Wedding Photographer, Wakefield, West Yorkshire
Posts tagged Photography
Dunstanburgh Castle Landscape Photography
Apr 29th
Dunstanburgh castle in Northumberland
I was up at Dunstanburgh Castle in Northumbria on a bit of a motorbike/photography trip with a friend recently when I got this photo. Unfortunately there wasn’t much of a sunset and there was even less of a sunrise but we did the best with the light we had. Dunstanburgh castle is a very photogenic location, with waves rolling in over the large round boulders as foreground interest and the ruined castle on the hill top it gives the landscape photographer numerous opportunities to create a great image. A great sky would really set the image off but as the clouds weren’t really dancing I made sure the sky wasn’t really the focal point, one of the ways this was done was by positioning the horizon on the top third as opposed to the bottom. I wanted the motion of the waves to appear misty, this was done by having the camera on bulb mode and keeping the shutter open for 90 seconds (a very opaque neutral density filter such as a 10-stop is pretty essential for long exposures).
Yamaha XVS 1300 Midnight Star
Mar 16th
Motorbike Photography
I had quite a few shoots over the weekend so I unwound a little by taking some photos, strange I know! I’ve noticed from some of my web traffic that the motorbike photography gets quite a lot of visitors, not surprisingly looking for the Yamaha XVS 1300 midnight star, it would be handy if they were getting married but I suspect they see the photo and are drawn in expecting a top notch review of the bike and are probably a little disappointed when all they get are a few camera techniques. If you are one of these visitors, no review needed, you should just go and get one of these, I love mine!
Yorkshire Dales Three Peaks Walk Photography
Mar 9th
We did the three peaks walk in the Yorkshire dales at the weekend, which is a 26 mile all day walking affair over 3 of the peaks in the dales, (Pen-y-ghent, Whernside and Ingleborough) and had some of the best landscapes Yorkshire has to offer. I had seen a similar photography idea that I wanted to try during the walk, it basically involved taking a photo every minute or so for about 12 hours, it got quite tedious after about 15 minutes, especially going up the hills and finding 3 feet of frozen snow on the tops but it was worth it in the end and the weather was pretty stunning too.
I also managed to get a couple of usable landscape photographs at some points that I have used at the start of the video to set the scene, I’ll put these up in a post soon.
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.
Depth of Field
Jan 14th
Another no photo post today I’m afraid, I’ve now forgotten what the sun looks like! I was out doing a bit of remote shooting with the pocket wizards today, I use the PW’s for off camera flash but I’ve recently got a cord that connects the wizards to the shutter release so I can fire the camera from a mile away. Unfortunately my tests yielded some of the worst photos I have ever taken so I won’t be posting any but I’ve ironed out the kinks and should have some up soon.
I did have to use web resource that I haven’t been on for a while as I was trying to do some Depth of field calculations. Depth of field is a term used when talking about how much of a photo is in focus and is not an easy concept to begin with but it soon becomes second nature. Portraits are a good example of photos that have a very low depth of field, they (usually) have a nice background blur with just the subjects face, or more specifically eyes, in focus, this draws in the viewers attention. Landscapes on the other hand usually have a large depth of field so everything is in focus from the foreground to the back ground. There are many factors that you can change to alter the depth of field, the main ones being:
Lens aperture – Lower the f number the smaller the DOF, so f/2.8 has a much shallower DOF than f/16)
Focal length – Wider focal lengths have higher DOF, so 24mm has a larger DOF than 200mm)
Subject distance – As the subject gets closer (or the working distance decreases) the DOF becomes less
Sensor size also plays a part with larger full frame sensors having less DOF than smaller crop sensors but this is not a variable that can easily be changed.
Anyway the simulator I was using, which explains things visually better than I have above is Here. With this DOF simulator you can see the current depth of field and how changing things like aperture and focal length can effect things, this is very useful if you need to know how wide your DOF will be if you have settings X,Y and Z. The site it is on, Liquid Sculpture, is also a great site with some fantastic water drop shots, well worth checking out.
Inspiration
Jan 13th
No photos to post today so I feel a bit stingy but the weather has been pretty shocking of late, we were a bit spoilt with all the snow and clear blue skies last week! So I thought I’d write a little bit about some of the sources I use for inspiration when I can’t get out to take photos for whatever reason.
Talk Photography – This is a forum I’ve used quite a lot in the past not only for inspiration but it’s also great learning resource. It really helps develop a critical eye for both others photos and your own, this becomes very important when you are out composing photos. There is always a little voice saying “what would that lot on TP make of this?” There is an issue of some people being overly critical and believe me, photographers are the most critical when it comes to, well, photographs. You sometimes question their validity to criticise but everyone has an opinion, if you can learn without taking too much to heart you will develop as a photographer.
Stumbleupon – I’ve only got into this recently but it’s great, you basically register and put in your interests (photography) and start stumbling. I’ve got a toolbar on firefox now where I just click and it’ll take me to some obscure site showing great photos, you can even say if you like it or not to get it noticed by others. I’ve found some great photos and resources just by stumbling.
Flickriver – This shows some of the best photos out there on flickr for a particular day, and there are hundreds, daily! It’s across a whole range of subjects so there is plenty of inspiration. Definitely worth a look.
Twitter – Again I’m kind of new to twitter but it’s a great way to meet others with the same interests, there are loads of big photographers who twitter a lot and the info is really good stuff. Other photographers are great for inspiration, just to look at the sort of images they are putting out, how they light and compose images. I always think looking at photos is a great way of learning, you absorb them somehow and they come back to you when you are out with the camera.
Flickr Maps – Flickr is great for photos but there are quite a lot to wade through and some of them have, ahem, limited appeal. The maps tool though is great, especially if you want to get out and don’t have any place in particular to go to. I put the map on an area I’m interested in (usually about a 10 mile radius of my house) then just search for landscapes, if an interesting shot comes up I see where it is on the map and get down there. It’s important not to go and try and replicate a shot but it helps open your eyes to landscapes that could just be on your door step.
It’s not always easy to keep inspired and more often than not you can go out and come back with nothing, but hopefully some of these links will inspire you to go out and get some shots. To quote Ansel Adam:
“Landscape photography is the supreme test of the photographer – and often the supreme disappointment.”
I’ve posted one of his shots below, he knew his way around a camera!
The Tetons and the Snake River