Wedding Photographer, Wakefield, West Yorkshire
Photography
Fine Art Banana
Feb 19th
It’s one of those non portrait or wedding photography posts today which I do from time to time, especially when it’s not wedding season, so if you are a bride looking for a wedding photographer this post may not be of great interest, unless you like off camera flash and/or fine art photos of bananas.
Fine Art Banana
The main reason I’m posting today is I have just received my wireless flash transmitter, the ST-E2 and I was having a quick play round with it. I have had a bunch of pocket wizards for some time now so I’ve done quite a bit of off camera flash stuff but I find they aren’t the quickest things to set up which isn’t ideal for things like wedding photography. The good thing about the ST-E2 is you an just pop it on the camera and set your flashes as slaves and away you go. You don’t have the sort of range you get with the pocket wizards but if you are just taking photos in a room (eg a bride getting ready) these seem to work great. If you have a couple of flashes you can also change the lighting ratios remotely which is pretty cool.
A good understanding of how to use flash both in automatic mode and manual are very important and after a bit of reading around the best way to develop this to just get out your flash(es) and practice. Still life photography is a great way to practice, if you can light something a little bit differently you can make something as plain as a bit of fruit look quite interesting. That’s pretty much all I have done with this shot of a banana from earlier today. I had 2 flashes either side of the banana triggered with the ST-E2, one was direct and one bounced off a nearby wall. My camera was in manual mode but the flashes were in ETTL, one of the main advantages the ST-E2 has over pocket wizards is it’s ability to talk to the camera with the complex infrared bursts just before an exposure. I processed it in black and white with siver efex pro to add a bit of film grain just to give a bit of a fine art feel to the end photograph. So far I am happy with the ST-E2 and hopefully it will give me a few more options when wedding season rolls round.
Motorbike Photography
Feb 8th
I’m going to start doing a bit of motorbike photography, this was quite a quick attempt largely due to the freezing conditions outside. The garage wasn’t the tidiest I’ve seen and there was a car just behind the bike so I had to be careful not to light any of it. There was no ambient light so everything was lit by 3 flashes, one you can see in the top left and another between the car and the bike, both these were hard unmodified lights. The third light was an umbrella just to camera left and this provided the detail to all the chrome. Everything was on full manual and with the flash powers varying from about 1/2 to about 1/64. They were all fired with pocket wizards, the quick mono conversion was done in CS3. Hopefully I’ll be getting out and doing some moving shots with more riders and less lights!More Landscapes
Aug 28th
Thought I’d post a couple of landscapes I got earlier today, I’ve been waiting for the clouds to be just right, they came in a little towards the end but I was quite pleased with these. I did a little dodging and burning both in LR2, with the local adjustment brush and then a little more in CS3. I liked how both images semed to have a different feel to them even though they were only teken about 30 minutes apart. No foreground interest or leading lines in the second one but I thought the sky 
was great.More Black & White Trees
Apr 15th
Thought I would put this one up to keep ticking over, not an award winner I’m afraid but it what can you do. There has been some interesting weather at the moment, plenty of cloud breaks for the sun to peep through (and cloud bursts to soak you and whatever camera gear you have out at the time!). I wanted to do another high contrast mono similar to my infra red shed I posted a while back, which incidentally is being published in the May edition of Practical Photography (out April 23rd) if anyone cares.This was taken at ISO100 f8 16mm 1/100 Sec, I had to use f8 because I was without a tripod and I had a polarizer on. I tweaked it in lightroom and then added a BW adjustment layer in CS3. For anyone who uses Ligthroom, version 2.0 is now out for free beta testing, so you can try it and report any bugs you find.
Merry Christmas Boxing Fans
Dec 25th
Check out the date and time, I was up super early to open some presents but more importantly to edit some photos!
These were some I took yesterday as an impromptu boxing match broke out after my nephew watched Rocky III, it wasn’t the fairest of contests by any stretch of the imagination, I would estimate a weight difference of around 11 stone (154 Lbs) but the little one managed to tuck his opponent up with some lightning left jabs before unleashing his hammer right cross square to the jaw. The second image showed how this electric fighter had the crowd in absolute pandemonium.
It seems in this contest of David and Goliath, David not only triumphed but Goliath ended up eating his Christmas pudding through a straw!
These were some I took yesterday as an impromptu boxing match broke out after my nephew watched Rocky III, it wasn’t the fairest of contests by any stretch of the imagination, I would estimate a weight difference of around 11 stone (154 Lbs) but the little one managed to tuck his opponent up with some lightning left jabs before unleashing his hammer right cross square to the jaw. The second image showed how this electric fighter had the crowd in absolute pandemonium.It seems in this contest of David and Goliath, David not only triumphed but Goliath ended up eating his Christmas pudding through a straw!
I would go into detail about how these shots were taken and processed but it is Christmas morning and I have a few errands to run, Merry Christmas.
