to using my Holga Lens.

A Holga lens with a Canon EF mount gives my modern digital SLR the ability to create images of a 50 year old Chinese camera.

Holga's have a cult following due to the quality of the images; soft focus, dark corners and lens flare, which are all attributes photographers usually do not want but with the popularity of phone photography and apps such as Instagram, Holga's and other 'toy' camera's are now proving to be popular.

I picked up my Holga lens before the summer (you might of missed the summer if you blinked) for around 8GBP and although it proves to be a bit of a novelty it comes out of the camera bag every now and then.

Back to Hunstanton.

The sun was starting to come down and walking along the beach, i thought i could finally attempt to shoot into the sunlight to create a halo around the subject; Laura in this case, by placing Laura directly in front of the camera, effectively blocking the sunlight light entering my lens. Firstly this creates a silhouette, although silhouettes can be cool, this is not entirely what i wanted. To solve this i used the built in flash to create some fill flash, balancing the ambient light of the scene with Laura's face lit by the flash.

Another image taken on the day.

I slightly softened/lightened the Vignetting (darkening of corners) at the top right corner due to it being overpowering and looking odd opposite the sun in the top left corner.

Thanks for looking.

A cold Sunday in Ely. Shot in RAW

We took a trip to Ely, Cambridgeshire last Sunday to have a look around.

Luckily the weather remained dry, however it was pretty cold but as its November it was to be expected.

Ely, a city, is known for its cathedral, although I'm not a religious person i was drawn to the building due to it size; you have to admire the workmanship.

My favourite part of the day was walking by the riverside; canal boats, pubs, restaurants and fresh air, all a good combination.

Although the image contains lens flare, i used the foliage to diffuse the sunlight in order to achieve a decent exposure

One thing i didn't expect to find while walking alongside the river is what has dragged out and left on the side.
It seems I'm drawn to odd things.

I used this trip to shoot in raw for the first time. Although I've been into photography for a few years now I've never felt the need to shoot in raw.
I usually shoot in the finest quality JPEG and try to read the histogram to monitor weather the image is correctly exposed. Another good trick is to use the clipping display on the camera to show weather the image is over exposed.
On average i also shoot with negative exposure compensation, i think i must prefer darker images.

I hope you enjoy my images!

One Day In Her Life; Manual Focusing and B&W With My Fiance Laura

The history behind this post is that i recently bought a Canon FD lens to reverse mount onto my camera to practice macro photography.

When buying the lens and reverse mount from ebay i also purchased an adapter to mount the lens onto Laura's Olympus E-PL1 compact system camera.

All in all, 1 old lens, 1 reverse mount and 1 adapter cost roughly 20 quid, which in my opinion isn't too bad.

Being an old lens it's fully manual, which was new to me as I'm used to controlling the aperture by the camera; this lens has an aperture ring just below the focus ring.

Mounting the adapter to the camera was very easy, just like mounting a true Olympus lens however mounting the lens to the adapter is a bit fiddly, especially to ensure control of aperture isn't lost due to incorrect mounting (this happened a few times) and now its mounted i really don't want to take it off.

It looks so good!

I really like how the camera sits in the hands with the larger lens on, it feels more natural than when it has the kit lens attached as the kit lens is tiny in comparison.

History lesson over.

I wanted to get to grips with using manual focus, so i decided to annoy Laura by following her around all day taking photos of her doing mundane things.

I really like this photo, the Laura's hands, phone and face area really crisp and sharp.
Its a very natural candid photograph.