Scaffold By Night

Scaffold By Night.

The manflu seems to have passed, now just choked with a cold. As such I didn’t want to leave the house for tonight’s shot, but I was lacking in enthusiasm for Still-Life today, so I went out and explored the building site which is literally over the road from me. It wasn’t the most interesting sky, but there was still a bit of colour breaking through the clouds. So by squeezing my lens through the security fence I was able to get todays shot unobstructed.

I liked the shot as the silhouette of the scaffolding was nice and sharp against the sky, and also there was some background interest with the trees and break in the clouds. The setting used today were, f/7.1, 1/15 sec, ISO-6400

Again, no progress with Lightroom vs Elements on the Mac yet, so this was edited using iPhoto – probably not the best it could be, but I’m reluctant to wait for 15 mins for my laptop to turn on, and then another 20 while Photoshop loads! I’m having far too much fun with my iMac anyway! So for this I just played around with the saturation, contrast and levels, and cropped the image to remove some of the distractions at the side of the shot.

Overall, not my best shot or blog post – but given I still feel pretty rotten, today is just one of those days I’m glad to have got through! Hopefully tomorrow brings more inspiration!

Thanks for reading!

Jake

In Search of Spring

In Search of Spring.

Rumour has it, we’ve now entered Spring. For the UK that inevitably means snow and cold weather. Until that happens I’m happy to stay under the pretence of Winter – especially if we continue to get days like this. I thought today I would go out in the search of getting a flash of colour that would indicate that Spring is here. Unfortunately I think we’re still a week or two away as there wasn’t any sign that the local woodland was beginning to stir.

That being said, there are still corners of the woods that I’m still stumbling across meaning its still a good source of photos. Todays shot is one that I literally stumbled on. Hidden amoungst all the undergrowth I managed to find this log covered in moss just capturing the last of the days light.

As usual the difficulty was getting the focus correct from not being able to get down and use the view finder. I was relying on focusing in Live View, which I think I’ve just about managed today. I like the colours, and the sea of the white from the snow drops in the background. Also the lens flare from the sun coming through the trees gives a nice effect too. The settings for todays shot were; f/8, 1/25sec, ISO-100.

Again, not too much in Photoshop, apart from the usual. I tried a few different compositions by cropping the image, but in the end decided I preferred the composition as I’d captured it in the camera.

Nothing else to really add today – just the obligatory thank you for reading! Thanks!

Jake

Drained

Drained.

Todays title not only explains the subject, it also explains how I’m feeling right now! Football last night, and interval training during my lunch have left me utterly exhausted! And still one more session to go tonight – hurrah! So getting my post in early again tonight in case I don’t have the energy to type!

So, the shot. As you may or may not be able to tell – it’s a manhole cover (further more referred to as the “cover” – manhole is not a word I want to be typing too often!). It’s not exciting and isn’t new. However today, I decided to go out just around the street with my camera, just as the sun was fading, and I noticed how the shadows were exactly in line with the cover. I really liked how long the shadows were, and also the grainy rust that’s now appearing on the cover. After after getting as many different shots and angles as I could while I had the light, I plugged my favourites into Photoshop and started to have a play. Firstly I tried a shot of the full square cover – however as I wasn’t up close the impact of the shadows were signficantly reduced, so in the end I went for this shot instead. It gives a great sense of the grittyness of the cover, and also I love how the shadows are perfectly lined up. Todays settings were; f/5.6, 1/100sec, ISO-100.

In Photoshop it was just a case of cropping the image slightly, and squaring it up a little before playing with the black and white filters (as well as Levels, and Exposure). It’s another image that kind of came from nowhere today, and I must say, I beginning to like these off-the-cuff shots as I’m starting to get some really good shots!

Yet again, thanks for taking the time to have a read of my post (or at least look at my picture!)

Jake

On the Horizon

On the Horizon.

After another mini-adventure today, this photo was taken about 40-yards from my front door. I had decided to go out in the local woodland again and see if I could spot the local deer having thought of away to get around my camera shake issue (Tv Mode – aka Shutter Priority Mode!). But after 45 fruitless minutes of scrambling through trees and boggy water, soaking my trainers in the process and finding nothing except a single robin (who was too far away to fill the frame even at full zoom, so unfortunately his photo was discarded today) I came home to find a rather impressive sky in the fading light.

By resting my telefocal lens on nearby fencing, I was able to reduce the shutter speed down to 1/15 sec but keep the focal length at 75mm which allowed me to keep the contrast between the clouds and the horizon without any camera shake. Nothing more the usual tweaks in Photoshop (exposure, levels and saturation) which made it rather straight forwards today. Certainly not the best photo I’ve taken, and I’m sure there will be better skies for me to capture moving forwards, but it was more fun to shoot than another still-life shot!

I’m hoping to order my own tripod over the next few days, as I have had to return the one I was borrowing, so I should be able to get some better/different shots with that hopefully!

Short and sweet again today, so thanks for reading!

Jake

It’s a tree..

It’s a tree..

Pretty self-explanatory today – I needed to take a trip to the local shops, and thought it would be a good opportunity to take my camera and get todays shot – I need to get in the habit of taking the camera with me everywhere, and seeing at the days light was starting to fade and come into the “Golden Hour” for lighting I thought I could get some good images. Since I’ve been playing with my camera I haven’t really had many opportunities to take some shots during the “Golden Hour” – this is one of the first times I’ve purposely gone out to shoot, and I can really see why people say its the best time for photos – tonight some of the landscapes looked stunnig in the fading light, with the long shadows running across the hill sides. I actually managed to get several nice shots in the end – some took a bit of off-road trekking to get the right shot, but I think this one is best with the orangey-yellow light causing such a contrast to the shadows. I think it was only 5 minutes later that the sun had disappeared completely, so I was lucky to come across the shot when I did.  As an extra bonus my explorations have led to find more bits of woodland which I’d not known about before, so there was some potential other shots in the upcoming days, weeks and months. Not too much playing in Photoshop today (for this shot at least, I will try and post a bit later about my more extensive “Photoshopping” today) , just a minor adjustment to the brightness and contrast. Overall really happy with the shot today, so that with the ideas for future shots, I’d say today has been productive! 🙂

As always, thanks for reading!

Jake