Confetti

This was one from a recent wedding that I quite liked, sometimes the autofocus can lock on to the confetti but as long as you max out the frames per second for a while you usually get one or two. You can always try a different composition for the confetti shots as the couple and the guests are usually more than willing to do it again if you suggest it, the vicars normally line you up in the cross hairs from the bell tower though!
This one was done at ISO200 f/3.5 1/2000 sec at 27mm, processed in Lightroom to add the sepia tone, the vignette and the 3D effect.

Circular Panoramic Photosphere

I was just experimenting with a panoramic from Wales, I haven't been doing much shooting lately so I have to play with older photos, it is still only 2 weeks old though. I saw this effect in a recent photo mag and thought I would try it out. This vista is not the best for this technique, the ones I have seen are normally cityscapes, so I must remember to do one next time I'm near canary wharf. The floor of the shot is also an important part, one I omitted on this occasion. I will write a better tutorial when I get a better example.

Buttermere

Hi guys, just thought I'd pop this one up. It was taken about a month ago whilst I was up in the lake district. I have processed it with dynamic photo and quickly cleared up a few dust spots with CS3. It is a really nice walk up haystacks from Buttermere and you can take in a few other peaks before coming back down which is good, on a clear day there are plenty of views but good luck getting a clear day up there! We had a nice morning and then the clouds rolled in. Theres nothing too remarkable about this one, more of a memory shot really, I would have liked to have a bit of foreground interest and possibly made more of the path but I was there primarily for the walk. The info on this one is f/16, ISO100, 16mm 1/40sec. I also used a 0.9 Lee ND grad for the sky.

Astro Photography

I haven't done a great deal of astro photography, largely due to a lack in focal length but as it was a relatively clear evening I decided to slap on the 100-400 and a 1.4x tele extender and see what I got. The tele extenders increase your focal length by either 1.4x or 2x, but you loose a stop of light with the 1.4 and 2 stops with the 2x, with this type of photo I wasn't too worried as I wanted to be at about f11 to start with. You also have to manually focus with the TX's, again shooting a moon this isn't too much of a problem. A tripod is essential as is either a cable release or using the cameras 10 second timer and I've just remembered mirror lock up, in this example I forgot about mirror lock up but if you have it under your custom functions use it as it reduces shake further. I started to appreciate that the moon is traveling at over 2000 mph and it soon moves from your viewfinder so you need to keep adjusting. When it comes to processing I found the histogram to be quite narrow so you need to stretch it a little either using levels in CS3 or the blacks and exposure sliders in Lightroom (or the tone curve) this results in more contrast. I also had to crop in quite a bit, this can be solved by attaching you camera to a telescope ;-) I took this around sunset so the sky was still quite blue but I converted to mono and dropped the blues right down. The info for this was f/11, ISO100, 560mm, 1/200sec.

More of Snowdonia

Another shot from the same walk as yesterdays post. This one was taken from bristly ridge during our ascent of Glyder Fach but looking back at Tryfan. I didn't use a grad for this shot or a tripod but I did have a polariser on so I had to up the ISO a little and open up the aperture more than usual to compensate for the darkening from the CPL. The exif data was ISO250 f/11, 16mm, 1/125 sec. I originally tweaked it in lightroom and then CS3 but I did another version using dynamic photo which I preferred. If you use Dynamic photo you know a lot of it is experimenting with the sliders and it can be a bit hit and miss, the first thing I always do is drop the colour saturation and the vivid colours back to zero, this goes a long way to remove the 'overcooked' HDR look.

The Castle of the Wind

I was in Snowdonia national park a few days ago to celebrate the start of summer, I was scrambling up mountains with a friend and we found this interesting formation at the top, I say we found it but I imagine there have been plenty of previous founders, this was confirmed when we found out it was called the castle of the wind, a cool name it has to be said. The name is due to the sound that can be heard when the wind passes over the mountain through the sharp rocks. Anyway this one was taken using a 3 stop soft edge ND grad and processed in Lightroom where I added some contrast and a vignette. The exif was ISO200 (I was hand holding) f8, 16mm 1/125 sec. The mountain was called Glyder Fach and I highly recommend it to anyone who likes a bit of scrambling.

Lifestyle Portraits

We did some outdoor shots at the weekend as the sun was out (occasionally) and the oil seed rape was in full bloom, excellent when one of your subjects suffers from hay fever (I only found this out after). We did some posed shots in the studio but the outdoor ones were all pretty much off the cuff, I really liked this one, I thought the pose combined with the balloons was great.

I went for another '300' style processing effect in lightroom with the heavy vignette. This was my first outing with the 70-200 f/2.8 lense and I loved it. It was taken at f/4, 140mm, 1/1250 sec at ISO100. The large aperture and the long focal length made gave great background blur and I think the low angle (basically lying on the road) finished off the effect. It's always good when you don't get shot at by irate farmers!

What the...

I have no idea what was going on when I processed this one, I imagine it didn't make much sense whatever it was. I don't think the image is particularly strong so I think I tried to process it in a zany way to make it better but not 100% sure about the results. I couldn't give you a rundown of the steps to get this as it was all a bit random, I did venture into the world of LAB colour at one point in CS3, but I didn't like what I saw!