Checkmate

Checkmate.

So this is my first post via the iPad, so hopefully it works as it should! Today’s shot is from my Dad’s chess set that he purchased on a trip to Russia a few years ago. I love the hand crafted pieces, the detail in each piece is just magnificent!

I took a bit of time to set up the shot – I’m not a massive chess player, but I am pretty sure it was actually checkmate! The settings used for today’s shot were f/6.3, 1/60 sec, ISO-2000. I also captured the shot using the camera’s black and white setting as I knew I’d be really limited with the software on the iPad.

So using my little SD card reader I was able to upload the picture onto the iPad, and using the in-built software I was actually able to add the sepia effect, and that was pretty much all that I could do!

I’m really pleased with the final result, I like the contrast between the black and white and also the sharpness of the foreground image.

With new surroundings brings new inspiration, so hopefully i can capture another interesting shot tomorrow!

Thanks all.

Jake.

iPost Office

iPost Office.

It’s a wonder you can’t do everything on the internet yet. And to be honest, I’m disappointed my new iMac doesn’t so some of these remedial tasks for me. I mean, surely there’s an App for Passport Renewal? Well – apparently not. Today, despite not being 100% I had to walk back to the High Street to get my passport renewal forms checked by the Post Office. As always, I went with camera in tow to make sure I got the daily shot. Our High Street is particularly nice actually. The majority of shops are all independent shops – there is a Co-op and Lloyds Pharmacy, and that’s it! There’s a nice butcher, a fish-monger, several bakers – but as yet, I am still to discover the Candlestick maker.

So, the shot. Well, as it was the main reason for my trip outdoors, I thought it may as well be the main subject of my photo for the day. As you can see from the sharpness of the shadows, it’s been another sunny day, so getting the shot was particularly easy today. The setting used today were f/7.1, 1/320 sec, ISO-100.

The actual challenge would be get it looking nicer using my new toy. I haven’t yet decided if I am going to down the Photoshop Elements or Lightroom path on my new iMac – I still have my old laptop with Photoshop (I’m not daft enough to pay for a new version of Photoshop – yet!), but I thought I’d see what the in-built tools on the iMac are like, so todays shot was edited using iPhoto. It’s surprisingly sophisticated – you can play with all the usual settings that I normally do adjust (levels, contrast, saturation etc…) and there are even options for cropping, rotating etc.. and even (to my relief) a Black and White filter. While you are restricted to the levels of adjustment, it’s still pretty useful for quick touching up of images.

That being said, I’m still not used to moving everything around in iPhoto. From what I’ve seen it’s not like a normal image viewing app – you can’t just save an image to a directory and then it appears – I need to manually add it to an “event” to be able to view it.. but these are just my initial playings.. I’m sure I’ll eventually get the hang of it!

I might do another post later on my findings so far with the iMac, and share a few more hints and tips that I’ve discovered, in case any one has recently switched over from a PC to a Mac.

As ever, thank you for taking the time to read my ramblings.

Jake.

The Day Has Arrived

The Day Has Arrived.

I have been waiting for this day for a very long time. I’m not usually one to shout things from the rooftops, but today I took delivery of my first ever iMac. And she is beautiful. Having already been inducted into Apple technology, with the iPod, iPhone and iPad, I have always wanted to own an iMac. It’s taken several years for me to get my hands on one, but today is that day. Unfortunately I’m not 100% to be able to play with my new toy too much as I have been struck down with manflu. So it’s just a quick introduction then back on the sofa today.

As a result, todays blog will be very short – so I chose todays shot, out of simplicity more than anything. I haven’t setup any photo editing software yet, so this is straight from the SD card. Not my best, but I have no desire to be on the floor playing with settings today. The settings for this f/3.5, 1/160 sec, ISO-1250.

Nothing too much to say about this one today – hopefully feeling better tomorrow when I can spend a bit more time thinking about my shot.

Thanks everyone!

Jake.

Morning Raindrops

Morning Raindrops.

A break from the pattern today. Two colour photos in a row! I was actually able to get todays shot before 9am, which is also a first I think!
Another morning of glorious sunshine today, and I noticed the raindrops were just sitting on the washing line (that I hadn’t put away since “Chasing the Wind“) and they were just catching the morning sunshine. So before I started work I waded in out into our soaked garden and captured a few shots. It also reminded me if we ever get a long enough dry spell I MUST cut that grass!!

I chose this shot as I like how I’ve got multiple reflections in the drops, and also I like the nice bright colours of the blue sky, cream walls and the red roof tiles. They make a nice contrast for the morning shot. The only real difficult I had was trying to focus on the washing line as it blew in the breeze! The settings for this shot were f/13, 1/100 sec, ISO-100. Really easy is such fantastic light. Once I got it in Photoshop, I only tweaked the levels slightly – there was no need to mess with the colour as they were perfect anyway. All that was remaining was to crop the shot slightly.

I’d have liked to get in closer with a macro lens to get this shot, but I was stuck with the 8cm focussing distance on my 18-55mm lens. I am now beginning to find the limits of my equipment – much to the frustration of my wife, who already thinks I’m planning spend too much on my photography (and she’s probably right). So my current shopping list now includes a 50mm prime lens, then either a macro lens or a macro reversing ring, as well as a tripod, some ND and Polarizing filters – oh and not forgetting the remote control and lens cases as well. I think I need a second job! My birthday isn’t until October, so that’s a long wait!! I’ll try scouring eBay for some bargains in the meantime!

As always, thanks for taking the time to have a read.

Jake.

Please (B)olt the Gat(e)

Please (B)olt the Gate(e)

More colour today. Hurrah! We were out for a nice Sunday lunch today, and this gate and grass area was just outside the restaurant. I’d actually planned the gate to part of a wider shot as we walked to the restaurant, however when we came out and car had parked exactly where I wanted to capture the shot. As I walked through the gate looking for inspiration I noticed on the other side was this dilapidated sign ‘Please olt the Gat’. I liked the detail within the shot so I chose this to try and capture the rust and the spider webs either side of the sign.

It was a pretty overcast sky, so I knew I didn’t want to incorporate much of that in my shot, and I also wanted the focus to be drawn to the gate, and not the brightly coloured bushes in the background. So using a relatively high aperture, I was able to blur the background and ensure focus is kept on the gate. The settings I used for this shot were; f/7.1, 1/125 sec, ISO-640. I was quite please how crisp the final shot was actually, so it didn’t take too much work in Photoshop, just tweaking the levels and exposure (again) before rotating the shot to square it up a little before cropping.

Simple, yet effective. I like it. Hope you do to.

Thanks for reading.

Jake.

Surfin’ USA

Surfin’ USA.

Nope, certainly not a fan of the Beach Boys – but it’s been a while since I posted a movie or music related title, so I thought – why not?
Another black and white shot today – just looking back at my previous shots, I’ve alternated between colour, and monotone for the past 12 days. Very strange. Well, happy to keep up the pattern anyway.

So this is a souvenir from our Honeymoon in 2012. A trip of a life time to Hawaii. Needless to say, we loved it for every single second we were out there, and I’d go back in an instant – if it didn’t take the almost 25 hrs door to door. So this little souvenir sits on our lamp table as a wee reminder of what the sea feels like when it’s had some heat into it!

So the shot itself, is relatively simple – I just setup the shot with my white backboards and captured with the following settings; f/4.5, 1/80 sec, ISO-400.
I took a few at different angles, but had a pretty good idea what I wanted to achieve tonight, and it didn’t take too long to capture.

Once in Photoshop, it was just a case of cropping down the image, converting to black and white and playing with the levels and gamma before applying a little vignette and some grain to give it a bit of retro feel. Based on what I wanted to take tonight, it was mission accomplished (in my opinion!) – with the added bonus of a relatively quick shot, edit and blog post. Now time to relax after a busy (and stressful) day. Oh and by the way – No, I didn’t order my tripod, but I did treat myself to one or two other things instead! Maybe they’ll get a blog post of their own soon!

Thanks for reading.

Jake

Field of Light

Field of Light

Another late post – sorry folks! We were out in Edinburgh last night, and to my surprise I found that the Field of Light exhibition was still ongoing in St. Andrews Square. I’d known it had started a few weeks back, but didn’t have the opportunity to get out to see it, and I had assumed I had missed it. So I was thrilled to be able to capture some shots last night. The whole exhibition consists of 9,500 lighted glass spheres on stems which slowly change different colours across the entire square. It’s quite an impressive sight to behold.

I really need to get my tripod ordered. I was struggling again last night with camera shake due to the low light conditions. So only a handful of images I captured were any good. Another issue I had was from the lighting of the surrounding builds. They look great, but in the background of my shots they really did detract from the lights. It also didn’t help that it was absolutely freezing last night, and I wasn’t suitable prepared so my hands were frozen stiff. This meant it was a case of getting some shots quickly and getting back to the car to defrost as soon as possible! So settings for last nights shot were f/3.5, 1/6 sec, ISO-1600.

So looking at my pictures this morning, it wasnt difficult to pick a shot due to so many being rubbish. However, I am pleased with the shot I’ve chosen. In Photoshop I cropped the image down to remove the distracting background, and also added a Channel Mixer layer to boost the blues in the shot slightly. Other than that the image didn’t need much rework. I did play around with some other filters, but nothing really worked, so decided to leave it as you see it now. The lights are kind of hypnotic, and in the final image they look like something out of the movie “Tron” (which I love by the way). I like the cables and how they’ve caught the light and all feed back to the central ‘hub’ – it’s like futuristic nervous system. I like it anyway!

Plans for today include buying some new gloves and ordering my tripod. Which is on top of a list of 100 other things to do today, so had better get cracking.

Thanks all.

Jake.

Music Without Sound

Music Without Sound.

Evening everyone! Today’s post will be real quick one, as I’m shattered, and would like to return to my sofa as quickly as possible! Back to home comforts this evening, but in the end I’ve not really needed Photoshop – just my portable studio. As I’m kinda lacking my usual enthusiasm today, I knew it would be a still-life shot. I think I am getting more comfortable with my still-life shots now though – I think I’m beginning to see that you can capture of shot of almost anything and make it interesting, which is definitely helping me when I can’t get out and about to get a nice scenic or wildlife shot.

So today is just a shot of my noise cancelling earphones. My saviour on long journeys. They normally sit above me in my office and just as I went to turn my laptop on to load up Photoshop, I noticed them out of the corner of my eye. So I started shooting using the white side of my backing card, but soon found the contrast was a bit too much, so flipped onto the black side of the card and tried again. I knew I’d be using a very shallow depth of field to make the shot interesting, but it was just a case of getting the sharpness in the focal point of the shot. The settings for todays shot are; f/4.5, 1/50sec, ISO-6400.

This isn’t actually a converted black and white image – all I’ve done in Photoshop is adjust the contrast slightly, and increase the yellow tint a tiny little bit. I tried converting it into black and white, but in the end I like the warmth that the yellow tungsten light gives the shot. I also decide the image didn’t need any additional graining, so in the end it was only a minor adjustments that were needed. Just what I wanted tonight!

Seeing as this was meant to be short post, I can see I’ve managed to ramble on again! Hopefully a decent nights sleep will rejuvenate the enthusiasm for tomorrow! Thanks for sticking with it!

Jake.

A Well Used Pan

A Well Used Pan.

As I’d mentioned this morning, I’ve not been at home to be able to utilise Photoshop for today’s image. So I’ve only been able to use what software was on my mother-in-law’s PC to get a bit creative with todays shot. So it was a case of finding something interesting and getting pretty much the shot I wanted in the camera!

So I found this well used baking tray in my mother-in-laws kitchen, and decided that would probably be my shot of the day immediately. The colours on the tray were great – so it was just a case of getting the right settings on the camera to capture the shot that I wanted. So after 30 or so different shots of different angles and settings, this is the photo I finally chose. The settings for this one were; f/4.5, 1/50sec ISO-1600.

For editing, I found that there was some Canon software already installed on the PC – Digital Photo Professional, which allowed me to play with saturation and the levels (a surprisingly sophisticated tool actually). Once I’d got the colours the way I’d wanted, it was just a case of rotating and cropping the image accordingly. The shot also looked pretty good in black and white, but seeing as yesterdays shot was also black and white, I thought it’d be best to keep the colour!

So overall I’m pretty happy with todays shot. Like I said, I liked the colours in the tray, and also the large aperture gave a nice depth of field, and I’ve managed to get a sharp point of focus on the rim too. I might try getting another shot here again for tomorrows shot as I’m not sure what time I’ll be home to play around in Photoshop, but we’ll see what the day brings. Not the most exciting picture or blog post – but like I’ve said before – they can’t all be exciting and stunning shots!

As always, a pleasure writing for you folks. Thanks.

Jake.

Alone in the Dark

Alone in the Dark.

I was busy last night so I didn’t get chance to post, but I did manage to get a photo taken. This is a shot I’d been planning for about a week or so. I just needed the car park spaces to be empty outside our house. I’d noticed the light fall onto a neighbours car last week and thought it’d make a cool shot – but thought it’d be fairer if I photographed my own car. So had to wait a few days for it to be empty.

It was a pretty straight forward shot to capture again, the settings I used were f/4.5, 1/20sec ISO-6400. I took a number of shots at different angles and using slightly different exposures, but 1/20sec was about right to reduce the glare from the light, and still give enough detail in the car. I chose this shot as it makes the car look a little more isolated as there are no lights on in the houses behind, from other angles you can see other lights which draw the viewers eyes away from the subject of the photo.

Nothing much needed in Photoshop, I didn’t even bother with messing with the levels, only added a Black and White layer, before blurring the number plate. (Never can be too careful online!)

Todays shot will be a more of a challenge as I am not going to be coming home today, so I will need to take a shot good enough to post without any post-production work needed, as I won’t have my laptop (Photoshop) with me! Hopefully I can come up with something half decent!

Thanks for reading

Jake.