Paul's blog has moved to: blog.pmstudios.co.uk

Digital pinhole 3rd attempt

2012-01-30T21:51:00.002Z

I am trying to get a decent pinhole camera effect using a digital camera: This is the best I have achieved so far. Most pinhole camera techniques is a pinhole of some kind to image directly on the camera sensor. … Continue reading →

Beginner’s tutorial on close-up photography

2012-01-29T19:07:00.002Z

I have been writing a tutorial on how to take close-up photographs using an entry level compact camera: This is the final photograph from the tutorial. It was taken with a Canon A470 which is one of Canon’s basic cameras … Continue reading →

Bird’s nest in the garden

2012-01-22T22:13:00.000Z

This nest was found while weeding an overgrown part of the garden last spring: I had forgotten about these images until I started working through some of my photo libraries. Last April I was digging out a badly overgrown part … Continue reading →

How sharp is this budget lens? (a technical post)

2012-01-18T08:11:00.002Z

I have read posts that suggest that, when stopped down, a budget lens can almost equal a more expensive one. I have decided to put this to the test with my old, budget, film era, 75-300mm Canon lens. For this … Continue reading →

Another session of different lighting a flower

2012-01-18T08:06:00.001Z

Learning from my previous trials, I tried some different ways of lighting another sample of the Christmas Cactus flower: This is an edited image of the first example. This is not back-lit image, but the first setup shot. The flower … Continue reading →

Green Woodpecker spotted

2012-01-09T22:15:00.000Z

I always carry a camera even when popping out to get a newspaper: I went out to my local petrol station to buy a newspaper at about 10 o’clock one morning a couple of days ago and, as I pulled … Continue reading →

Trying out back-lighting a flower

2012-01-07T20:30:00.000Z

I have been experimenting with back-lighting a flower of a Christmas Cactus – here are some of the results: All these photos are as ‘just out of the camera’ – they have not been ‘Photoshopped’, just re-sized and watermarked. As … Continue reading →

Checking out lens focusing (A technical post)

2012-01-03T20:29:00.000Z

Something I have been meaning to do for some time is to check the focusing of my lenses – my camera has a focus ‘micro adjustment’ feature. I had previously done this for a 50mm lens I bought last year, … Continue reading →

Further Experiments with portrait lighting

2011-12-31T20:27:00.000Z

At a recent camera club workshop, I did some more experiments with portrait lighting: I organise some photography workshops for my camera club where a group of like-minded members practice their photographer skills. Earlier in December we had a portrait … Continue reading →

Experimenting with portrait lighting

2011-12-22T20:24:00.000Z

I have been experimenting with lighting for portraits: In this example, taken in my kitchen at home, the scene is lit by two off-camera flashguns. To the right of the camera is a dedicated flashgun on a tripod connected to … Continue reading →

Learning about my studio flash

2011-12-20T21:54:00.000Z

I originally learnt the basics of how to use my studio flash back in April last year by attending a course on portrait photography run by a professional photographer. What has always puzzled me since then is that, although my … Continue reading →

Moving the blog

2011-12-11T20:48:00.001Z

For a number of reasons, I have decided to move the blog to a Wordpress system hosted on my own website. You can see this at:

http://blog.pmstudios.co.uk/

Late November visit to East Ruston Old Vicarage

2011-12-03T20:20:00.001Z

I am privileged to be able to visit this garden out of season:
(images can be seen in my new blog http://blog.pmstudios.co.uk/2011/12/late-november-visit-to-east-ruston-old-vicarage-2/)

The public visiting season to this garden finishes at the end of October. I have wanted to see how the garden looks over the winter season - this year I have my chance. Last week I made my first 'out of season' visit to the garden and it didn't disappoint, although it did help to choose a fine, sunny day with mostly blue sky. It was a bit windy though which spoilt some of the photos.

This first view was taken in the Dutch Garden. Even though the garden is closed it still looks immaculate. The main difference was that all the large pots had been emptied an refilled with soil. I saw some were being planted up with bulbs. One of the greenhouses that is normally accessible on open days was full of overwintering pots of aeoniums and crassulas having been dug out of the front garden. Another greenhouse had agaves.

As I walked around, I tried to find views I hadn't seen before, or viewpoints to give a different perspective. I had never been able to get a really good image of the Paper Lady statue. However, By taking a child's-eye view, I think I have managed to get something a bit more striking:

One of my favourite gardens is the Exotic Garden with its fountain and pond. Although it took a few goes to get it, I like this autumnal view of the pond and the pergola with the low sun illuminating the upper part of the structure. The reflection gives a nice symmetry to the image.

At the bottom 'corner' of the garden is an area that doesn't appear to be visited as much as the others. This has a silver birch avenue with red stemmed dogwood to the sides. The low autumn sun made the dogwood glow a brilliant red as you can see here:

What a brilliant contrast it makes with the blue sky, white trunks and green foliage.

You can see the full set of photos taken on this visit in my gallery devoted to this garden.

Trying something different

2011-11-27T19:30:00.000Z

I have been experimenting with some of the photos taken at East Ruston Old Vicarage:

It started with this view taken inside one of the greenhouses. I felt it would benefit from a sepia toned monochrome to give an 'old-time' feel. Although it worked well enough, I thought it could do with something extra. This lead to this version:

I will not go into the technical details here, but by blending in the original colour image, it has brought out an orange glow to some of the subject, such as the leaves in the middle of the top half of the photo. I quite liked the effect so I tried it on some others. Some worked better than others.

With this one, the tree leaves to the top right went to a light grey which tended to dominate the view. So I had to do further work to tone them down:

This is the original effect on a scene in the California Border, with the statue as the prime subject:

For comparison, this is the original colour image:

And for this version, I have given it a red tint:

Feel free to comment to let me know what you think of these experiments. The full set of originals can be seen in my gallery.

Stockton Church

2011-11-18T14:45:00.000Z

I was commissioned to take a photograph of this church to present as a framed A3 photograph:

Stockton Church serves a small rural community - services are held there once a month as the vicar has 5 churches in her guardianship. In the past though, it would have been a lot busier as it served the workers and landowners on the surrounding farms and estates that made up its congregation.

It is an old church: I am told that parts of it date back over 1000 years to Saxon times. Like many churches in Norfolk it has a round tower and, more unusually, a thatched roof whereas many churches in the UK have square towers and a tile or lead roof. It has recently been re-thatched - the person who commissioned me is a member of the Parochial Parish Council (who are responsible for the church) and organised the funding for the new roof.

I took many photos of this building and showed a shortlist to my contact. The photo shown above was the one that was chosen. The church was awkward to photograph as there are trees close to the front of the building. This was the best view possible as there was also a large tomb with a steel rail fence around it - you can just see part of it in the bottom left corner. I would also have liked to have moved further back but more trees blocked my way.

This second photo was taken a little further to the right - I wanted to omit the steel rails. This meant that I could not get to cross on the top of the roof closest to me as the trees stopped me going back any further but this did not matter too much as it was obscured by the leaves of the tree behind me. There are quite a few leaves showing in this image - there were even more that I was holding out of the way. I would have liked to have been able to prune some of this...

The final image below shows the rear, north, side of the church - this is better in many respects as the trees did not intrude so much although it does miss the entrance. I also looked at views from the other end of the building - I would return later in the day, but the views from that angle were quite poor.

I did ask for permission to sell these images as prints, but this been neither refused nor given. Should a print be of interest to you, please let me know and I will contact the authorities again.

Mid October visit to East Ruston Old Vicarage

2011-11-05T10:40:00.003Z

We managed to choose another fine, sunny day for this visit (our 10th of the season!):

This first image is of red crab apples against a glorious blue sky - although how your screen is set up will determine how glorious the colours look. For this visit I wanted to shoot a few more unusual views that people wouldn't normally notice - I have rarely seen people looking high up at the sky.

For this second image, I have chosen a rather cheeky image:

I am sure the owners would not mind such a shot - the room is beautifully set out and there is nothing to stop visitors looking in - it invites viewing. Rather than press the camera lens against the glass, I kept the glazing bars to show that we are on the outside looking in. I like also the way the sun illuminates the fruits.

This third image is of a walkway through silver birch trees. I love the way the red dogwood glows in the low autumn sun. It is better than in the summer.

In this image I saw some detail that I, and I suspect many others, have overlooked. It is a small stone garden ornament tucked down at the bottom of a brick gate pillar. Small detail like this is so easy to miss...

In our previous visits, the doors to this greenhouse have been open - this is the first time I have seen them closed. The plants in the greenhouse have been well pruned back so the greenhouse itself is lighter and less cluttered.

In this final image, I show some detail just to the left of the doors in the photo above. Small detail like the small galvanised watering can I had not noticed before, possibly because the doors were open. A small but very pleasant arrangement.

The full set taken on this day can be accessed from my page dedicated to these gardens (I have moved the old gallery)

Camera Club Competition 'Decay and Dereliction'

2011-10-29T20:22:00.000+01:00

I entered this photo for the projected image (slide show) section of the 'Decay and Dereliction' competition:

The judge considered this against another image for first place. The other image was what might be called a safe, conventional photo with a large impressive sky (the judge admitted that he liked big skys). Mine, I felt, was a more original image with unusual toning effects. However, the judge eventually went for the 'safe' image. I entered this more as an experiment to gauge reactions rather in the hope of getting top marks.

So how did I get this? To take the photo I used a low tripod to get the camera well down and took a bracketed set of 3 (-2 stops, normal exposure, +2 stops). This was processed in Photomatix HDR software using its default settings which gave this photo:

This then had a curves adjustment layer which gave me:

Followed by a hue/saturation adjustment layer:

Followed by a gradient map adjustment layer which gives a slight sepia monochrome image:

With the gradient map in position I play with the curves and hue settings until I get an image I like.

As this version was too boring I duplicated the background layer and brought it to the top of the stack. I then played around with the blending and opacity settings until I got the final version:

I have found that different images respond in different ways to the technique which then needs adapting. You can see a larger version of this in my Featured Photographs Gallery.

Late September visit to East Ruston Old Vicarage

2011-10-24T19:13:00.000+01:00

This visit was characterised by fine, sunny weather with blue sky:

In this visit, most of which was taken in the morning before the public visiting hours, I tried to capture some views that were a little different from the norm. I did take some 'classical' views of these gardens - this was the first visit since May with clear blue sky. I was able to visit in the morning as one of the owners, Alan Gray, has given me permission to visit outside of the public hours. This enables me to use a tripod and take photos without visitors wandering in and out of the frame.

The picture above was taken in the Exotic Garden. I balanced the camera on the wall forming the edge of the pond to get this image. I love the colour of the blue sky, its reflection in the pond, and the contrast with the colour of the goldfish. Ideally the image needed a slightly wider angle of view but this was the limit of my lens and I could not move the camera further back.

This next photo shows the way into the Exotic Garden from the opposite end. This took a few goes to get right due to the wind moving the foliage. However I was pleased with the final result. Although many people say that you should not have symmetrical images with the subject in the centre, in this image it works (in my opinion...)

Looking out for something different, I decided to try this view through a window:

The photo was taken in the Pavilion by the Mediterranean Garden looking back along the King's Walk to the vicarage. Again, this took a few goes to get right, but I am happy with the result. I could have made the outside scene darker and more contrasty but, I felt, it would have not looked genuine; it shows it was brighter outside than in.

Finally, I tried to get a different view of this holly. Again, I took several shots in my attempt to get a sharp foreground but still show berries in the background hedge. I think I succeeded, but only just. I wanted to stop down the lens further, but there was too much of a breeze moving the foliage which would have blurred the images.

The full set (119) of images taken on this day can be seen in my personal portfolio.

Somerleyton Hall and Gardens

2011-10-14T18:05:00.000+01:00

At the end of September we decided to visit Somerleyton Hall and Gardens:
Somerleyton Hall is a large country house about 12 miles or so from where I live - this was our first visit since we moved here in 2008. For this visit we decided not to pay to go into the house, but just pay for the gardens. I would describe the land more as parkland rather than gardens, although there is a large formal garden to the front of the house.

It was a beautiful, exceptionally hot (for the time of year), clear, sunny day with quite a few visitors considering this was the last day of the season. However we were slightly disappointed with the grounds - there was not enough garden and the formal garden wasn't particularly impressive.

I could see the benefit for a town-dweller visiting these grounds - lots of lovely parkland to walk around, but for us, living in the country, with the Norfolk Broads on our doorstep, I wasn't excited by them. This lead to a less than impressive set of photos as you can see...

The first photo, shown above, is of a small pond set to one corner of the grounds where the public can roam. It was in quite deep shade necessitating changes to the camera settings to cope with the dull light.

There were some quite impressive specimen trees and stands of white pampas grass. The second photo below shows an example.

There was plenty of grassy open spaces between the trees with paths to walk around. It was difficult to get a photo without other visitors appearing in the shot, but occasionally I did manage a couple of views as can be seen below:

Getting the following image without people took a little while as it was popular for visitors to stand by for their own snapshot photos!

The final photo is of this large spreading tree near the entrance to the gardens. It appears to have sprouted many other trees around it from either the roots or branches touching the ground - so it it one tree or many? This photo was taken from within the circle of trees and shows a branch growing down then bending back up to the light. I also love the texture of the bark.

After we finished, we went of to a local pub and had an enjoyable meal in its restaurant before going home.

My Father's War

2011-10-07T21:35:00.005+01:00

My late father served in the RAF during World War 2:

These photos are part of a collection of old family photographs that my mother and father had thrown away when they were clearing out prior to moving house. When I heard of this I told my mother to retrieve them from the bin.

At this time my father was quite ill - he later died of lung cancer - but I managed to spend a little time with him going through his wartime photographs making a few notes about what he could remember. These have been in an album I have kept for the past 18 years, but I am now digitising them all and hope to prepare a little book of them for the family.

He was called up in July 1940 at the age of 20. Prior to that he was in the Messenger Service based at Craylands School in what is now Basildon, Essex. This was also a first aid post - I have several photos of the people there undertaking exercises.

The photo below was, I believe, taken in 1939. My father is 3rd in from the right.

What strikes me is how young they all look...

Much of my fathers time with the RAF was spent in the Middle East - Iran, Iraq, Kuwait - places that are currently in the news. One of the bases he stayed at was Habbaniya in Iraq. Researching this I found it was an RAF base from the 1930's to the 1950's and there is a Habbaniya Association for people who have served there. I have made contact with them and received some good advice from them.

I have a number of photos taken during this time - I have no idea where they got the film, photographic paper and chemicals from - showing him and his mates at the various camps - one of the notes states that they waited 6 months for equipment.

The photo below is labelled 'the cookhouse crew'. My father is on the front left. What I like is that it shows the ordinary blokes making the best out of the situation.

This final image is where they were watching the reactions of a scorpion trapped by a ring of burning petrol. Bored young men trying to entertain themselves....

If you would like to see some more photos, feel free to contact me via my website and I will send a link.

Another (8th) visit to our favourite garden

2011-09-29T17:55:00.004+01:00

In the middle of September we made another visit to the gardens at East Ruston Old Vicarage:

Again, I was privileged to be able to visit the garden in the morning outside the public visiting times. However, despite the weather forecast being favourable, and it being a fine clear day at home, by the time I got to the vicarage it was dull and overcast. Just occasionally there was a glimpse of sunshine or blue sky. Then, after I finished and was driving home, the blue sky reappeared!

I had to work hard on each photo to get some colour and life into it - these images show some of the results. The first photo, shown above, is of the 'Autumn Garden' - I can see why it is called that as during the early part of the year it is not so interesting as it is now.

This second image is of a short wall made of logs and is by a seating area. This is a new feature that was only made last year. I do like the way the logs have been utilised along with the pine cones still attached to them - there is a large pile of similar logs not far way in this woodland garden.

For the third photo, I am showing a view in the Exotic Garden across a pond to a pergola. I chose a low viewpoint to emphasise the structure and use the pond as a border along the bottom of the frame. You can see the foliage is just beginning to turn to the autumn hues.

This final photograph is a view through one of the greenhouse to a side exit. It is a lovely scene but I thought it would benefit from a sepia tone to give an old time feel. In my opinion this works very well - one of the best I have produced. I may revisit this to add a little blurring around the edges and a slight vignetting.

The full set taken on this day can be seen in my personal portfolio gallery.

7th Visit to the gardens at East Ruston Old Vicarage

2011-09-16T14:04:00.004+01:00

At the beginning of this month we made a special visit to this inspirational garden:

This visit was special in that I was invited by one of the owners, Alan Gray, to come and take photographs outside of normal visiting hours - in this case a Thursday morning (the gardens are normally open 5 afternoons a week to the public). This gave me 2 distinct advantages i) the ability to use a tripod which is not permitted during the public hours, and ii) being able to set up and take photographs without other visitors wandering into the shot.

He invited me because he liked the photographs I had previously taken of the garden. In fact he regretted it had not known me sooner because he said that one of the images would have made a superb front cover for their guide book which had only recently been published.

I had arranged to go that morning because the weather was forecast to be fine with blue sky and just the occasional bit of high cloud. In fact it was a glorious day when we left home but a few miles away from the garden it became quite dull and overcast. This dull weather lasted all day but, on leaving in mid afternoon, a couple of miles away the sky was brilliant blue again.

In fact the same thing happened again yesterday when we made another morning visit...

To be honest, most of the photos were rather flat and dull - I had to spend a lot of time on each one trying to inject a bit of colour into it. These examples shown here are typical of what I took on this day.

The first photo, shown above, is a lacecap hydrangea. This is from one of many stunning bushes in the woodland area of the gardens. It was a hand-held shot taken during the public time in the afternoon after I had put away my tripod. The lighting was quite dull and many of these hand-held shots had to deleted because of camera shake.

This next photo was one of the earlier ones. It shows a collection of aeoniums in the Walled Court. My wife who accompanies me as my 'assistant' (she is a skilled gardener and loves this place for the inspiration it gives) had to hold another plant to the side that was spoiling the composition. I was pleased with the colours and composition of this image - I believe it works well.

This next shot is of the 'front door' to the vicarage. I don't know how much it is used but it is a beautiful entrance to the property. I love the ivy climbing the walls and the potted plants by the steps. Again my wife had to hold some drooping flower heads out of the way.

My wife spotted this container and arrangement of watering cans. I was concentrating on setting up for a different photograph, so she was just looking around and spotted this arrangement that we would have otherwise overlooked.

This is a nice little view that I like to take. It is from within one of the public greenhouses and looks out through an open door. There is such a wealth of detail in the somewhat crowded arrangement of plants and the old weathered wood gives a timeless feel to it - I must try this as a monochrome print.

The full set of images taken on this day can be seen on my personal gallery.

Beginner's Digital Photography Lessons 5 & 6

2011-09-02T20:20:00.003+01:00

These two lessons are a continuation of these beginner's tutorials.

Lesson 5 looked at the use of scene modes: what they do and how they can help - this was released a couple of weeks ago (I forgot to post about it!)

Lesson 6 looks at colour casts and how the white balance settings can correct it.

The downloadable PDF of these lessons can be accessed from the tutorials page of my website.

Camera Club Competition 'Close-up and Macro'

2011-08-31T10:37:00.006+01:00

I made entries for the Close-up and Macro competition held at the camera club last week:

I thought that a lot of members would enter pretty flower and interesting insects to this competition, so I looked for something different.

For the projected image entry, I cultivated this mould which was growing on some old sliced beetroot. My wife would like to make clear that this is not the normal status of our fridge(!) - I let the beetroot get mouldy outside of the fridge and kept it coverd in a plastic bag to stop it drying out. At the end of this post you can see some snapshots showing how I set this up.

The judge only awarded this 16/20 points

This second entry, in the colour print section, is of a chick that we hatched earlier in the year. In hindsight, there is too much space to the right of the chicks head, and not enough on the left. I do like the way the subject is shown though. This also was awarded 16/20 points.

This third photo is the entry for the B&W print section. For this I dragged an old valve radio out of the loft, took the back off, and shot a set of photographs. I do like this final result with just a hint of sepia toning. The judge gave this 18/20 points.

Larger versions can be seen in my Featured Photographs gallery.

Below I show some of the set-up I used for the mould photograph. The first shows from above the mould on a plate. The next two are of the plate in the fridge and the camera, flash and reflectors:

6th Visit to East Ruston Old Vicarage

2011-08-15T19:35:00.005+01:00

Last week we made our 6th visit to this magnificent garden:
The weather was a little overcast at the start of the visit but brightened up as the afternoon wore on. We started our visit by walking through to the woodland garden to the west of the grounds - most of the visitors were going in the opposite direction!

We had a leisurely stroll through the paths through the woodlands. As the light levels were quite low, and there was a bit of a breeze, I had to be judicious with how I took my photographs. My favourite subject is the 'lacecap hydrangeas' - an example of which I show above. I do love the colours of these flowers.

When walking around I try to take a variety of photographs from showing the whole garden, to views within a garden, to individual flowers and plants. The pond in the 'Sunk Garden' has never really attracted me before, but this time I took a couple of shots of the plants growing in it - the back lighting gives, I feel, a more satisfying image.

The Pavilion and Mediterranean garden always attracts many visitors, so I was pleased to be able to get this image as there happened to be a lull in the visitors walking around. I like this shot because of the interesting sky - plain blue or just overcast would not have worked so well.

Below shows my last shot of the day. I have walked past this table and chairs many times but had only taken photos from the opposite direction to this. This was taken as a quick grab shot between other visitors walking past. Imagine eating here and entertaining friends on a warm summer's evening. My favourite of the day.

The full set of photos taken on this visit can be seen in my personal gallery.

A technical note: For focusing, I normally set my camera to use a single focus point and use that point on the subject, focus lock, and recompose the image. I find this works well most of the time.

For this visit I changed the focusing mode to 'Auto select'. Although this appeared to work well whilst taking the photographs with the subject being one of the selected focus points, most of the focus points selected were towards the foreground. This had the effect of pulling the plane of focus forward from where I would normally set it, causing more of the (less interesting) foreground to be in focus, but blurring more of the (more interesting) background.

I shall revert back to my former method of focusing...

Visit to photographic exhibition at the Sainsbury Centre

2011-08-12T07:27:00.006+01:00

Last week I went, with some friends from the camera club, to a photographic exhibition at the Sainsbury Centre for the Visual Arts in Norwich, UK. The main feature was an exhibition of photographs by John Hedgecoe called "The Face of the Artist", along with a second exhibition of photographs by Dorothy Bohm titled "A World Observed 1940 - 2010".

I knew of John Hedgecoe - I bought and read several of his books in the 80's and 90's - so was interested to see some of his photographs as printed. To be honest I had mixed feelings on seeing his images.

The quality of the prints, especially the black & white was high - I never managed to achieve that standard when I had a darkroom. However, for the photos themselves, I thought some were good, some were indifferent, and some were basically poor.

I felt that many photos were lauded because of a) the subject, and b) the photographer. If I was to exhibit some of those photos, they would be thrown out and my friends would tell me I can do better than that.

For example, there was one photo of Zandra Rhodes. To me it looked as though it was taken with a hand-held flashgun that wasn't aligned properly. The left side of the image was overexposed, the right side rather dark, and the image itself was nothing special.

My friends were also expressing similar opinions. One idea we discussed was getting a copy of a well regarded image and entering it into a competition....

For the second exhibition by Dorothy Bohm this, I felt, fell into two camps: the earlier black and white images were mostly good, but the later colour prints were mediocre (although there were a few very good images).

One sign of our times that struck home was the photos of children taken in the 40's and 50's. Very natural and down-to-earth. Try taking a photo like that today and you could get accused of all manner of things and possibly get arrested (the UK is not such a free country as it once was, mainly, I feel, due to the hysteria created by the tabloid newspapers).

But we enjoyed the afternoon, chatted a lot about the photographs, and learnt much.

Pinhole camera experimenting

2011-08-01T13:25:00.001+01:00

This week I have experimented with using a digital camera as a pinhole camera:
I have often thought about using a DSLR as a pinhole camera - there is the occasional article in the photo press about it - but I never got round to attempting it - until this week. After a few trial runs, I managed to get to get some reasonable images.

(Update 04.Aug.11) It looks better sepia tinted!

The technique involves drilling a hole - about 5mm or so, in the centre of a body cap, taping a piece of baking foil over the hole, then using a fine needle, make a small hole in the foil. It took a few tries to get the hole right but, as you can see, the final image is still blurred - I will discuss this further on.

The first photo was taken in my garden on a sunny day - the exposure time was 1 second. The only 'photoshopping' was some exposure adjustments using 'levels' and removing many of the dust spots that showed up.

I was so surprised at the amount of dust spots, that I put the lens back on to check and they all disappeared! There must be something in the way the light hits the sensor of the camera that accentuated any dust.

The second photo shown below was taken at the same time, but this one had quite extensive adjustments to the tonality to try and get a better balance of colour and range of tones - I think this works out better.

This third shot was taken later in the day, still with a 1 second exposure, but processed differently for the exposure and tonality. I don't think this one works so well.

For the final photo, I tried to show some flowers in the garden. This was processed in the same way as the second image - nice bright colours but oh so blurry.

Getting the images lined up was awkward - there is not enough light for the viewfinder. So, with the camera mounted on a tripod, I aimed it in the right direction and took an exposure. This was then viewed and the camera adjusted and another image taken. This was repeated a couple of times until I was satisfied with the composition.

Larger versions can be seen in my personal gallery.

Some thoughts and technical notes:
These were taken using a 'cropped format' (APS-C) sensor on an 8 Mpixel digital SLR camera. With a small format sensor, to get a sharp image, a small hole is required. However, make the hole too small and diffraction effects will blur the image. Additionally, a small hole means longer exposure times.

The distance of the pinhole from the sensor determines the focal length. Using the body cap method, we appear to have a slight telephoto effect. To get a wider angle of view would involve getting the pinhole closer.

In the early days of photography, pinhole cameras would have been exposing large plates of glass or film - 5" x 4" or even 10" x 8". This enabled reasonably sharp images. However, the light would have been spread over a very large area, entailing very long exposure times.

I am currently working on a technique to overcome some of these limitations - If they work I may do another post.

Beginner's Digital Photography Lesson 4

2011-08-01T13:18:00.000+01:00

In this fourth lesson for beginners using their digital camera, I address the topic of zooming the lens. This tutorial has been released as a PDF file so that you can download and print it for your own private use.

This lesson is also available on the iArt blog of Melanie Phillips who is a pet portrait artist and art tutor who has both a pet portrait website and an art resources website.

The downloadable PDF of the lesson can be accessed from the tutorials page of my website.

Another visit to East Ruston Old Vicarage

2011-07-23T21:12:00.004+01:00

Last week we made another visit to this amazing garden (our 5th of the season):
The weather wasn't too wonderful - it was wet before and after the visit, with a lot of cloud and a bit of a breeze. Most of the shots I took were not very good - this shows some of the better ones.

As regular readers know, I am getting to quite like the HDR technique for making photographs, provided the effect is not too overdone. I usually take 3 shots to make the image. However, with the breezy conditions, the movement of parts of the subject caused a large number of artifacts spoiling many photos, including the one above. However, I shoot in 'raw' format which captures a larger range of brightnesses. This I process in HDR to bring out the tones and details.

So, this first shot, of the 'King's Walk', is from a single exposure. This view is from by a window on the southern side of the house looking south along this wonderful view. I have printed this to A4 size and it looks good in print.

The view below is of, what I believe is called, the 'Dutch Garden' near to the previous location. This, again, is a single exposure HDR image. I like this for the wealth of detail and, like the previous image, the detail of the clouds and sky.

The final image is a close-up of some pine cones. Every time I walk past this tree I am fascinated by the cones - this is my best photo yet. While taking the photo, I could see through the viewfinder the branch gently bobbing up and down in the breeze, so I was surprised at how sharp the final image looked.
You can see the whole set in my personal gallery/portfolio.

Camera club portrait session

2011-07-19T20:42:00.007+01:00

Every month I organise a portraiture practice session for my local camera club - this is from the June session:This young lad is a friend of another member of the club. He volunteered to come to one of our sessions - this makes a change from photographing each other which is what we often do. We hold these sessions about once a month at a local village hall on a Saturday afternoon with, typically, 6-8 members attending.

We generally have two lighting setups - I bring a pair of 400w/s studio flashes with modifiers, reflectors, backdrops etc. Another member brings his Canon based speedlight setup although this means only members with Canon gear can use it.

For this session I wanted to get more of a low-key feel with hard, directional lighting finishing with B&W images.

In the first image, shown above, the lad was about to put an arrow to a bow - he does some archery. I like the look of this and the way that he is not looking at the camera.

The second image was taken from a low viewpoint. The far side of the face is in shadow but there is a slight lighting on the far cheek to separate it from the background.

This third image is a bit like the second, but closer in. The far side of the face merges into the background but the eye still has a highlight.

This 4th image is a full length showing him putting the arrow to the bow. I like this as he is looking at what he is doing, not at the camera.

This final image show one of the members acting as a subject while we set up the lighting. As you can see, there is one flash head on the left and two DIY cardboard/baking foil reflectors. The flash head on the right was not used for the portrait shots, although I used it for the full-length image.

Beginner's Digital Photography Lesson 3

2011-07-17T20:00:00.003+01:00

In this third lesson for beginners using there digital camera, I address the topic of the self timer. This tutorial has just been released as a PDF file so that you can download and print it for your own private use.

This lesson is also available on the iArt blog of Melanie Phillips who is a pet portrait artist and art tutor who has both a pet portrait website and an art resources website.

The downloadable PDF of the lesson can be accessed from the tutorials page of my website.

Sandwich shoot:

2011-07-10T07:42:00.004+01:00

Last Autumn I was asked to take some sandwich photos:

My client was a chef who lived nearby who was working on a contract for a promotion. I had a phone call from him – his usual photographer was not available – could I take some photos of sandwiches? To cut a long story short, that evening saw me in his kitchen taking photos of sandwiches for his client - I had no dealing with the end client - the chef had the brief. I did what I was asked and loaded the photos onto his laptop before I left.

The following day I had a call from him – he was not satisfied with the sandwiches – could I repeat the shoot at my place? So a day or so later we repeated the shoot in my kitchen. For me this was preferable as I was able to better control the set-up. My client seemed satisfied with the results.

The following day I had another call – the end client wanted a bigger sandwich – could we do it again in my kitchen? So shoot 3 went ahead. This time everyone seemed satisfied.

The first photo, shown above, is from the third shoot and shows the unwrapped sandwich. This has had very little editing - just a little exposure adjustment for my gallery image - the end client was doing their own post production work.

In a recent idle (!) moment, I tried my own adjustments to bring out more detail which resulted in the image below (some technical details at the end of this post):

There were many views taken of the sandwiches, using both black and white backgrounds, wrapped, unwrapped, whole, cut, and so on. As you can see, it is not a sandwich that would be easy to eat!

The final shots were of the ingredients used for the sandwich. Again, this was against black and white backgrounds - here I show the white. For this I was standing on one of my kitchen units with the ingredients on a white(ish) board - I did not have anything pure white that was large enough. I was leaning over, holding the camera with one hand whilst bracing myself against the ceiling with the other hand - not easy! However I was pleased with the result.

A selection of images from the second and third shoots can be seen at in the gallery.

Technical details for the second image: I processed the original raw image in HDR software and turned up the settings quite high to bring out the texture. But this was a bit overdone, so within Photoshop, I added another layer from the original image but reduced the opacity. Above this was a curves layer to adjust the exposure. The HDR software had brought out a lot of detail in the background which I wanted to remain black. So at the top was another layer, from the jpg original where I adjusted the background to pure black and cut it out - with a little feathering.

East Ruston Old Vicarage - 4th Visit

2011-07-03T07:38:00.005+01:00

We recently made our 4th visit of the season to this inspirational garden:

On this day the rain was coming down in very heavy showers. Luckily, we took our rainproof jackets and I took my 'rain jacket' for the camera. Even so it was quite difficult getting decent photos as the light levels were so low most of the time. My trousers got soaked, especially around the knees when I knelt down to take some photos.

In the first photo that I show above, taken in one of the woodland walks, you can see the rain in the photo (you may need to click through to the gallery to see it within the photo). This made it a challenge to get steady images for my favourite technique of HDR photography (see the note at the end for a brief explanation).

The second image was taken in a brief sunny interlude between the photos - you can see the heavy grey cloud that had just passed over. This image shows the wildlife pond at the southern edge of the grounds. Although I have taken photos of this pond before, this is the first one that I liked.

In this third image, again taken in a sunny period, you can see from thewet paving that the heavy shower had just finished. One advantage of the weather being so wet was that there were fewer visitors about so my photography was less interrupted by people walking into the view.

The full set of photographs can be seen in Paul's Personal Portfolio.

Notes: Why was the dull lighting bad for the HDR photography? HDR typically requires at least 3 exposures, one of which is overexposed (needing a slower shutter speed). Using a higher ISO for the sensitivity gives more noise which HDR tends to accentuate so lower ISO speeds tend to be used. This meant that for the overexposed frame, the shutter speed was very slow leading to camera shake - too slow for even the image stabilisation to compensate. Tripods are not allowed in these gardens.

Beginner's Digital Photography Lesson 2

2011-06-30T18:46:00.003+01:00

As mentioned a few weeks ago, I am resurrecting my tutorials on digital photography for beginners.

I have just release lesson 2 on 'Taking a Photo' where I discuss the shutter button, focusing and a couple of composition tips.

This lesson is for the iArt blog of Melanie Phillips who is a pet portrait artist and art tutor who has both a pet portrait website and an art resources website.

A downloadable PDF of the lesson can be accessed from the tutorials page of my website.

Exhibition Prints for sale

2011-06-25T18:51:00.004+01:00

I have just released the first batch of exhibition prints for sale:

These images I have prepared as prints for our annual camera club exhibition next month. To coincide with this I am also making the images available for purchase through my website. Please contact me if you are wanting to buy a print - most are available in sizes up to A3 (about 11.6" x 16.6") mounted on a card mount. More details and prices can be seen in the gallery.

The first one that I am showing here is a view of still water at the Cors Caron nature reserve in mid-Wales. I used to live nearby and this image was taken on a visit to friends who still live there. I find this to be a beautiful tranquil shot that reflects the character of the place on a glorious sunny day.

The second of the images I am showing is a close-up of a Christmas Cactus flower. I have taken many photos of the flowers of this plant - this is one of the best. I love the pink translucent petals of this cactus. I entered a copy of this in one of our club competitions and the judge wanted to take it home!

This final image is an abstract titled 'red and dotty'. This sort of image appeals to some but not to others... Feel free to comment constructively - I would enjoy feedback!

More details and prices can be seen in the gallery.

Monthly Garden View

2011-06-15T20:00:00.003+01:00

Each month I take photos of our garden and smallholding:

These photographs are not meant to be commercial in any way, but are intended to be a record of how the garden grows and develops of the years. I have been doing this for nearly 20 years and 3 properties - it is fascinating to see what it was like when we first moved in and how it was when we left, with all the stages in between. All these images get printed and put in albums so we can easily look back on them - for all the advantages of digital photography, I still feel that you cannot beat prints on paper.

From these photos you will see we have quite a large area - nearly 2 acres split between the flower beds, vegetable plot, an orchard and our chicken runs.

The first image, shown above, is of the summerhouse in the main part of the garden. We have a nice blue sky and a yellowing lawn. The lawn isn't very good - ideally it needs digging up and resowing - it is drying up: this spring has been an unusually dry time with very little rain.

The second photo is of one of the flower beds next to the summerhouse. Despite the dry weather, my wife has managed to get some colour into the garden.

This 3rd view is taken at the end of the vegetable plot looking back towards the house. In the foreground are the potatoes which appear to be growing quite well although we have still to see how well the tubers are growing in this dry weather - we see farmers are watering much of their crop.

The full gallery can be seen in my personal portfolio.

Technical notes: Most of these have been processed in HDR software from 3 bracketed exposures. Where the wind movement was too great, a couple were processed from the raw file in the HDR software.

Beginner's Digital Photography

2011-06-14T07:35:00.002+01:00

At the request of an old client and friend, I am resurrecting my tutorials on digital photography for beginners. This request was from Melanie Phillips who is a pet portrait artist and art tutor who has both a pet portrait website and an art resources website.

On her art resources website, Melanie currently has some guest postings on art related matters and contacted me to see if I could do something on digital photography that she could post. So I looked back on what I had done previously on digital photography tutorials and decided to rework and re-instate these, and allow Melanie to post them on her site.

A have started off with updating my Digital Photography Glossary, and written the introductory article. I have also updated and re-instated a more advanced item on taking photographs by moonlight. These can be accessed from the tutorials page of my website.

3rd visit to East Ruston Old Vicarage

2011-06-06T17:25:00.000+01:00

We recently made our 3rd visit of the season to the garden at East Ruston Old Vicarage:

As you may have gathered, this is our favourite place to visit - my wife for the garden in its entirety, me for the wonderful photographic opportunities. I would love the opportunity to visit the garden when it is closed to the public on a fine sunny day.

For me though, this visit was not quite as good as the previous visits. I think this was not so much a problem with the garden, more the fact that that it was in that period where some plants were past their best and others had yet to reach their peak.

The picture shown above shows the path that leads from the entrance along the front of the house. I love the tranquil nature of the image with the range of green tones. In the photo you can see tree ferns. These seemed to have survived the harsh winter we had this year - a testament to the owners' gardening skills.

This second image is of the fountain in the exotic garden. This fountain is rather clever in that the water sprays inwards which minimises the spray and splashing. This garden is still being planted up so is not at its best.

This third view shows the house from the King's Walk. I could not quite spend the time getting it lined up quite centrally as other visitors were walking in and out of the vista.

The full set of these photos can be seen in my personal portfolio gallery.

Hawthorn HDR testing (a technical post)

2011-06-03T20:27:00.010+01:00

In this post I am looking at the different ways of using HDR (High Dynamic Range) in creating an image of hawthorn blossom - this is a technical posting.

HDR is a technique to overcome the limitations of digital cameras in the range of brightnesses from shadows to highlights that they are capable of producing. The usual way of using HDR is to take a few photographs, typically 3 or more, at different exposures and combine them in specialised HDR software.

Above is an example of an HDR image created from 3 photographs taken at 2-stop intervals. This was processed in Photomatix Pro using the 'details enhancer' default settings. This has then had further exposure adjustment in Photoshop. The result is a reasonably exposed image with a good range of tones - not perfect, but OK.

However, on the day this photograph was taken, there was a blustery breeze blowing and, however much I tried, I could not get a set of 3 exposures without any movement between them. This movement can be seen in leaves in the enlargement below:

This was a problem with all the sets that I took. So I tried using the HDR software on a single image - this is known as tone mapping. My first attempt was to use the standard exposure JPG image:

This is not too bad, but the shadows are a bit dark and the highlights a bit bright (although it may not show that much in these web versions) and it lacks punch. A little bit of tweaking the exposure in Photoshop gives this image which stiil lacks punch:

Processing it in HDR software gives us this image which has opened up the shadows but still lacks punch:

Further basic exposure adjustments didn't do a lot for the image.

So I then tried processing the raw version of the image in the HDR software. This gave a much punchier image:

There is a lot more detail in the shadows and the highlights seem to be more controlled. Doing some basic exposure adjustments in Photoshop gave me this final image:

This version has a good level of detail in the highlights and shadows, plus a better range of colours - they are more saturated. In terms of the tonality, I think this is equal to the 3-exposure version. This, in my opinion, is due to the fact that the range of tones was not too extreme in the scene - the sensor could handle it in producing the raw image so the HDR software could balance out the tonality.

One anomaly seems to be showing in these images is the slight halo surrounding the foliage where it meets the sky. To my eye it seems the smaller the image the more pronounced the halo. In the large originals I could hardly see if there was a halo.

Hawthorn Blossom

2011-05-31T20:16:00.005+01:00

May has been the time for Hawthorn Blossom:

Although in this part of the country, the weather has been quite sunny (unusually so - we could do with some rain), it has also been quite windy and blustery. This has meant that is has been difficult to take photos of such things as blossom without the wind causing blurring to the image.

On the day I took this photo, I was taking 3 exposures of each subject so that I could process in HDR (which I have discussed before). However, there was too much movement between each of the images which caused a lot of ghosting in the image. So this image was made from a single exposure, but still processed in the HDR software so as to bring out the detail in the shadows and highlights. Looking closely at the original image, there are lots of small dark spots similar to dust on the camera's sensor - these were in fact flies, bees and other insects feasting on the blossom.

This shrub (or is it a tree?) is along the boundary hedge adjoining our neighbours property in the orchard part of our smallholding. We get on well with our neighbours - we help look after each others livestock - and there is a small gate just beyond the hawthorn to enable easy access to each other's property.

This second photo is more of a close-up of the blossom:

Again, this photos was taken as part of a 3 exposure set which suffered from movement caused by the wind, and getting in close magnifies the problem. So this is a single image processed through the HDR software to improve the tonality. I really like the hawthorn blossom - the pale cream blossom complements very well the fresh green of the leaves. As the season progresses, the leaves tend to a darker green.

After the frustrations of the outdoor session, I took some blossom and leaves indoors to photograph in close up. I will try and review and process these soon so that I can show some examples.

Repairing an old family photograph

2011-05-24T10:00:00.002+01:00

We found this photograph whilst sorting through a box of hundreds of old family photos:

It was a picture of my late father-in-law taken as a baby in the 1920s. It appeared to be mounted under glass and taped onto a hardboard stand. At some point the glass had been broken and 'repaired' with clear adhesive tape. As you can see from these images, it was in quite a sorry state:

One thing that puzzled me was that the photograph appeared to be toned in some manner - it had a slight gold metallic look to it.

Before I started work on on the photograph I took some digital photos of it in case replacing the glass spoilt the image - I envisioned that the print could have become stuck to the glass.

However, when I carefully cut through the tape around the edges securing the glass to the backing, I was very surprised to see that the image was formed on the glass - it was a 'glass positive' (as opposed to a glass negative used in the early days of photography). The metallic gold effect came from some gold-coloured backing paper.

This meant that I could not discard the glass. So, after brushing off some shards of glass and other dust, I used clear adhesive tape to stick it together around the outside, being careful not to stick over the emulsion forming the image. I then turned it over and removed the old tape. I had to use some nail varnish remover to remove the sticky residues left by the old tape. I then used some clear tape to fix around the edges of the front side. This kept the pieces firmly together.

To present the photo I taped a new sheet of gold coloured paper to the back of the print - the original being discoloured and stained. I then cut a mount for it and put it in a glass fronted picture frame - the final result is shown below:

I deliberately kept visible the centre point of the breakage (the little bit that shows white at the base of the photo shown above) and the cracks in the glass as they are part of the story of the photograph.

Taking the photos of this glass fronted photograph proved to be quite tricky - reflection were coming from everywhere. I lit the photograph using diffused light from flashguns to either side as shown in the three photos below:

Camera perspective of the setup:

Reflections were still a problem, so the final take I used a black cover across the top. What this doesn't show is the camera set to its 10 second timer to give me time to hold a large piece of black material over and above the camera to stop the reflections from the front.

All in all this, was a worthwhile exercise to get the photograph into a presentable format.

Converting Tree image to monochrome (a technical post)

2011-05-18T18:44:00.001+01:00

In this technical post I describe how I created this monochrome image:

I have been asked a few times how I made the image that I entered for a camera club competition; hence the writing of this somewhat technical post.

The starting point was a colour image composed of three bracketed exposures that were processed in Photomatix HDR software - I will not describe that process here. The starting colour image was this:

Using Photoshop, I then added 3 adjustment layers, from the bottom (above the background layer) was a hue/saturation layer. This ended up looking like this:

Above this was a brightness contrast layer which gave this:

Above this was a gradient map which gave the final image:

Although each layer was placed in that order, the adjustments were made from the top down, then adjusted again until I was satisfied with the result. The rationale is that 1) the gradient map provides the B&W conversion and gives a slight sepia/brownish tint. 2) Brightness and contrast are adjusted to give the exposure that I want - this can only be done once the image is in B&W so that you can view the effect. 3) The hue/saturation is adjusted - mostly the hue slider to alter the tonal balance; in this case not much was changed but in other images I have shifted the hue by quite a large margin. Doing this you can see some tones get lighter or darker as the slider is adjusted.

I use the gradient map for monochrome conversion in this manner:

First I ensure the foreground is black and the background is white. When the gradient map adjustment layer is selected (or edited later) you get something like this:

I click once on the gradient bar which opened the gradient map editor as shown:

If the foreground to background gradient is not selected I click on the preset (top left preset shown above). Then, just below the bar, near the middle, I click to set a 'stop'. Double clicking on this stop opens the color picker as shown below:

Choose a colour to suit the effect that you want - in this case the RGB values are 147,130,127 which gives a mid brown. Click OK. This drops you back to the gradient map editor. Drag the colour stop just created left or right to give the tonal balance that you want. Click OK.

Finally OK the gradient map.

As stated before, this is followed by the adjustments to the brightness/contrast and the hue/saturation.

The final print can be seen in the gallery.

Camera club Open Competition

2011-05-12T20:24:00.000+01:00

This is was my one of my entries to the camera club Open competition:

Once a year the club holds an A4 print competition, the idea being to level the playing field for those who do not have an A3 printer. This competition is judged by members voting rather than having an external judge.

Above is my entry to the monochrome section. I used a colour image of a tree (shown below), Eucalyptus coccifera, that I took at the gardens of East Ruston Old Vicarage. This was voted into second place by the members. This surprised me as I was not expecting a popular response.

For the technically minded, this is how it was done:
The original was an HDR image, processed with Photomatix Pro, using 3 originals 2 stops apart. This was then processed in Photoshop using 3 adjustment layers. At the top is a gradient map that I use to provide the B&W conversion. I set the midpoint to a brownish colour to give a slight sepia tone to the print. The next level down is a 'brightness/contrast' layer to make small adjustments to the exposure. At the bottom is a 'hue/saturation' layer. This I use to change the tonal balance for the gradient map. I have found that as you move the hue slider, the tones change in the monochrome image. This can fine-tune an image.

The photo below was my entry to the colour section. This was unplaced. Some of the members spoke to me to discuss what I had done, so it attracted interest if not votes! This was another HDR image from 3 exposures.

The full size images can be seen in the Featured Photographs Gallery.

East Ruston Old Vicarage - 2nd visit of the season

2011-05-06T09:25:00.000+01:00

This week we made our second visit to our favourite garden:

We were blessed with a fine spring day although the wind was a little cold. Also, being out of the main visitor season there were not too many visitors, so my photography was not interrupted too much by people wandering into the view. Ideally I would like to spend a whole day here, without visitors, and be able to have the camera on a tripod.

Technically, these are all 'HDR' processed images, taken from sets of 3 bracketed photographs (using the jpeg originals, not RAW files). As these are hand-held, I think a tripod would help with the alignment of the images although the software does a fine job. Most of these were processed using the default settings in the software, then had a slight 'levels' adjustment.

The image above is what you see when, from the visitors entrance, you walk past the front of the house then round the side to the back. This is a wonderful patio area. There is also a lean-to greenhouse just to the left which has this wonderful scented rose growing - the gallery has a photo of this. The scent immediately took me back to my childhood - I remember making 'perfume' from roses in our front garden that has a similar smell. Very evocative.

This shot is of tulips growing in a raised bed. The view was back-lit by the sun to produce these wonderful colours. We were surprised at how well these tulips were growing - it is quite late in the season and many were past their best there were still some good displays. We were also surprised at some white daffodils still showing well - ours finished weeks ago.

This is another view of my favourite part of the garden - the 'Sunk Garden'. People walking about meant that I had to be more selective in my composition - no bad thing. The gallery show a variety of more tightly cropped images. The view here is almost into the sun:

This 4th view of of a Eucalyptus tree: I love the look and texture of the bark. I had to crouch down quite low to get this viewpoint. Running your hand over the bark you can feel the smooth texture and get a feel for the strength of the tree.

More views can be seen on my personal gallery.

Time lapse photography of chickens

2011-05-01T21:33:00.000+01:00

I have been experimenting with time-lapse video:

This video clip shows our chickens being let out of their shed in the morning for their morning scratch feed and drink. One of the reasons for making these clips is that my wife sells surplus eggs at the gate of our smallholding and I thought it would be a good idea to show our customers (many say these are the best eggs they have ever tasted!) how we keep the chickens.

This clip was made from a series of still images taken at an interval of 1 second. I used Premiere Elements 8 (PE8) to combine them into the video sequence. I found using PE8 hard going - I do not find it intuitive, it crashed out on me a few times, and it even updated the last modified date - this was a pain. This had me very frustrated but I eventually learned to work with the program and managed to get reasonable results. Compared to using Windows Movie Maker to do the same thing, it is so slow.

I have tried different using different viewpoints and different settings. This second clip was 1 still image every 3 seconds with each image lasting for 3 frames:

The camera for this video clip was set about 2ft off the ground looking towards their shed and also viewing their drinking pot.

In this final clip I show the chickens as they put themselves away for the night - we go out later to shut the pop-hole (door) to keep them safe overnight - there are foxes about. The camera for this clip was low on the ground. The chickens do not just go in, they keep coming in and out as you can see:

The full selection of these chicken videos (real chick flicks!) can be seen from this page of my website.

New season at East Ruston Old Vicarage

2011-04-22T09:25:00.000+01:00

Last Saturday we made our first visit of the year to our favourite garden:

This year, like last year, we have bought season tickets to this inspirational garden. Our intention is to visit it about once a month - weather permitting. Last year, when we visited, I started off by just taking my old compact camera. Later I took my old DSLR as I wanted to better capture the beauty of the gardens. Towards the end of the season I started taking 3 'bracketed' shots of each scene so that I could try out 'HDR' photography - this gives a better tonal range to the photographs in many cases although it is easy to go over the top.

This year I am using my newer DSLR for the higher resolution and quality. I am still taking bracketed shots for HDR processing of the images. Above is a view of the Sunk Garden. This garden sets lower than some of the surrounding gardens and has a some formal displays along with a ground-level pond in the middle. I have managed to get the image quite symmetrical and the HDR processing has generated a very pleasant vignetting to the foreground. I am quite pleased with the result!

This next image is a close-up of some tulips. This, again, has been processed with HDR. I believe this has really brought out the colour and texture of these flowers. After I processed the 3 images, I did some minor adjustments to the exposure in Photoshop. This was one of those photos where a range of different brightnesses and contrasts all produced an acceptable result. This was my choice although others may find it a little too dark.

This third image shows what is called 'the King's Walk'. It is a view from the front of the house along formal hedging to the summerhouse in the distance. To take this I stood right in front of one of the house windows - what a wonderful view to have from the house. Although I tried to keep the symmetry, I was just slightly out. Despite this, I do like this photograph.

More images taken on this day can be seen in Paul's Personal Gallery.

New hatched chicks

2011-04-12T08:20:00.000+01:00

My wife has just hatched some chicks:

This first photo is a portrait of a 5-day old chick. This was taken in my 'macro and close-up studio'. It is an amazing experience to see the chicks hatching and see how quickly they get about and grow.

The first set of photos that I took was using a black cloth base and background in my 'studio'. However, although the background was OK, the texture on the base was too distinct and the colour was too light - it was not black enough as you can see below (this is a 1-day old chick):

So I tried an experiment for the next session, taken when the chicks were 3 days old. I tried gluing some straw to a sheet of plastic or the base. This was OK in principle, but the straw is quite coarse in comparison to the chicks and it stuck up in quite a number of places which caused a number of distractions:

This was one of the better ones, but you can how rough the straw is.

The final image I couldn't resist. The chicks are full of life, all running around but then they decide to sleep. This one has its eyes nearly closed as it is nodding off.

My wife has another set of eggs in the incubator and I am planning the next series of shots with a better surface for the chick to rest on.

March camera club portrait session

2011-03-27T22:29:00.001+01:00

Our camera club held another portrait practice session this month - this is one of the photos 'as shot':

We use each other as models for these practice sessions which we hold once a month on a Saturday afternoon. We try out different lighting and posing techniques as well as discussing matters photographic. I was disappointed with my photos from this session although I was quite pleased with this one. Above I show it 'as shot' with very little Photoshop manipulation - just cropping.

In the next image I have used 'Adobe Camera Raw' to process the image from the Raw (sometimes called the digital negative) file:

In this I made some adjustments to the image. In the first case I corrected the colour - I had mistakenly left the camera's white balance setting to 'auto' - here I have corrected it to a flash setting which has given it a warmer tone. I also manipulated some of the exposure adjustments to better balance the light and dark areas of the photograph. The final adjustment, which I quite like, is that I applied some softening to the image. I am quite happy with the final result although I think that the eyes could do with a little lightening.

In this final image, I have experimented with a plethora of adjustments:

For this I:
1) Cropped the basic image
2) Processed a copy in Photomatix Pro for tone mapping. This was then copied as a layer above the basic image and the opacity was reduced
3) The eyes were masked off and brightened as an adjustment layer
4) a curved adjustment layer was placed on top to lighten the shadows a little

It didn't quite work as I hoped - I was anticipating getting more texture in the skin. I need to practice more...

Camera Club "Reflections" competition - projected image

2011-03-10T16:48:00.000Z

For this section of the competition I tried something a bit different:

I had the idea of using a Lego figure looking in a mirror - I titled this 'As we get older, we get greyer'. We still have the Lego in our loft that our children used to play with (they are adults now in their own homes but our loft is still full of their stuff...). A quick trip to the loft found the box from which I selected a number of parts.

The setup was quite simple - I have an attic room which has a roof window - this was taken with available light. The parts were assembled on a freezer we keep there. The mirror was a plastic card mirror, not glass. I used my macro lens to take the image.

As you can see from this setup photo, there was nothing sophisticated here...

The full set of entries can be seen in the Featured photographs gallery.

Camera Club "Reflections" competition - colour print

2011-03-10T15:50:00.000Z

This was my entry for the colour print section:

This was titled "A Kaleidoscope of colour" and drew favourable comments from the judge who awarded it 18/20 points. During the break he asked that I explain to him how it was done.
So ho was it done? I tried to set up two mirrors in the manner of a kaleidoscope as can be seen below:

This was composed of a plastic mirror that I scored and bent in half. The top part was held in position with a piece of masking tape. It was placed with a black background which was just some black material from a drapers shop.

The lighting setup was quite simple:

An old hammerhead flashgun was fired through a home made diffuser made of 2 layers of cheesecloth stapled to a cardboard frame. The power of the flashgun was adjusted manually to give the correct exposure.

The resultant image was this:

The 2 biggest issues were isolating the flowers from the dark background so that I could get the background black. Then there was the spot removal tool to remove all the dust spots...

I was quite pleased with the results though - it look better in the print than it does on the web.

The full set of entries can be seen in the Featured photographs gallery.

Photography Club Portrait competition (3 of 3) - Projected Image

2011-02-10T11:11:00.001Z

For the projected image I again chose to do something different:

This was titled "Oi! What are you looking at?" and raised a laugh when it was shown. The judge liked it and awarded it 20/20 points although it was one of 5 making that mark so didn't come first.

This was a composite of 2 photographs - the first is me holding the mount with a black insert:

The second was of me looking through a larger mount:

In photoshop the technique differed slightly from the previous. I first edited the first image to black out the background but there was no need to cut out the insert as the other image was laid on top.

I then cut out most of the mount from the second photo (including, not only my head but my fingers as well). This was then copied and placed on the first image. The transform tool was used to resize it over the inner part of the mount.

One difficulty was that the lighting on the mount caused shading difficulties. This I overcame by cheating - it worked for a low resolution projected image, but was not good enough for a print. I used the colour fill to recolour the whole of the mount (cutting out around the fingers was tricky).

This is one area I need to work out how to do it better.

This, along with the monochrome image, was all done in one evening so did not take a lot of time.

Photography Club Portrait competition (2 of 3) - monochrome print.

2011-02-10T11:10:00.001Z

I also tried to do something different for the monochrome entry on the theme of Portraits:

This one I titled "its me me me me me!" as there were 5 images of me. The judge spoke highly of it again, but this time awarded 19/20 points.

To make the image I used one original:

In photoshop I had to paint in the full background and trim to size. Then in photoshop I used the magic wand tool to select the black insert (I learnt this after the mistake with the colour print as mentioned in the earlier post). To get a good edge I expanded the selection by 1 pixel, then feathered the selection by 2 pixels. I then deleted the selection to get a transparent area (the background need converting to a layer for this.)

I duplicated the background layer. Using the marquee tool I selected my face, copied it into a new layer, placed this layer behind the duplicated layer and re-sized it using the transform tool so that it fitted into the insert. This created the innermost image.

These two layers were then flattened. The background was duplicated and placed above the flattened image. The flattened images was resized using the warp tool and placed inside the insert. These 2 layers were flattened again and the process repeated a few times.

The conversion to monochrome was done using a gradient adjustment layer.

Photography Club Portrait competition (1 of 3) - colour print.

2011-02-10T11:09:00.001Z

I tried to do something different for this month's competition on the theme of Portraits:

This was a composite of 2 photographs but several attempts taken in my 'office' (a.k.a. spare bedroom). On my first attempt, the computer screen showed just what happened to be there, so for the second attempt I left the photo viewer on the screen showing the first tests. This resulted in the following two photographs:

This one was used as the main subject. It was lit by a desk lamp above the shelf - the colour balance was set to tungsten. One mistake that I learnt from this was that I should have but some black paper behind the cut out of the mount - it was quite difficult cutting out the centre of the mount in Photoshop. I deliberately left the clutter on the desk - I did not want a pristine look.

This second photo I used as the photograph in the mount. If you look carefully at the screen, you can see me in the main photo, looking at a screen with me on the screen - pictures within pictures.

For the photoshop work, apart from a small amount of exposure adjustment, I cut out the centre of the mount in the first photograph and copied in a separate layer of the second photograph with this layer behind the first. I had to skew this layer to match the shape of the mount.

In all, this took about an hour or so to do.

The judge spoke quite highly of this but ony awared it 12/20 points!

Garden snapshots using HDR

2011-02-08T22:07:00.000Z

I have been taking regular snapshots of our gardens for nearly 20 years:

These garden photos have been mostly for our own personal records so that we can see the progress of the garden from when we move in to when we leave. We believe we leave the gardens in a better state than when we move in. Most of these photos have been satisfactory, but often the high contrast situations give a print that leaves much to be desired - and yes I still get them printed, we have several album's worth to look back on.

It is only over the last few months that I have been using the HDR technique to give a better print - some might see this as overkill for a snapshot but I find that the effort is worthwhile. Today, as it was a bright still day, I took a series of photos. This posting shows the result of one view.

This image is the final result of the HDR processing with a little exposure adjustment in Photoshop (levels and shadows/highlights). When these photos were being taken, the sun was behind one of the few clouds in the sky.

The output of the HDR process is shown below. Although still quite nice, I found it a little flat.

Now compare this to the one of the original images as it cam out of the camera:

The main issue with this is that the sky is very washed out - it is too bright when compared to the rest of the image. Even tweaking it in Photoshop does not give a good result as you can see:

There is so little detail in the sky that trying to enhance it has made little difference. If you compare this with the first image, you can see a distinct improvement.

Even though these are record shots for our own use, I believe the little extra effort is worthwhile.

Purple Fairy - Rag Doll

2011-02-04T16:39:00.000Z

This doll was commissioned by my daughter:

These dolls are made by a neighbour; she hand crafts them from vintage materials. Although she does it as a hobby, many hours of work go into the making of them and they sell for peanuts. After my wife bought a doll for herself, my youngest daughter saw it and others that I photographed and thought that she would like one made as a fairy for a friend. These photos show the result.

I tried photographing them in a number of poses - sitting, standing, walking, flying. The black background makes them really stand out. I tried using Photoshop to cut them out from the background but the dark tones of the doll made it very difficult to separate out.

The doll was supported by thin black cotton tied to a piece of wood suspended above the doll. You can see the setup below - I have a home made close-up and macro studio in an attic room as can be seen. This is all hand made including the turkey roasting pan made into a 'beauty dish' - I call it the 'turkey dish'!

More photos can be seen in the client's photo collection.

New 'Featured Photograph' feature

2011-01-18T21:21:00.000Z

After about 5 years I am replacing the 'Picture of the Week' with a 'Featured Photograph' item:

The reason I am no longer doing the 'Picture of the Week' is that the fixed schedule does not match very well with my current projects. Therefore I have decided to replace it with a 'Featured Photograph' item that matches better with my current work, which will appear a few times a month, but not at fixed weekly intervals.

To start the new feature I am showing a photo of a friend taken at a camera club portrait session. I am organising these sessions at my local village hall at a frequency of about once a month. We have between 5 to 8 members attending each session - these are held on a Saturday afternoon.

This particular photo is of one of the members, Brian - we are using each other as models. I converted it to a dark brown/sepia monochrome image. I thinks this has worked well when compared to the original image shown below:

I am considering entering this in the club's forthcoming 'Portraits' competition.

January Garden/Smallholding View

2011-01-10T20:17:00.000Z

I regularly take photos around our garden / smallholding:

For years now, since around 1992, I have been taking photos of the garden and since 2000 of the smallholding. In our last smallholding in Wales I took weekly photos over our front garden which was quite easy as our bedroom overlooked the front garden. I even composed a video from some of these photos which can be seen on You Tube.
In our present, smaller, smallholding I have not been so regular taking photographs, neither do I have such a good viewpoint. However, I have decided to try and take a regular set of photographs around our garden and smallholding - about once a month, maybe more in the spring and summer. In previous photos I have found it difficult to get the balance between the land and the sky in correct proportions, so I am now using the HDR technique to take the photos - 3 images at different exposures make each photo.

The first photograph is of our summer house and pond with an arbour on the right. This is taken from near the southern edge of the garden looking north - from the shadows you can see the how low the winter sun is.

In this second image, I am near the western edge of the garden looking east. Again, you can see a large shadow area in the foreground - this is the shadow of the house. You can also see that there was a fair amount of cloud about, although for most of the time the sun was shining.

For contrast, I have selected this final photograph as it was taken a couple of days earlier when the sun was not shining (even though there is some blue sky) hence there is no sun/shadow contrast. This is taken from the opposite side of the garden from the previous photo (I am near the trailer in that image) looking westwards.

Without the HDR processing of these photos, the images are a lot less colourful and lack a lot of detail.

More of these can be seen in my personal, non-commercial, gallery.

The parts of sweetcorn associated with pollen production and fertilisation.

2011-01-02T20:17:00.000Z

This shows the pollen anthers of sweetcorn.

A while ago I took photographs of sweetcorn growing in our polytunnel. I used my old macro lens to get close-up views of the pollen forming and using parts of the plant. Until you get in close to these subjects, you often don't appreciate what is going on. I took dozens of photographs at different apertures to get different depth of field so that I could select the best - most were taken at f16.

The first photo shows what I think are the anthers that hold the pollen - the pollen dust seems to come from these. As you can see, there are dozens of them - hundreds on just one plant as can be seen in this second image:

In the polytunnel the plant gets covered in the dust (although the plants outside don't seem to suffer so much - the wind disperses the pollen more and the rain washes the plants) with some anthers dropping onto the leaves- as can be seen in this third photo below.

From a photographic perspective I like this photo because of the curved lines made by the leaves. With hindsight I could have composed the image better, but on the other hand it does show what it was intended to show. One advantage of taking photographs in a polytunnel is the lovely soft light it gives - it acts like a huge diffuser.

The full set can be seen in the Gardening Gallery.

Local views after a fall of snow

2010-12-28T08:00:00.000Z

After a recent fall of snow we went for a walk:

I took the opportunity to take my camera to further try out the HDR technique which I discussed a couple of weeks ago. This particular fall of snow was about 2-3 inches deep and was followed by a few days of cold, frosty days. I took my monopod with me to help stabilise the camera whilst taking the photos although the HDR software is very good at aligning the photos together.

The first photo, shown above, shows a gate from the field to a small car park - we don't normally venture any further as getting this far is about a 20 minute walk and we usually turn back at this point. This time we turned to the left and headed down towards the river for Stanley Carr and Alder Carr - a Carr is where the marshy ground is being colonised by trees.

This view is by Stanley Carr and is looking northwards along a woodland track. This leads up to the main road to Aldeby but I have never noticed where it emerges onto the road. One day I will have to explore further. I like this image for the view and detail in the trees. Without the HDR technique most of the detail would be lost in the shadows. Most of these photos I am taking with a view to being used as a background to other photos, however this one (to me) stands as an image in its own right.

This final image shown below was taken the following day. It shows a view over Aldeby Marshes. The snow is beginning to thaw a little but still leaves what I consider to be an atmospheric photograph. To my mind the tree on the right in the middle distance is what makes it. Remove the tree and the image doesn't work.

The full set of these images can be seen in my personal, non-commercial Gallery.

Sweetcorn (Maize)

2010-12-20T16:57:00.000Z

I have a number of photographs of Sweetcorn (maize) growing in the garden:

We have been growing sweetcorn in the garden for several years, both outdoors and in the polytunnel. During the past 5 years I have taken photographs of these plants but have only just got around to reviewing and editing these photos. Now we have moved to East Anglia, the growing season is long enough to get a successful crop outdoors. Where we lived before in Wales, we got a better crop growing the plants inside the polytunnel.

The photo above is one taken this year of the sweetcorn growing outside. This was taken on a bright, hot summers day (Totally opposite to today which has snow on the ground and is bitterly cold - the UK is experiencing one of the coldest Decembers on record - but is still sunny.) The bright, hard sunlight means there is a lot of contrast between the brighter parts of the image and the shadows; these have been corrected somewhat using Photoshop but next year will try using 'HDR' techniques to improve the look. I took this photo from low down to obscure as much as possible the background.

The next photo is one taken in the polytunnel. This shows the male flowers of sweetcorn, laden with pollen. There is masses of pollen released from these flowers, so much that it stains the lower leaves. This is what I like about this kind of photography - I see stuff that normally gets overlooked, and with my curiosity primed, I research the subject.

The next photo is of the female flower. These strands are called silks and catch the pollen and so fertilises the flower. From what I understand each silk equates to one corn kernel, so it is important that the female flower is well fertilised to get a full cob of corn. The part of the plant below the silks will swell to form the cob.

More photos of sweetcorn can be seen in the Gardening Gallery.

Testing the HDR technique in the snow

2010-12-12T16:34:00.000Z

We recently had a few inches of snow:

In this part of the UK (Norfolk) we do not normally get much snow, especially at the end of November / beginning of December. This year we had an early fall and this enabled me test out using the HDR technique on snow scenes.

The first image shows a view across our garden. This was taken first thing in the morning after the overnight snow. This image is built from 3 different exposures (2 stops apart). It was interesting to do this and see how well the detail is shown. Unfortunately the the sky is rather bland - it is still the fairly uniform dull gray colour. I am pleased with the way the snow shows on the trees and furniture.

This second image is a composite of 6 images (each 1 stop apart) - I wanted to see what difference a this makes but I couldn't discern any differences. This view shows the cloud clearing to reveal the blue sky behind. I was pleased with the way this came out - it would have been nice if the sky cleared completely...

A little later on we went for a walk alongside some of the fields opposite our property. I could not get any 'spectacular' landscapes, but did take some that I might be able to use as backgrounds for portraiture - I may talk about this later. The image below is another composite from 6 images (again exposed 1 stop apart). With a grey sky it is rather bland but it may work with a suitable subject placed in front.

The full set can be seen in my non commercial Personal Gallery.

Garden by Moonlight

2010-12-04T21:03:00.003Z

I have been trying out taking photographs by moonlight:

I started this experiment to try something different for a competition for the local camera club - the theme was 'In the Garden'. Clues that it was not taken during the day are: the stars in the sky, the cloud reflecting light from sodium street lamps and the bright white from a garden lamp (one of those cheap solar LED lamps). This is the same image that I entered. However, the judge was not impressed...

At first glance it looks a like a daylight photo. This had a 30 second exposure - the shadows are actually moonshadows - and the single image has been processed using 'HDR' software - this has brought out a lot more shadow detail than conventional processing would show.

This second image is a 'straight' print - just the exposure has been adjusted in Photoshop. I had considered this for the competition but felt that it looked too much like daylight without any distinct clues as to the time it was taken. (this version has also had some slight cropping).

I have also processed this image using the HDR software - this, I feel, is a better image:

These are not meant to be commercial images, just practicing technique using both the camera and software. The full set can be seen in my personal gallery.

Cape Gooseberry (Physalis-peruviana)

2010-11-28T15:52:00.000Z

One of my favourite fruits to grow is Cape Gooseberry (Physalis peruviana or Chinese Lanterns)):

I have grown this fruit for a couple of years now in my smallholding in Norfolk (and previously when we lived on a smallholding in Wales). I find this a fascinating, easy fruit to grow although the season is not quite long enough in the UK - There are many unripe fruits at the end of the season.

I also find it a fascinating subject for photography. Some of the photos I take might be called straight forward record shots, showing the plant and fruit as it develops. Other of the photos might be considered of a more artistic nature - although not by any means fine art.

The first photo, shown above, is a fruit ripening in its husk (or lantern). You can just make out the round orange fruit inside the husk. The second image below is definitely a 'record' shot of young plants in the polytunnel. These had not long been planted out:

For the completeness of the story of the fruit, I also like to show the picked fruit:

- although you can eat them raw, I prefer to cook them - this shows a pan of them cooking on the Aga at our previous home in Wales:

The full set of these photos can be seen in the Garden Gallery.

Experimenting using the HDR technique with landscapes

2010-11-22T19:52:00.000Z

I have been trying out using HDR software on landscapes:

These were taken on a fine autumn day - I thought it was a good day to try out taking images for the HDR technique. HDR is a method, using specialist software, of merging a set of images taken at different exposures into one photograph. The objective is to overcome the limitations of digital cameras where they cannot capture both shadow detail and bright sky detail. Overused you get a 'hyper-real' effect, but with care you can get a reasonable range of tones in the photo.

The photo above is a blend of 5 exposures. This was taking looking directly in the direction of the sun which is shielded by the tree. As can be seen in the 'standard' exposure below, there is very little detail in the shadow side of the tree and the sky is washed out to almost white. The HDR image above had good sky detail - the clouds are distinct from the blue - and there is detail that can be seen in the tree.

The next pair of images is of the detail of an oak tree showing the sunward side. This shows more tonality but sharpness appears to have suffered. I have learnt a lot from this exercise and the next fine day will take another set of photos with different settings and have another go.

The full set of these test photos can be seen in my Personal Gallery.

Hand made dolls for a local craftswoman

2010-11-15T18:42:00.000Z

I was asked by a local craftswoman to photograph her hand-made 'dolls'.

The term 'dolls' does not do justice to these items. We have tried coming up with other names - figurines, mannequin, rag witches - none of which seem to best describe what they are. The are meticulously made with, for the most part, vintage materials all carefully hand stitched. The faces are painted. I would hesitate to guess as to the hours of work involved in making each one.

The first photo, shown above, is of a jester. I love the colours and patterns in this photo. This was taken in my new close-up studio which is essentially a sheet of plywood with a support at the back to hold the backgrounds. It is large enough to hold reflectors, stands and other equipment. The lighting I used is similar to that what I use for some portraits.

The next photo is of a green and orange doll. The colours of this I think are striking. And as for the expression on the face...

I love the mournful expression in this third doll. I find it beautifully matches the colours of the dress and headpiece. I find the contrast between the dark dress and the deep blue and turquoise colours works very well.

The full set of these photos can be seen in the client's gallery (with the permission of the client).
P.S. Some of these dolls are for sale by the client - if you are interested, use the contact form to contact me and I will pass it on to her.

Chickens roosting in an apple tree

2010-11-08T08:24:00.000Z

Some of our chickens have taken to roosting in the apple trees:

We are puzzled as to why this behaviour started. As young birds they were kept in a smaller run where they had perches in their chicken run. Not long before they were moved to their larger run, one started to roost in an apple tree. Then two, then many. When we moved them to their permanent run they were shut in their shed overnight (it is easier to move the birds at night).

After their first day out, that night, all but one were perching in an apple tree within the run. Depending on the weather, a few choose to stay in the shed but most will perch in the tree whatever. To overcome this we tried fencing off the trees, but a few still manage to flap their way into the tree, even though each has one wing clipped (this is painless cutting of feathers - a bit like having your nails clipped).

Never having seen photos of chickens roosting, I thought I would try to photograph them. For my first attempt I was using a flashgun off camera that had a small diffuser. Although this gave some good photos - such as the one below, I thought the lighting was rather harsh.

So, for my second attempt, I used the same flash, but on camera with a second, powerful flashgun on a tripod to the side of the camera - this was to try and provide some background illumination. I think this helped as you can see in the first photo and the one below:

You can see the full set of photos in the Smallholding Gallery.

Last visit of the year to East Ruston Old Vicarage

2010-11-01T19:23:00.002Z

Last week we made or 6th visit of the season to our favourite garden:

We normally try to get to the garden every month, but the visit for the end of September got delayed by poor weather and other commitments, so it wasn't until last week we made our 6th visit. We were quite fortunate with the weather for, although it was not glorious blue skies, nonetheless it was quite pleasant and mild.

Although the garden is at the end of the season and past its best, there was still plenty to see - including the work they are doing - and the autumnal colours were beginning to show. The first photo shown above, is part of the sunken garden - behind me taking this photo is a pond that is perfectly level with the surrounding ground. This view shows a seat under an arbour with the steps leading down into the garden.

This second image is the 'Desert Wash' Garden. In the summer this is ablaze with the orange of Californian Poppies. Now it is more subdued but with a pleasant range of more subtle tones - I really like the range of greens, yellows and browns. In this photo you can see that the sky has a light covering of high cloud.

This third photograph is of another garden with a fountain. Although looking a little untidy, this shows a beautiful range of tones of greens, reds and purples. I feel this image has a distinct autumn look and feel; to me it is obvious that it is not one of the other seasons.

The full set of photos that I took can be seen in my Personal Gallery.

Camera Club Competition - Summer

2010-10-28T20:33:00.007+01:00

Not a particularly good result at this week's competition:

Above is my entry to the colour print section: it was titled 'The flower before the fruit'. This was a bit of a rush entry because I was not really satisfied with my first attempt, shown below. This week, I had been taking photos of the fruit and flowers of Cape Gooseberry (Physalis) in our polytunnel whilst harvesting the fruit. I was also experimenting with a relative new technique known as HDR - I have just bought some software to use for this. This photo is a composite of 2 different HDR images (using 3 bracketed exposures) and one of the original unprocessed images. I thought this was quite effective but the judge awarded it just 17 points.

Below is my original photo which I decided not to enter. The title was 'Summer showers' and was an attempt to show both fine weather and showers in the same photo. The rain and clouds did not stand out well enough, even though I had photoshopped in extra rain in the left hand image. I think the idea was fine, the execution was lacking.

This image was set up by leaving my camera on a tripod (with a rain jacket on) and taking photos at appropriate moments on a showery summer day. Three images where then composited together with the sunny one acting as a pale background.

The colour print entry was also a rushed job. The original print that I had prepared, shown below, although OK I later thought with hindsight as too boring and clichéd.

I decided to enter the print shown below. This is another one of Cape Gooseberry; this time showing the fruit - I gave it the title 'Ripening Fruit'. It was taken at the same time as the flower shown above. Again, this is an HDR image, it comprises of 3 images taken at different exposures. I like the way the colours came out and the soft tones. The judge criticised it for the soft tones saying it need harder lighting! She awarded it only 14 points.

For the black and white print entry I used this image of round bales of straw in the rain - I called it 'Wet Harvest' - the small drops of water on some of the stalks of wheat did get overlooked. This I had to composite from 2 exposures to get detail of the clouds otherwise the sky would have been just white. The judge quite liked this and gave it 18 points.

There were some other, quite excellent photos that won so I did not feel cheated.

Chickens roosting in their shed at night

2010-10-24T21:16:00.000+01:00

I decided to take photos of chickens roosting one evening:

We currently have 3 runs for our chickens and each has its own chicken house or shed. Normally the chickens put themselves away as it starts to get dark, then all we have to do is close the pop-hole (small entrance hole). and they are safe for the night. This particular shed is a converted children's play house that was left behind by the previous owners of the property. I converted it into a chicken house by removing the internal structures, putting a few perches and nest boxes in and cutting a pop-hole in the side.

I have tried before to take photos of the chickens inside the shed but in the morning when they are active and waiting to be let out - this has not been too successful. I don't know why I have never thought to photograph them at night before.

The first photo shows a cockerel facing inwards whereas most of the hens are facing outwards to the wall of the shed. I liked this photo because you can see his face and the fact that he is facing differently to the hens. The bright red of the comb helps it stand out.

This second photo is taken a little to the right of the first and is directly opposite the door. This shows some of the hens on the perch. They are a little unsettled by my presence - which is why they are turning to look at me.

There is a smaller run which has a block-built chicken house. In here is a perch made of some supports from rough timber with a perch from a hazel tree stem. As you can see, some of the chickens are perching, some are resting on the floor. Either way they seem settled and content (although they are keeping an eye on me!)

The full set of these photos can be seen in the Smallholding Gallery.

Joel Grimes seminar

2010-10-21T21:28:00.000+01:00

Yesterday evening I went to a seminar presented by Joel Grimes - a portrait photographer from the US. He was in the UK presenting a couple of seminars and running workshops. This particular seminar was held in Chelmsford and lasted about 3 hours - a worthwhile 3 hours.

When I heard of this seminar, as I hadn't heard of him before, I looked up his website and was amazed at the quality and uniqueness of his photography - this is why I decided to go.

He talked a lot about, what could be described as, his philosophy of photography, his experiences and marketing as well as talking about the photography. Although he did not go into much detail about his Photoshop techniques, he give an overview with a little detail - enough to start experimenting. He also discussed his approaches to lighting (which has changed over the years) and how he uses backgrounds to produce composites.

This gave me a lot to think about...

Have a look at his website

Gallery video slide shows

2010-10-19T09:54:00.000+01:00

For most of my Galleries, I now have a video slide show:

I have created these slide show for each of the major galleries to better showcase my photography. The first one shown above is for the nature / environment gallery. For this I have taken a sample photograph from many of the albums. These have tended to be the more colourful or eye-catching images. Many of my photographs in this gallery are more 'record' shots showing the less interesting (to many people) aspects of the natural world such as the underside of leaves, the joints with stems and so forth - these would not make an interesting video.

The second one is for the 'miscellaneous images' gallery. This gallery is a potpourri of photos covering a diverse range of subjects - seashore, patterns, textures, colour, rotting fruit - even an old valve radio!

The full set of these videos can be seen on the video slide show page.

Sandwiches - a rushed commercial shoot (updated)

2010-10-11T09:52:00.007+01:00

Last week I had an urgent call to photograph some sandwiches:

It is a long story, but basically the client, a food consultant, needed photographs of sandwiches for a small project he is working on with a client. He called me in the morning wanting to know if I could help. The photos needed to be taken that day so they could be sent to the client by the following day.

I agreed, so went to his house that evening and took a series of photographs, loaded them onto his computer and thought that was it. The following day, he called again and said that he was not happy with the sandwiches, so could I do another shoot at my house. Although I had activities planned, I managed to squeeze a couple of hours in the middle of the day.

We worked in our kitchen which gave us a bit more working space around the subject. I was able to set up reflectors on stands to help with the lighting. The client also wanted the sandwiches on both black and white backgrounds.

The first photos were the sandwiches wrapped up - as shown above, then unwrapped as shown below - this time on a white background:

They were then cut and I took a number of photographs of them on each background - such as the first photo in this post. The final shot was a view from above of ingredients spread on a white, then a black background. This worked OK, but I could have done with being a bit higher up.

Postscript: Whilst writing this post, I had an email from him saying this is not quite what his client was wanting - am I available for another shoot?

Update on Tuesday, Oct 12th.
Yesterday evening we did the third shoot - the end client wanted a modification to the sandwich. I cannot post any photos as the end client has put a 3 month embargo on these images. However, I did manage to get a shot of the set-up that I show below - this was in our kitchen:

Video slide shows

2010-10-04T13:26:00.002+01:00

I have just incorporated some video slide shows in my websites:

I had been thinking for some time that the presentation of my images was somewhat static and could do with livening up in some way, but I was uncertain as what to do. Then, I couple of weeks ago, I went to a seminar by Mark Cleghorn (a professional portrait photographer of some standing). There he introduced a gallery of images in video format - I was hooked, it looked that good.

So, this past week, I have been at work selecting images for my own slide shows. I have created a total of 3 shows for my portraiture website. The first, shown above, is to demonstrate the type of portraiture I do and is on the homepage.

The second, shown below is from a single portrait session and shows many of the photos taken:

The third is of young children from two different portrait sessions:

I hope you agree with me, that these are a better way of demonstrating your work.

American Cemetery near Cambridge, UK

2010-09-27T14:31:00.000+01:00

I have always been conscious that the freedoms I enjoy have been bought at the expense of many lives:

As a child in the 50's and 60's we used to drive past this Cemetery on the way to visit relatives. Having been brought up in a country still recovering from the war (I can remember my father parking in bomb sites in London), where the comics of the time were full of stories refighting the Second World War, I was aware of the nature of war: that people died fighting. There were also television programs of the time that showed the newsreels showing the reality of war and what the Nazis were about.

As I grew up I learned more of the war - the Warsaw ghettos, the concentration camps and the sacrifices that many made fighting the evil that gripped much of Europe. I knew also that it was not just the British that fought the Nazis, but many from other countries, such as Australia, New Zealand, India, Canada (amongst others) and, of course, the United States.

So I resolved to visit this cemetery. But the years passed, the family was raised and we never seemed to live quite near enough to visit the place. However, where I now live is not too far (a 2 hour drive) and the cemetery is just a small diversion when I visit the relatives who still live in the same town I visited as a child.

Last week I made the effort to visit the American Cemetery - I am pleased I did.

It is a fine, quiet place well laid out to reflect, not the glory of war, but the sacrifice of the men that died - and many of them did. The cemetery is the last resting place of over 3800 men and records the names of over 5000 missing. Men like Donald R. Gipple from Kansas (below). I don't know him nor his family. All I know is that I owe a debt of gratitude to him and his compatriots who died fighting a war. Due to such people, I am from a generation that has never experienced conscription or war yet also enjoy freedoms that are now tended to be taken for granted.

The number of 3812 (according to the American Battle Monuments Commission) buried at this cemetery does not mean a lot until you see the headstones - mostly Christian crosses but with some Star of David headstones - stretching across the lawns. Then it starts to drive home the numbers involved - for this is only one of many Allied cemeteries across Europe and the rest of the world.

The grounds were well tended - I saw several gardeners at work. But they were not the only ones here - there were other people wandering around, paying their respects. In addition, there was a wreath, by the flagpole, for 303 BG which I presume is the 303rd Bombardment Group.

An interesting, thought provoking day.

Links:

The official website of American Battle Monuments Commission

A site commemorating the 303 BG

More photographs from this visit

Some panoramic views

"In the Garden" Competition

2010-09-24T14:57:00.000+01:00

"In the Garden" was the theme for this months camera club competition:

To be honest, I was less than impressed by the judging: the scores were low, the marks given were inconsistent, and the quality of many of the comments made were, in my opinion, not very helpful. A few other members I spoke to afterwards were of a similar opinion. For example, in the projected image section, there was a shot of a flower bloom that was badly out of focus and the composition was uninteresting - this got 13 points (out of 20). A few images later another flower was well focused. it had water droplets on it (which the judge complimented it on) and was better composed - this got 12 points!

Above is my entry for the Projected Image section titled "Garden by Moonlight" - this got awarded 13 points - the same as the out-of-focus flower. I was trying to be imaginative by presenting something different to what most others were likely to show. This was taken in my garden by moonlight on a clear evening with a nearly full moon. I took several different views and experimented with different settings before settling on this image. It is entirely lit by moonlight with the exception of a couple of low power LED garden lights which are seen in the middle of the photo. The cloud in the background is reflecting the last light of the set sun. The exposure time was about 30 seconds. I was quite pleased with this shot.

For the second image. I used a photo I took of the fruit of the plant commonly known as Cape Gooseberry or Chinese Lanterns - Physalis. This was taken in my polytunnel where I was growing a patch of about 20 plants. In this photograph I isolated one fruit hanging from a stem that was leaning over. This gave what I considered to be a pleasant composition with a diagonal line. The colour version was not brilliant, but I thing the monochrome image enhanced it. I believe that giving it a slight sepia tone improved it. This was awarded a 17 points - along with 3 others - the winning shot had 18 points. The judge then had to award 2nd and 3rd places - this got 3rd. One that missed out was what I thought was a brilliant shot of the interior of a garden shed.

For the colour image, I took a photo of onions that were growing in the garden. I got down very low to give an unusual viewpoint along with the sense of perspective as the row of plants shrunk into the distance. The judge made a few favourable comments then awarded 12 points...

The full set of my entries into this years competitions can be seen in the Featured Photographs Gallery.

The garden herb Borage

2010-09-20T21:16:00.000+01:00

Borage grew well in our garden this year:

We grew the garden herb Borage from seed this year. I did this because in our previous smallholding I grew it and found it to be an attractive flower to photograph. The few plants that we sowed and planted out grew very well and we ended up with a large thick clump of plants. A few of the flowers grew in a pink form - this is what I show above.

Most of the flowers grew with a blue flower, as shown below. This image is a straight-on and shows why it is sometimes known as the star flower. I like the way the hairs on the sepals (the green parts between the petals) glow. The whole plant is covered with this fine white downy hair which seems to glow in the light.

In this final image, I show a flower stem out in the garden with a cloudy sky forming the background. The little dark spots that are visible on the sky is not dust specks, but small flies buzzing around the flowers. These photos were taken during the earlier part of summer when we had a long hot, dry spell.

More photos of Borage can be seen in the Garden Gallery.

The flowers of Chives

2010-09-14T08:15:00.000+01:00

Chives have an attractive flower:

Chives are a member of the onion (Allium) family. They have these attractive dark lilac or purple flowers. The plant throws up quite dense clusters of these flowers which are very attractive to pollinating insects - as can be seen in the photo above. The leaves are effectively stems coming up from the base and are an attractive shade of green that complements the lilac colour.

In this first photo, I was lucky to capture a shot of a bee collecting nectar from the flowers. I like the composition of this photo but feel it would be slightly better if the lower of the 3 flower heads was complete - however, these things happen quickly and you do not always get the time to compose the perfect image.

In this second image, I tried to show how dense the clusters of flower heads were - this was not a large area of chives - just two patches about 12-18" across next to each other. This photo does give the impression of a larger area, the second clump of plants is out of focus in the background.

In this third photo, I have taken it from below to show the flowers against a blue sky. I have used a reflector to add some light to the shadows underneath the flowers. I was also lucky with this image to get a bee on the flower in the foreground - others in the sequence did not show it.

The full set of these can be seen in the Gardens Gallery.

Projected image knockout competition

2010-09-13T18:32:00.000+01:00

Our camera club had its knockout competition last week:

In this competition, which is judged by members, pairs of photographs are projected side-by-side. They are selected at random so there is no chance of people influencing the order. The judging is by a show of hands - the members voting for their favourite of the pair.

We were allowed to enter 3 images for this competition. I thought that I would go for the 'Ahhhh' factor with two of my entries by showing what I thought were 'cute' child photos. The one shown above, of a 4 year old boy, got through the first round but got knocked out in the second when a mistake was made. The software used to present the images didn't have an 'undo' facility so we had to go forward with it as it is.

My second 'Ahhhh' photo was of this 4 year old girl. I thought it was quite a different child portrait but this got knocked out straight away! Ah well...

The third photo was of the blossom of the hawthorn tree. I thought this may stand a chance but, again, got knocked out straight away. Macro photos do not seem to do well either with members or external judges.

More of my camera club competition entries can be seen in the Featured Photographs Gallery.

5th Visit to East Ruston Old Vicarage

2010-09-06T22:13:00.000+01:00

Last weekend we made our 5th visit to this wonderful garden:

Although the summer is drawing to a close, there was still a lot of colour, and other interest, to be seen at this garden. The dahlias looked very colourful. Unfortunately, they were partially shaded, partially in strong sunlight which made it difficult to photograph. For the most part, the hydrangeas were finished although many were still carrying blooms and a few shrubs still looked fresh.

The above photograph is of a French Marigold (Tagetes) - the colour of this bloom was stunning. We are not sure as to what variety it is - the closest we can find is 'Fire King'. I hope your monitor can show the brilliance of this flower.

There were a large number of eucalyptus trees around the garden. Many of them had wonderful patterned bark and some of them with a a papery bark that was peeling. This gave some amazing patterns to the bark. This one I have chosen for the shades of green against the pale, fresher bark. It looks like camouflage.

In the final image I show a scene of a pond near the tea garden. Although we have looked at this several times, this is the first time we noticed the two bird sculptures hidden in the foliage - you need to look carefully to see them!

More photos of this visit, along with all the others from previous visits can be seen in my Personal Gallery.

Field scabious

2010-08-30T14:45:00.000+01:00

Superficially, this looks like the Devil's-bit scabious shown last week:

There are 3 scabious detail in my reference manuals: The Devil's-bit, the Field, and the Small. The Devil's-bit (as shown last week) was relatively easy to distinguish from the other two; however I found it very difficult to to separate the Field from the Small. I was pouring over my reference books when I notice one key difference - the sepals at the rear of the flower. This enabled my to identify this species as the Field scabious (to the best of my knowledge!)

This was found growing in the grass in the orchard area of my smallholding. There were only a few plants growing. After taking photos of these both inside and out, I noticed some very large plants growing in one of the borders by the house. On one of the occasions there was a cabbage white butterfly feeding on the nectar (don't get me going as to which species of cabbage white this is...)

The following photo is of the rear of the flower head which helped my identify this plant:

The full set of photos can be seen in the Environment Gallery.

Devil's-bit scabious

2010-08-23T21:03:00.000+01:00

Devil's-bit scabious (Succisa pratensis) is a wild flower found in the meadows and fields:

This plant has an attractive lilac flower about an inch across. It tends to flower in the later part of the summer - typically mid to late August. There are 3 common scabious flowers all looking similar to the untrained eye (like mine!) so it takes a little research to try and identify which one it is. The way that I see it, the Devil's-bit is more scruffy looking than the others.

I do find that the unopened flower bud is quite attractive - almost geometric like. The colours are quite subtle and do not quite match what the opened flower is like - more of a creamy pink than lilac.

The above 2 photos were taken in the studio. But as the purpose of a lot of this photography is to show the plant, I finish with a view of it in the meadow. This particular image has a fly feeding on the nectar:

More of these images can be seen in the Environment Gallery.

Family Photographs

2010-08-22T18:41:00.000+01:00

I have, since my early teens, been quite – how should I say – obsessed with cataloguing my photographs. This continued when we started a family in 1980 and I still do so. All the family photos are in large albums arranged by date (there are about 25 of them now).

In addition, I have become the family ‘archivist’ in that I also have an album of photos of my ancestors and other distant relatives – the oldest of which is my grandfather’s grandparents – it must date to the late 19th Century. I doubt whether he considered it would be of interest 100 years later. The early photos, like this one on the right (my great great grandparents) would have been taken in a studio – the technology did not exist then for ‘everyday’ photography.

These albums are a source of great pleasure and interest within the family, especially as we are now starting to trace the family tree – we can put some faces to names. We can also look back, with pleasure, at places we have lived, hairstyles and clothes we wore (much hilarity there!), holidays and so on. Our, now adult, children enjoy pulling out an album when they visit us to show their partners.

What this is leading to is: What do you do with photos you take?

In the days of film, you took it to the chemist and got back your prints – these often ended up in the back of a cupboard or drawer. Many people now have digital cameras. Some people that I have met have taken photographs but done nothing with them. They may have printed a few which get looked at once then put away and forgotten. They may have even copied them to a computer; you may argue that once they are copied to a computer they will be available for ever. But technology both changes and fails (How are we going to read all those time capsules recorded with the BBC micro of the ‘80s? What happens if your computer crashes?)

How are your children, grandchildren and so on (those that you have now or may have in the future) going to see what things were like way back in 2010? I believe printed photographs in albums are still the best way of storing and viewing photographs for families. Although modern, quality materials have an estimated life of at least 80-100 years, this only applies if stored and viewed properly (keep out of sunlight and have those on display in glass fronted frames). But beware – if you print your own photos, cheap inks and paper do not necessarily have the same longevity.

Do you have something for your children and grandchildren?

A lot of the old photos I have are a combination of family snapshots and professionally taken photographs – the best being the professional portraits. The snapshots are of value by recording the day-to-day events. Although modern technology makes it easy to take a reasonable snapshot, as a family heirloom shouldn’t you invest in something a little better, such as a professionally taken family portrait? You could have grandparents with grandchildren, 3 or 4 generation family groups or the children themselves. Think about having portraits of children as they grow up – say every year – they may not be keen now, but will come to treasure them in adult life.

So why not invest now in a professional photograph?

A printable (pdf) copy of this article is available here.

Copyright © 2010 Paul L.G. Morris www.pmstudios.co.uk/portraits
Paul takes portraits and family photographs for clients in Norfolk and Suffolk. See his website for more information or call him on 07881 784 259

Black Medick

2010-08-16T22:25:00.000+01:00

Black Medick (Medicago lupulina) is a clover-like plant:

This plant is quite prolific in our so-called lawn (more plants than grass seems to grow in it!). It is a clover-like plant but a lot smaller that the more common clover that also grows in the lawn - the flower head is barely 5mm (<1/4") across. The leaves are also of a darker green. Because the plant is so small, this is the largest view that my camera can capture of the flower - although it can be cropped and magnified that way.

This plant is a legume - a member of the pea family - and the flowers seem quite characteristic of this group of plants. As I take photos to help identify different characteristics of a plant I also photograph the leaves as can be seen below. You can see they have the typical clover-like form. Identification was quite difficult - there are similar species - although I feel reasonably comfortable with this as the leaves are downey.

In the lawn, this plant grows in largish clusters, some a couple of feet across. The flowers, although tiny, show as a mass of small yellow spots amongst the dark green leaves - the next image gives some idea of this:

These photos were taken in quite a dry spell when the only thing green in the lawn was the clovers. Since then we have had a lot of rain (too much!) and these plants have flowered even more - I will have to get out and take some more photos.

The full set of images can be seen in the Environment Gallery.

'Though a Window' competition

2010-08-12T21:17:00.000+01:00

The judge at this week's camera club competion liked this:

The theme for this months competition was 'Through a Window'. The competition was very stiff - the standard of entries has increased markedly in the 20 months I have been a member. This was awarded 20/20 points for the colour print section, but was one of 5 prints to get this rating. In the final positioning, the judge gave it 2nd place.

The judge liked it for the simple composition, the vibrant colours and the fact that it was an original concept taken specifically for the competition. I was, however panicking a couple of days before as I didn't have any suitable entry. I had the idea of a neighbour's dolls house but did not want to impose upon them. Then finally I had an idea of a Lego window. So, on Monday lunchtime I went into the attic, found the box of old Lego, sorted out a few components, set up and photographed the set (2 photos: one of the window and one of the Lego figure), composed it in Photoshop and made a print - all in an hour!

My favourite entry was this monochrome image title 'Broken Pane':

As it happens, this was the first photo to be judged. The judge gave very favourable comments about it, including the slight sepia tone, sharpness and detail, then awarded it 15 out of 20 points! I was puzzled but as the competition progressed, this was his 'average' score - some got as few as 12 points.

The entry for the projected image was, I felt, my weakest entry but it gained 18 points. This was titled 'View through a Windows window':

His comments concentrated on the actual photograph but made no comment on what I had done apart from one throw-away line at the end when he said 'we can see what he's done!'

So, overall, I was quite happy with the results - in fact I was surprised at the points for the Lego print (I was a little embarrassed when I handed it over and saw some of the other entries...)

These can be seen in my Featured Photographs Gallery.

2 cute blond girls

2010-08-08T22:00:00.000+01:00

I had the privilege of photographing these two girls this week:

Children can be difficult to work with but these 2 girls, aged 7 and 4, were fun. I photographed the younger girl first (whilst her sister was looking at our dogs). I then photographed her older sister before taking both together. I then introduced an element of fun for them by having their grandmother blow bubbles over them - which they enjoyed a lot.

I have already hand printed this photo, at sizes from postcard to A3 for the family - I am now waiting for them to decide which other photos they want. The parents have given my permission to use some of the photos for my website although there are more, equally cute, in the private gallery for them to choose from.

The younger girl was an absolute joy with the expressions she pulled - as you can see in the following photo - this was completely spontaneous , not posed at all:

Their mother is a keen photographer and has taken numerous photos of the girls on different occasions. This has led the older girl to quite a fixed smile that lacked sparkle in the eyes. But as she started to enjoy the sessions, she started to smile more naturally. I was pleased with the following image:

More of these photos can be seen in the Example Portraits Gallery.

4th visit to East Ruston Old Vicarage

2010-08-02T15:12:00.000+01:00

The Hydrangeas were looking spectacular:

Hydrangeas are those flowering shrubs that colour between pink and blue according to the acidity of the soil. I have never been much of a fan of these plants - until now. These week on our 4th visit to East Ruston Old Vicarage the hydrangeas were just amazing - I have never before seen such a range of colours, they were absolutely gorgeous.

Even though our visit was cut short by heavy rain we had enough time to quickly view much of the garden. However, it was not so spectacular as it has been - I can understand this as it is now that awkward time of the year that many gardens (including ours!) looks below par. The main spurt of flowering from spring to early summer is over and most plants are spent.

These hydrangeas were mostly large bushy shrubs planted in the woodland area of the garden. This first photo I have chosen as the 'Picture of the Week'; I love the colours of the flowers ranging from blue to pink against a dark green background. I hope your monitor is capable of showing such delicate colours.

This second plant has similar flowers but here the colours go from a deep, dusky pink to a pale, almost white, pink. Again, the dark green leaves provide a suitable background for the colour of the flowers.

This final image shows flowers with colours from a delicate lilac to pink. The foliage is a lighter shade of green which, again, complements the flower colour. As well as these delicate shaded colours of hydrangeas, there were also the brighter, more blowsy colours although I did not take as many photos of these. In fact I did not take as many photographs as I would have liked as we could see the dark rainclouds gathering overhead. Still, I am glad we made the visit as on a later visit we may have been too late.

The full set of photos can be seen in Paul's personal gallery.

The small bright flowers of Scarlet Pimpernel

2010-07-27T14:22:00.000+01:00

This wild flower has beautiful orange-red flowers:

This is a Scarlet Pimpernel (Anagallis arvensis). I have found two plants growing in our garden: one was in the grass in the orchard area of the garden, the second was discovered clearing weeds in the vegetable plot. The first plant was photographed a couple of weeks ago during a very dry spell - the surrounding grass was quite dry and brown. The second was photographed just a couple of days ago.

In this first photo, I have isolated just a single flower. This is one of several photographs taken at different angles and distances. Depending on the setting of your monitor, the colour should show as an orange-red going to a deep purplish-red at the centre.

In this second image, I have shown the flower head-on with the rest of the plant in the background. This gives a better indication of the shape - 5 petals. The size of the plant is about 12mm across - say 1/2".

The final photograph shows the underside of the leaves and the rear of the flower - important identification points. You will notice that the leaves have dark brown pin-prick spots all over them - this is how the plant is.

The full set of photos can be seen in the Environment Gallery.

Colne Valley Festival

2010-07-20T18:07:00.000+01:00

This peaceful river flows through a country park that passes by London's Heathrow Airport:

The Colne Valley Park is a regional park of countryside to the immediate west of London, stretching down as far as London's Heathrow Airport. The reason for my visit was to attend the festival weekend that was organised by my youngest daughter - she works for a countryside charity that does a lot of work in the park and gets funding, not just from the adjacent London Boroughs, but also distributes small grants funded by Heathrow Airport itself.

Whilst attending the festival, we went on one of the short circular walks that took us along the adjacent Grand Union Canal (one of the major canals before the age of Railways) and across this river - the Colne. Considering how close the massive housing estates of London are, it is surprising how few people seem to visit this place - they are missing a gem!

The festival was a small event (there is neither the time nor funding to organise anything massive), this was a pleasant small event. I took photographs to both support my daughter and give me some experience in taking portraits at this type of event.

One of the activities was this 4-piece jazz band. They were playing on and off all day. Due to licencing restrictions, they could not keep playing in the same place - they had to move about so this photo shows them playing at the edge of the field where the event was held.

There were a couple of craftsmen there demonstrating their skills; this shows one making willow hurdles:

The full set of photos can be seen in an events gallery on the portraits subsite.

Camera Club Open Competition

2010-07-19T08:05:00.000+01:00

Not a good result last week - this photograph scored only 15 / 20:

This was my entry for the projected image section. I thought I would try something different with a still life - it is titled 'Rotten wood remnant' - it is a piece of an old apple tree root that I dug out of the garden. This took me a long while to shoot as it was very difficult to get the reflection just right (this is not a 'Photoshop reflection') and to remove the tiny specs of wood dust that it was shedding.

The judge considered it technically perfect and in a different more relevant competition it might achieve 20 points, but in this competition he could only give it 15! Ah well... I must admit though, I think he was the best judge we have had so far. In the majority of cases I think he was very fair in his comments, even though he was quite critical.

This photo of a flowering currant, which was my colour print entry only got 16 points. His main criticism was the flowers that were cut off by the bottom of the frame. I had thought about that but didn't think it made much difference - the judge thought otherwise - he gave it just 16 points.

I am struggling with black and white images. This one is of the local fishing lakes. I had trouble getting the tones right in the image. The judge criticised it for the messy composition and the lack of a subject for the eyes to focus on. He gave this 12 points - my worst score.

The full sized versions can be seen in the 'Featured Photographs' gallery.

The tiny yellow flower of the hop trefoil

2010-07-12T17:10:00.000+01:00

This clover-like plant is growing in our lawn:

I have been photographing the wild flowers (aka weeds!) in our garden over the past few weeks. One thing I have noticed in our lawn is the amount of clover growing in it - it grows better than the grass and has kept green in the recent prolonged dry spell that we have had. I noticed that some of this clover had different flowers and different size and colour leaves. Looking closer you can see that they are different plants - so far I have identified 4 different types of clover.

This one is, to the best that I can determine (if I am wrong, please correct me!), a hop trefoil: Trifolium campestre. It is still part of the clover family and is good for the soil in that it fixes nitrogen - perhaps that explains why it is so green - the rest of the lawn needs feeding. This is called a hop trefoil because the flower heads turn pale brown so as to look like miniature hops. In this first photograph I am concentrating on the flower head which has this lovely pale yellow colour; it is only about 1cm across.

The second image shows the leaves. You can see that it has the 3 clover like leaves - this is where the Trefoil part of its name comes from. Like many plants the identification gets quite subtle - you are looking as how hairy or downy the leaves are or the stem is; slight differences in the shape of the leaves - I have spent hours flicking through different reference books trying to identify each species.

The size of a plant is an important characteristic in identification so I have taken to photographing it against a steel rule as shown in the third photo. Not pretty but necessary...

The full set can be seen in the Environment Gallery.

3rd Visit to East Ruston Old Vicarage

2010-07-04T10:23:00.000+01:00

Whilst having tea and cake in the garden, I manage to get this 'grab' shot:

This week we made out third visit of the season to this garden - we are trying to visit about once a month. Mid way through the afternoon we stopped at the tea rooms for tea and a piece of cake and sat outside in the tea garden (along with many others, it was very busy). This bird - a Chaffinch - landed on a chair behind me. My wife who was sitting opposite pointed it out to me. I looked round, saw it, picked up my camera and manged 3 shots - the third of which was missing the bird. The whole event took just a couple of seconds.

I was very pleased with the 2 successful images - the exposure was correct and the focusing spot on. Not bad for a 4 year old camera with a lens that I dismantled and repaired myself (you can see some of the details in my forum post).

On this visit, I was mostly concentrating on colour. This first photograph I show petunia flowers. I love the shade of pink of these flowers, and seeing a mass of them together is quite impressive.

As this was a personal, rather than photographic visit, we were also looking for unusual plants. This one was fascinating for the colour of the flowers - a deep, dark turquoise. The plant itself must have been 15-20ft high. If anyone can tell me what this is, it would be appreciated.

Finally, there was a field that was full of cornflowers, corn marigold, a few poppies, and ox-eye daisy. It was called, appropriately, the cornfield. These photos do not do it justice (it would have helped to have a stepladder to get higher). The display was stunning. People just came and stared in wonder at it.

The full set of photos from this visit on 30th June (and previous visits) can be seen in my Personal Collection Gallery.

Spotted Medick

2010-06-27T10:12:00.000+01:00

Spotted Medick is a clover-like plant with a small yellow flower:

This is a plant that is growing profusely in the 'lawn' (OK the greenish stuff in the garden full of weeds!) At first I thought it was a form of clover due to the three leaves growing together. Clover, though, has its flowers in a largish ball, whereas this has just a single flower; it is part of the same family, related to peas and is nitrogenous in that is helps soil fertility by fixing nitrogen from the atmosphere.

This first photo shows a single stem of the plant sporting a single, open, flower. The flower is about 4-5mm (1/5 of an inch) long. This image gives a general view of the flower in context with the leaves.

The second photograph gives a more detailed view of the leaves, along with two unopened flower buds. The leaves are different from many clovers in that is has the distinct inverted V shape in the middle of each leaf. In some clovers you can see a faint larger V marking, but this is the first I have seen with such a dark mark.

This third image shows a carpet of them in the lawn. The dark V markings are quite distinct and the flowers, in this group, are mostly open. These plants are making quite distinct green patches in the lawn as the grass is yellowing due to the dry weather that we are currently having.

More of these photos can be seen in the 'flora' section of the Environment Gallery.

The trumpet-like flower of the Echinopsis-multiplex cactus

2010-06-21T07:51:00.000+01:00

This cactus has an amazing trumpet-like flower:

This is another of my cacti that has just come into flower - I believe it to be a Echinopsis-multiplex (but please correct me if I am wrong.) As you can see from the above photo, the flower is larger than the cactus itself. I do not know how large the cactus can grow in the wild, but this specimen is about 3 inches high which makes the flower about 6 inches long - quite an amazing sight.

This first photo I took just to put the flower into context with the plant it grew from. This cactus has not been specially prepared - I just brought it indoors from the ploytunnel where it was growing with the rest of my (small) collection.

In this second photograph, I am concentrating on the head of the flower. Here you can see details of the stamens and stigma (the flower parts used for pollination) and the beautiful pale pink to white petals. Most of the colour is towards the tips of the petals; the outer petals also have more colour.

In the third image, I have shown the rear of the flower head. You can see that there is a bit more colour to the outer petals. Strangely though, I prefer this to the photos showing the front of the flower - I like the way the pointed petals radiate out with the lower ones curling back on themselves.

Unfortunately, these flowers do not last - I read they come out at night and last just the one day. Whilst I was taking these photos - this was mid morning - the flower started to droop and by the end of the day it was flat on the ground.

The full set of photographs can be seen in the Nearscapes Gallery.

A second visit to East Ruston Old Vicarage.

2010-06-14T11:59:00.000+01:00

The flowers are really blooming now:

This was our second visit to these gardens - about 4 weeks separated this from the previous visit and things have really moved on. The beds with the tulips that I featured last week have been dug up and replanted - no sign of the tulips now - and much more is in bloom. The weather was also significantly warmer which helps...

In the first photo, I am showing some brilliant orange poppies - these are in the 'Desert Wash & Californian Border'. I love the masses of these orange flowers that are growing all over the place. In this photo, I have used a distant blue shrub as a contrasting background.

This second photo shows, what I think is, a wedding cake tree located in the 'West Field & Woodland Garden. To the west side of the gardens, a small woodland with various walks has been planted. There are some fine specimen trees here - this being one of them. To take this photo, I had to move around to get the best view - there is so much other stuff around it is hard to show just the one shrub.

I could not resist this photograph for the vibrant colour of the flowers. When my wife is back, I will ask her to identify these plants - she is the plantsman - I do most of the heavy work a look after the fruit trees and bushes in our garden whilst she can rattle off the common and Latin names of many plants.

You can see the current selection of photos in my personal gallery - these were taken for my own use and were not intended to be 'commercial' (although if anyone wants to purchase or licence a print, please contact me!)

East Ruston Old Vicarage

2010-06-06T21:07:00.000+01:00

This is the best garden we have ever seen:

East Ruston Old Vicarage is a private house in North Norfolk. The two owners have, over the years, developed a superb garden that they open to visitors during the growing season. We visited it twice last year towards the end of the season but this year have purchased season tickets. The selection of photos I am showing here were taken in early May on a cold wet miserable day. I only had my small compact camera with me, but even so, managed to capture some of the beauty of the gardens.

In the first photo, I have concentrated on the tulips in one flower bed. The owners have selected flowers of complementary colours that really match well - it was a sea of colour. These photos have not been enhanced - just a tweaking of the exposure in Photoshop.

This second image is looking back towards the house through a series of arches and walkways. Incidentally, the tulips were in a bed towards the end of the view on the right, opposite the house. You can see part of the end wall of the house on the left. This is quite a substantial building - some vicars had fine houses in those days...

This third view is looking back over some lawns to the house. I presume the window must be one of their main living rooms - what a view to have every day. The topiary is just amazing - the obelisks shown are just a few of what they have. Most of the lawns have the classic stripes from mowing in alternate directions using a mower will a roller.

You can also see some of the brickwork. Like all the brickwork around the property, it is first class - not the usual 'thrown together quickly' that you often see.

Details of the property can be seen in their website.

Sporting Action Competition

2010-05-30T20:44:00.000+01:00

I submitted an unusual portfolio of photos for this competition:

I left it late creating some images for this competition so I was getting desperate. I did not want to submit the common sports such as football or water sports. Checking the dictionary definition of sport (which included the word 'game') I started thinking of other types of sport.

For the projected image section, I decided on a game of chess (for the sport) and showing a movement of a piece (for the action). After digging out my old chess board, and checking the position of the pieces (it is over 20 years since I last played), I created the above setup and played a few moves.

The background was black plastic and card which I darkened up in Photoshop, but the board and pieces needed very little change. In hindsight, I think the picture would be better viewing the game from the side by turning the board through 90 degrees.

This was titled "Game in Play" and the judge gave this 17 out of 20 points.

For the second photo, I thought of watching sport on the television. Looking at the TV listing pages, that evening there was an England v Mexico soccer game showing. So I set up the following photo with the camera on a tripod and I used a remote trigger to fire the shutter - it is me sitting in the chair.

It took a few attempts to get right but I ended up with about 20 images to choose from. There was a distinct colour cast difference between the room lighting and the TV. To simplify things I decided on making this image monochrome. Thinking of a title for the photograph, I thought of the pun "Sporting Inaction" - this raised a laugh in the competition.

When the image was displayed I immediately thought it would be better if I was holding a beer - moments later the judge said the same thing! This gained 17 out of 20 points.

On the day of the competition I was getting desperate for a colour image. As some fishing lakes are just a few minutes walk away, I tried to see what I could find there. The following colour photo is the one I finally decided on. For the title I gave it "Fishing is a Gentle Sport". The judge gave it 16 out of 20 points.

Larger sized versions can be seen in the Featured Photographs gallery.

A salmon-pink cactus flower

2010-05-24T22:09:00.000+01:00

I believe this is a species of Mediolobivia:

This cactus has come into flower over the past few days. I have a few cacti that I keep in my greenhouse for the beautiful flowers that they produce. I believe this is one of the Mediolobivia species of cactus - but I am no expert so could be wrong... The flowers open fully in the morning - it seems that the brighter sun, the more open the flower.

This selection of photos were taken over 2 days - on the first day I had to stop for a little while and by the time I could resume the flowers has closed. I brought the cactus indoors to take the photos against a black background, using a flashgun fired through a diffuser.

The first photo shown above is a close-up of a single bloom. The positioning of the flower is one of my favourite set-ups. I have to position the flowerpot at the right angle - this is balanced on plastic grips. The height and position of the flashgun also has to be adjusted to suit the subject.

This second image is taken with a portrait aspect. Here, I wanted to get a roughly symmetrical view of a cluster of the blooms - I was fortunate that there was the flowers growing such that I could take this view.

In this final photograph, I am trying to show the sweep of flowers growing over the cactus. The flowers at the top are out of focus as I could not get enough depth of focus to show them all - but on the other hand, this does give some depth to the image.

The full selection of images can be seen in the Nearscapes Gallery.

Apple blossom season

2010-05-18T15:50:00.000+01:00

Apple blossom is quite beautiful seen close up:

We have a number of apple trees in our garden - of different varieties - that are now out in bloom. I had to prune a very old tree (probably 50 + years old) that had just come into bloom so I took some of the pruning indoors to photograph. This particular tree is, we believe, a Russet variety.

In this first photo I show both a complete and open flower surrounded by unopened blossom. It is interesting that the unopened flowers are red on the outside but the colour seems to disappear when the flower has opened.

In this second photo I show a cluster of the blossom. Here you can see that the red colour is fading on the partially opened blooms. The green leaves make a pleasant contrast to the colour of the flowers.

In this final image, I show a detailed close-up of the centre of the flower. I love this, not just for the detail of the stamens etc., but for the texture in the petals of the blossom.

More of these can be seen in the Garden Gallery.

Camera Club A4 print competition

2010-05-17T15:31:00.000+01:00

Last week the camera club had an A4 print competition:

The idea of the A4 print competition was to encourage those members who felt intimidated by the A3 prints submitted by more experienced (or wealthier!) members. Members could submit two prints in either colour, Black and White, or one of each. I submitted one of each but there were far more colour prints than B&W. This competition was voted on by the members.

I am pleased to say that this colour photo, of the flower of a Christmas Cactus, was the runaway winner. I do feel it was one of my best prints - it looked superb. The club secretary who was doing the commentary for this part of the competition walked up to it, said "what can I say?", picked up the print and said something like "I'm off now with this...".

There were a few other very good prints - I specifically liked one of 2 horses ploughing a field - this I voted first. But with member votes I have often said "A pretty flower trumps all".

Conversely, my B&W print was unplaced. I still haven't master the printing of B&W prints - they seem to look fine on the screen but lack punch in the print - more practice is needed...

Larger versions of these can be seen in the Featured Photos Gallery.

Flowers on the flowering current shrub

2010-05-10T21:31:00.000+01:00

Our flowering currant had a mass of flowers this year:

The display is quite magnificent during the early spring - it is a pity it is mostly hidden behind a shed! A couple of weeks ago, I showed some close-ups taken in the studio - here I show the plant outside. For most of these photos I had to climb a couple of steps up a step ladder to get to the 'interesting' area of the shrub.

In this first photo I show the plant against a blue sky. This has worked better than I thought as the sun is behind me and is quite strong - I expected the shadows to be too strong but it worked OK. The juxtaposition of the green leaves and pink flowers against the blue sky is quite striking.

In the second photo I show the plant with a background of a ploughed field that is next to our garden. I think this gives some context and scale to the plant rather than just show the plant. I took several photographs like this using different apertures to adjust the depth of field - this one gave what I think is the best image.

The final image shows the mass of pink flowers on this shrub, with the plant itself forming the background. I find the amount of effort the plant puts in to flowering quite amazing - it is a shame that it does not give any fruit like the fruiting varieties give.

More of these photos can be seen in the Gardening Gallery.