Week 5

Colour. It's everywhere and photographing colour should be easy. Yeah right.

Up here in Northumberland, thereis an absolute abundance of one colour, green. So I had the green angle covered but that would have made for an uninspiring portfolio.

With week 4 being pretty poor, I wanted to get out and find colour, so I headed off to Hulne Park in Alnwick. This vast estate is owned by The Duke of Northumberland and there are various trails the public can use. The day was overcast, so any colour woud have to come from the plants and it took about 30 minutes of walking to find anything useful. Bluebells were growing by the side of a dirt track and without my tripod to steady the camera, I had to hand hold being careful not to let the shutter speed drop too low.

I will have to go back to Hulne Park when the sun is out, there are plenty of landscape shots to be had. However I did find a statue of a monk which proved to be a very patient subject ;) The results I got from the kit lens were really sharp this time, seems you just can't win, and some of those shots are contenders for my ECA.

The building on the left here is Brizlee Tower which was restored in 2005. This is on my to do on sunnier day list, the overcast sky didn't make for a good background hence the B&W conversion.

Back home I set up some still lifes using gumballs and borrowed the kids plant pots. These produced some great shots, I'll let you look at them on flickr, but I will leave you with an old magical favourite....

Week 4

The purpose of week 4 was to introduce us to controlling depth of field and therefore our assignment was to take pictures that demonstrated various levels of it.

I was pushed for time this week and although I got out one day, the results from the 400D kit lens were disppointing again, so I ended up with just two shots showing DoF on a group of three rocks. :(

So I turned my hand to photographing an old TLR camera I was given years ago and used this to show narrow depth of field.

Now I know it's a photography course and you really should use fresh photographs, but I resorted to my library to make up the other photos for the week.

Week 3 - Part Two

I attempted to get photos to complete this weeks assignment last night. My aim was to get low-light, high ISO photos from Alnwck but decided to go down the coast instead, and I must say I am pleased with the results following the disappoint from my Alnwick run when the pictures didn't appear as sharp as they could have done.

I parked up at the beach and found that the tide was out, leaving what sand and some rocks exposed. Above is my initial shot at ISO 1600 but as I was taking pictures I thought about twisting the zoom barrel. I tried going from 18-55, but the best results were from 55-18mm..

The beach where I was at was littered with worms, surely an image waiting to be had. They are protected by local bye-laws to stop fishermen using them as bait.

The sun had already set and the light was refleting of the damp sand, so I sat my tripod down and took a few quick pictures at different exposures to ensure I got one just right. No editing was required.

From there I moved on again and came across fields with rapeseed in. There was an open gate on one so I went in and noticed that one flower head was sticking out above the rest, so making sure I was on ISO 1600, I composed the shot using the rule of thirds and took a few pictures again using the histogram display on my camera to get the exposure right. This needed just a little editing in Elements to enhance the colours.

Week 3

The emphasis on week 3 was exposure and we were asked to take 2 photos for two of the following three categories...

• Creative motion blur in low or normal light conditions
• Low light, high speed (high ISO) still photography
• High contrast photography

I knew that there was a weir on the River Aln near Alnwick Castle, so I hoped that I'd be able to get the weir and the castle in the same photograph. I could have if I had a chainsaw to chop down a tree! The camera was mounted on a tripod and the initial exposure was taken from the green grass on the river bank. From the first shot, I looked at the histogram and noticed some clipping so I reduced the shutter speed by 1/3 stop until it went (On the Canon EOS 400D, ytou can view the histogram by pressing Display when viewing an image, any clipping shows as black then disappears).

Despite using a tripod, most of the images I took either lacked sharpness or suffered from camera shake, so next time I must remember to take my remote control. If the images lack sharpness after that, then I need a new lens!

Walking round the river bank, the view of Alnwick Castle demanded I take it's picture. The river was still creating an almost perfect reflection on the water.

Further on, there is a bridge that crosses the Aln which has an imposing statue of a Lion. this was tricky and I ended up using fill-in flash, however this meant the castle became silhoutted. Luckily, the sun emerged from the clouds and cast a golden glow on the lion and the castle.


Again, this shot doesn't meet the criteria for this week's assignment, had I changed the ISO to 800 or even 1600, then I could have used it.

I need to get out and take more pictures for this assignment and might revisit the Aln but this time with my remote control to reduce camera shake as much as possible

Week 2

In week 2 we were asked to take at least two pictures of somewhere, somebody or something that we really liked. Time was short and so ws inspiration, but at least I was not alone.

A short trip to Sunderland provided me with an opportunity to photograph Roker Pier, but it was mid-afternoon, sunny (unusually for Sunderland) and unfortunately very hazey which didn'tmake for good photography, at least I knew I could enhance the images in Elements once I got home.

This one only needed a little tweaking to enhance the redbricks of the pier and a slight boost to the sky. As for the composition, I saw a similar image elsewhere like this on Flickr and tried to recreate it. While I was on the beach, I took a general shot which got cropped (as per assignment 2 to crop one of the images). Without the father and his child heading to the sea, I doubt this picture would have worked as well.

It's all systems go!

So the course has started and the sound of clicking shutters can be heard across the land.

Having read through the course material, I made a start on the first activity, commenting on 5 interesting photos on Flickr. It's hard work! There are so many fantastic photos on there I ended up choosing a dozen, wrote about each and then whittled it down to 5. The pictures I chose and the comments that go with them are as follows...

http://www.flickr.com/photos/satorarepo/2444661503/
Sol de vila (Curved in temptation) by Sator Arepo
Wow. This picture was quite rightly sat on the Explore homepage. The colours grabbed my attention and the distorted perspective kept me there. The blue of the sky is fairly even which is what makes the picture stand out, the sun is cleverly hid behind a leaf preventing the picture being wshed out. In doing so, we can clearly see the veins in the leaves and this has allowed the detail to be retained in the branch.
My eyes have been around every corner of this image and I can't see how this could be improved.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/estradasbiz/2436953532/
olhar by Igor Alecsander
This is sharp, well focussed and brilliantly done. The skin tone has a pale brownish cast to give a hint of sepia while the retention of the colours in the eyes really make this shot vivid and stand out.
I am being picky here, but I'd clone out the loose hair above the left eye.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/pianomom/2439150536/
When Ducks Attack by CrzysChick
A well captioned picture and good timing. The depth of field in this shot leaves the duck itself in focus while everything else is blurred. Strong greens boost the overall effect of the image.
this could be improved by cropping out about half of the foreground between the bottom of the frame and the duck, giving a panoramic effect, emphasising the direction of the other ducks. I'd also clone out the person in pink and straighten the horion.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jamesdale10/2436374868/
Nawaful, Iraq by James Gordon
A rundown, dirty, dilapadted shanty that hasn't been cared for, probably shot at too, yet despite this, the child peers through and manages a smile. This certainly tells a thousand words. Technically the photo is superb, the childs face is nicely in focus leaving the frame in the foreground out of focus.
I wouldn't change anything about this picture.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/pairadocs/2447788308/
Birdhouse in Your Soul by pairadocs
This shot oozes quality. The textures of the wall and telegraph pole, the low angled perspective, the monotone effect and comedy too.
I'd lose the mess of cabling at the top and crop across the bottom corner of the sign, making a more dramatic picture with the telegraph pole running from corner to corner.

Acivity 1.7.1

In this activity, we were asked to take 3 photos of bottles showing light, colour and perspective. My initial attempts saw me placing a Martini bottle on a chair next to the window which wasn't really working at all, so as the sun was high in the sky, I headed outside to use the garden table as a makeshift studio and came up with 4 photos that I really liked.

The brief was to take no more than 20 minutes on this task, however I decided that taking a photo of one bottle on it's own with a noisy backdrop wasn't going to be up to much, so I took some bottles out of the glass recycling bin, washed them and filled one bottle, Absolut Vodka, with water to get the light bending through it. As you can probably guess, this took a lot longer than 20 minutes.

Had I been paying attention at the time, I'd have noticed that the horizontal line across the bottom of the bottle was actually at 45 degrees, so I used the Straighten (and Crop) tool in Elements to get the result you see here. No other editing was done to this picture.

Going for the perspective here, I tried shooting this from below but the enclosed yard didn't help. One way I had a garage, another the house! So I went for the top-down approach and focussed on the figure. It wasn't until after I took this shoot that I noticed the blue hues in the bottle, reflecting from the Absolut Vodka lettering I assume.

Colour. I used several green wine bottles in this task to add colour to a clear bottle. I like the end result, especially the label showing through the bottom of the bottle.

Now this is my favourite of all these and a contender for my ECA panel at the end of course. It has already received very positive comments on Flickr and OpenStudio....

I can't really see a way of improving this. B/W draws attention to the
reflections and adds interest and intrigue as to what the colours are. Sort of
picture you would see in an advertisement. (Spike on OpenStudio)

Andy this is absolutely superb great focus nothing distracting the image is strong clear and punchy, the lighting enhances the writing on the bottle and gives the picture a very moody feel (Shadysheepie on Flickr)

Using the Convert to Black & White function in Elements, I increased the red channel and increased the contrast. My first attempt turned the lettering white which meant the A blended into the highlight.