Behold The Dawn!

I just found this photo I had been playing with a few weeks ago and forgot about it, there isn't much to be said about it really, I'm not a great fan of using myself as foreground interest but when there is nothing else about you just have to make do.

On an unrelated note, apparently photomatix have released a lightroom plugin for all you HDR enthusiasts, I haven't tried it yet but it sounds like a good idea. Anyway I have to sort some wedding photos from the weekend, have a good week everyone.

Woodland Shoot

I was out in the woods with my niece and nephew and as the weather was nice I thought I'd take the camera. There are quite a few problems using available light in woodland, as there is a lot less light than normal outdoor daytime conditions you have to use ISO levels similar to indoors. The light levels can also vary dramatically, confusing the hell out of your cameras light meter so in some cases you might be better finding a good exposure for your subject and dialing it in on full manual.

This can be seen in the first photo, the bright sun light coming from outside would have cause the subject and woodland interior to be under exposed and although there are some blown highlights I'd take it over a near silhouette. Another issue I find in woodland photos is a murky green colour cast from the leaves that is not the best for skin tones. Shooting in RAW you can adjust the white balance during the editing stage, I warmed these up to around 6000K as it also enhances the autumnal colours, just try not to go overboard.

Self Portraits

I had to send a mugshot type photo of myself to a magazine today and as I haven't posted on here since god knows when I thought I'd kill two birds with one stone, so to speak. I really dislike being on the other side of the camera and I particularly dislike it when I have to use a mirror, I could have set up a tripod and all that but thought it would be a fairly quick affair. So then out came the speed lights and pocket wizards and I got set in front of the mirror.

I have no idea why I decided to take pictures in the bathroom and it was particularly embarrassing when my sister dropped in to see me but I managed to get through it. It was a two light setup with hard light coming from behind me to provide the rim lighting (no I hadn't brushed my hair) and a light in front to 45 degrees to my left. The light in front had an umbrella on in one shot and a home made grid on the other providing two different types of lighting. A decent amount of light bounced from the rear light on the mirror lighting up the room behind me so I just sorted it out with the local adjustment tool in LR2 (now much better after 2.1 patch). I put it in mono as I find it more flattering. The exif was ISO100, 70mm, 1/200 at 5.6.

Sky Library

I went out this morning to get what I thought would be a great sunrise and ended up sitting in the car for an hour as it started raining pretty hard and the sunrise didn't look too promising, the joys of landscape photography! I decided to come home and although the sunrise wasn't that great and there certainly wasn't much foreground interest to properly compose a photo I decided to add to the sky library. These are great to have on your system if you ever need to replace a dull looking sky from an otherwise ok shot. They can be taken whenever you see interesting sky. I have a few sun rises, sun sets, midday blue skies and some moody cloud shots. I don't do a great deal of composite sky shots but is handy just to have the option.

Bolton Abbey Shoot

I was doing a shoot at Bolton abbey with some friends but they were busy at a service so I just got some shots of my girlfriend/assistant.

Conditions were very overcast which I don't generally like as the light is very flat and it's difficult to create any depth but on the otherhand it is very soft with no sharp shadows or 'panda eyes' you can get in harsh afternoon light. I got 5 shots I was happy with and thought I would put a couple up, they were taken around ISO200, 1/500, f/4 at about 70mm, processed first in lightroom then in photoshop, 4 out of the 5 were black and white.

Cows Week

A couple more from the back catalog, I have not done a lot of processing with these really but as you will have noticed I'm back in Black and White mode, I really wanted to use one of the cows bright orange colouring but it just wasn't happening. I was a bit annoyed as when I was snapping these my mate was getting shots of the bull, which I thought was probably a little more photogenic but I had not noticed him until we were leaving, breaking one of my main rules - Avoid the 'walk up' shot and have a look round. Anyway just thought I'd put these up to keep my post rate up.

Smooth Infrareds

I got an infrared filter a few fays ago and have yet to use it, it's just so much easier getting a similar effect in the digital darkroom. This is a shot I have processed largely using silver efex pro. I like the IR effect, especially on the sky but I'm not a great fan of the glow you tend to get from traditional IR photos. The benefit of doing it digitally is you can experiment and see the results straight away. With this shot I wanted to retain some detail in the grass and the leaves that the IR glow would lose.