Friday night...in a corn field

Went out this evening as the sky looked like it was going to light up the modest amount of cloud cover and I ended up, as I do more times than I'd like to admit, in a field with absolutely no foreground interest. I pulled out the 10 stop filter, to try and do something with the movement of the clouds and the corn, I thought the hill and the trees to the bottom right almost had a Tuscan feel, well, about as Tuscan as you can get in Northern England.Anyway I didn't spend too long editing it, mainly removing the magenta cast from the long exposure filter by adjusting the white balance in lightroom. The exif data was 20mm, f/11 cooked for 30 seconds at ISO400, 400 I know, and it was still slightly underexposed, I get a little nervous above ISO400, I don't know why because the 5D handles noise really well.

I was lacking in inspiration with my wide angle but saw Emely moor mast in the distance looked like it was about to get swallowed up by the storm so I swapped to the 70-200 and zoomed to 200 to eliminate any distractions. I could have done with the clouds being a little more side lighted by the low sun but there you go. This was taken at f/8, 1/40 ISO200. I was ok going to 1/40 at 200m as I was on the tripod but as a rule you should always have the shutter no slower than the focal length to avoid any camera movement. ie 400mm should ideally be taken at 1/400 or faster, 16mm you can get down to 1/16 (actually 1/15) but that is about the limit of hand holding for shots I find.I've also cropped to a 2:1 ratio for these shots, I quite like this widescreen, panoramic look and it works well with these as there wasn't much going on at the top and bottom of the frame.

Have a good weekend folks.

Marketing Material

Hey folks, not posted for a while, it's pretty quiet at the moment although I have been accepted to an exhibition in Skipton called art in the pen. It's an art exhibition in a livestock pen, I think it's pretty trendy, it was started in 2006 and has been growing pretty steadily, you never know it could be my cavern club! It's here if you want a look. I've done a bit of business type stuff recently that I don't usually go into on my blog but I am doing today as I haven't been out with the camera recently. These are the layout for my trifolios, they are cards that fold in on themselves so they can stand freely and just give people a chance to see some of my work. They are easy enough to design if you know your way around photoshop. I get them printed by my pro lab called Loxley Colour. Just got to drop them in at some local shops now.

More Beach Photography

Two more beaches from Harris, these probably count as the same beach but one is a little bit hidden. They aren't short of white beaches and blue seas up there, unless you go to the east side and then it's rocks and more rocks, the change in landscape over such a short distance has to be seen to be believed. The fist shot was another with the 10 stop ND filter and a 90 second exposure at f/11 (ISO100) one of the key things I learnt whilst doing this was to stand and position your shadow over the camera and tripod, this gets rid of any glare from the sun. I'd always read about shielding the sun but my hand always ended up in the shot. If I'm not behind the camera I may as well make myself useful and stand at the side! This technique cannot be done in the second photo as the sun is in shot, producing the glare, it can be removed in post but I wanted to keep it in on this one. Nothing overly tricky with this one, ISO100 16mm, f/16 for 1/3 sec. I had a 3 stop soft grad to make the sky play ball and tried to compose so the lines (rocks, sand etc) lead to the sun.

Cat bells and Derwent Water

We were in the lake district for New Years day and decided to beat the crowds and climb cat bells early on. The weather was great with no clouds and no wind so when the sun came up and lit up the Derwent valley it was difficult to take a bad shot.

We were taking pictures all the way up and concentrating on using the sun to side light the hill. There was a lot of frost about so frozen rocks and vegetation was good for foreground interest. I had a 3 stop graduated filter on because I didn't want to blow out the sun and the sky, this often gives a star burst effect which I quite like but you sometimes get a bit of flare somewhere else in the shot (usually right on the focal point) but this is easily correctable in photoshop, try to keep your lenses and additional filters free from any dust of finger prints to minimise this.
Again it's often easier to go on full manual and dial in your aperture and then play around with your shutter speed to get the exposure you want, it's not always best to let the camera decide, especially if you have a lot of contrast in the scene. The first shot was taken at ISO100 16mm, f/16 for 1/5 sec.
The shot from the jetty was taken later on when the sun was well up, however as it is winter you get a nice low sun for a lot of the day. This was a 10 second exposure to really take any movement out of the water in the lake. I also set the aperture to f/22 and the ISO to 50. On my canon you have to set expanded ISO to on in your custom settings. To slow things down further I slapped on a 6 stop ND filter (basically thick sunglasses for your lens) this allowed me to get the exposure time to 10 seconds.

1 Strobe, Choose your background

Hi folks, I've been playing with my pocket wizards again just experimenting with exposures with one flash off camera and some light coming in from the window. This was quite a quick setup in the living room with no clear backgrounds, I have done a shot to demonstrate what was in the background (a couch!). I didn't have any willing subjects so I had to use my wii guitar.

I think ambient exposure was about 1/100 at 2.8 ISO400. From this I can now choose if the background can be blown out white or Black, obviously for a white background there also needs to be something lighting your subject or you would get a silhouette, in this case the light came from the window.

So to blow out the background I had my flash pointed at the ceiling at 1/4 power, my camera set to 2.8 ISO400, 1/200sec, the window light exposed the guitar and the flash blew out the background.

Now to make the background black I had to eliminate all ambient light so I set my camera to 1/200 (I couldn't go any quicker as this is the 5D's x-sync speed) ISO100 and f16. The drop in ISO and aperture would also reduce the effect of the flash. The flash was now lighting the guitar, it was still at 1/4 power but I set the zoom (on the flash) to 85mm to reduce the spread and had it coming in from about 45 degrees to the right, this was important as I didn't want any spill onto the background, not to mention the horrible sharp shadow it would have produced. Instead of increasing or decreasing the power of the flash I just changed the distance between flash and subject and thats about it. I did a very minor tweak in lightroom to ensure the blacks were black and the whites were white but nothing else.

Autumn Leaves

This post is in celebration of my first posted article on a few article sites, I'll post the article here too as it is advice after all, this shot is a macro from last year but I'm going to get some better ones when the leaves start to turn this year. Anyway here's the article:

Leaves are a very popular subject when it comes to autumnal photography due to their great variation in colour at this time of year. If you are creative these subjects can offer great photographic potential. Here are 5 quick tips to make sure you make the most of the autumn weather

1. Ice – As the temperature drops outside leaves invariably become frozen in puddles, these can produce great photos. You can always pour cold water on the ice to remove the crystals and give it a really clear look, conversely you can scratch the surface to add some interest. If you can’t wait for the temperature to drop you can always stick some leaves in a water filled plastic container and freeze it overnight, just remember to fill your frame when you take the shot.
2. Falling leaves – As the leaves start to fall a rich carpet of yellows and reds starts to form. To get a sense of leaves falling without having to wait for a strong gust just ask an assistant to drop some whilst you snap away. Aim for a wide aperture to blur the background and go for shutter speeds of between ½ sec and 1/30 to get a sense of motion, you may need an overcast day or a neutral density filter as with the aperture wide open at this speed you may over expose during the day.
3. Soft focus – A quick, cheap way of adding a soft focus filter to your lens is adding a clear piece of plastic to the front of the lens (Clingfilm) and breathing on it, or on your UV filter if you have one. This will add a soft ethereal feel to your shots, just remember if you are breathing on your filters to give them a good clean after.
4. Back lighting – A great way to capture the vivid autumn colours is use the sun to back light them. This works great if you can shoot with a dark, shaded background. Remember if the back ground is dark the leaves may over expose so dial in a -1 stop to compensate and keep the darks dark and correctly expose the leaves. If the background is very bright you’ll have to add +1 stop to stop the leaves under exposing.
5. Get low, go wide – To really emphasise the coloured carpets so abundant in Autumn, fit a wide angle lens and get low down, focusing on a close leaf and fill the frame with the leaves going away into the distance, open spaces such as parks are great for this.