I've Returned!

Ah silence. Isn't it golden? I admit it, I've been silent of late. The hit rate for the blogs and site has been so low I just couldn't be bothered. Still I have things to report.

Firstly you'll notice that a new gallery has appeared. It will go live soon, just culling the 108 or so pictures back to improve load-times. It's a series from when we were on vacation in France last week. Yay us.

Secondly, I have to whole heartedly recommend ambling over to the Museum of Bad Art a fantastic location to gorp and stare at other peoples hard work and subsequent failure. Cruel I know, but hey, what can you do.

More plans in the pipeline; when they manifest I'll post ... assuming anyone reads this stuff.

[DW]

New Gallery Now Open

A new gallery based on my last photoshoot is now live. You can access it from my portal: http://www.pfff.co.uk.

If you dislike the layout, fear not, the photo album mechanics are based on FrontPage and annoy me greatly. I'll be resolving this with a java rewrite over the coming days.

The setup for this particular shoot was based heavily on my Nikon SB-800 flash. It performed faultlessly, allowing over 100 photos without a single recharge; for all I know it will continue for many photos to come.

A mixture of bounce card and direct flash were used depending on the type of zoom penetration I needed.

39 photos made it to the a-list, about 30 made the b-list and the final 30 or so were failures.

Enjoy.
[DW]

New Years Party

(Ah, sleep does wonders)

This is a mixture of shots taken over New Year Eve. There are some oddities thanks to the world of digital camera; the moustache is genuinely in the original photo, but looks like I added it later.

But what's the point? Okay, nice pictures of people celebrating, but it also shows the a tiny fixed lens camera is equally good at taking photos in the right conditions. These were all shot with a Sony U30 micro camera and other than some flash control they pretty much okay.

I wanted you to see the whole gamut of photography; things don't have to be hard or bad. Oh and all are clickable to enlarge (as normal).

Look at me!	Tasteful Headgear
Smile	Mine's a Manhattan
To your health	How you do'in?

Ocean View

Shot taken over looking the Persian Gulf. Very bright light, perfect colors. I decided to make this a panoramic simply as it added value; all I removed was some dull sky and water. Doing so however emphasizes the boats and again tells a story.

Sometimes photography is like that, the camera itself doesn't take you all the way. You need to postprocess in order to complete what you intend. It's no different from art, and no less photography.

View to sea

Looking out over the Persian Gulf. Taken with my AF-S 70-200mm VR lens again. I think at a high f-stop (F22?); I'd need to check the ExIf to be sure.

The key point about a shot like this is the story it tells; the only way to achieve this is to keep banging off the shots until you get the right one. Triage and trash anything that doesn't make the grade; after all this is digital and such things are cheap to do.

Hotel Nights

So so shot taken on a few second exposure at the Bahrain Ritz Carlton. I took this resting on top of an SUV in a moderate wind. My AF-S 70-200mm VR lens is kinda big, so you need a good resting point.

If there's one criticism I'll lay on the D70 is its lack of presets; you either take the night-time preset or reconfigure the camera completely. Now this is an utter pain as restoring it to your original settings also takes time.

If I was splitting hairs I'd like the camera to auto-sense the lens used and change the presets appropriate. The would allow me to flip lenses and instantly get the type of preset I'm looking for.

Monologue over.

The Art of Coordination

Another example of using such flash techniques to great effect. If a direct flash was used the room behind would have no illumination what-so-ever and appear black.

[DW]

Jazz Hands!

A good example of bounce and defussed flash. While well lit nothing is over exposed.

[DW]

Puzzles puzzles everywhere...

There is a theme here. I bought a couple of metal puzzles (the big heavy kind) as a Christmas present. Of course, all men are firmly convinced anything as mechanical as a chain puzzle can easily be solved. I laid my challenge in frustration carefully. Mouhahaha.



Note: Bottom-Left is a direct flash from the D70, see the difference in lighting? To me it's quite dramatic.

[DW]

What not to wear...

A silly photo using a bounce flash. How to wear a headset.



Is this a call centre operator in the making or a multi-million pound financial wizard ... you decide.

[DW]

Shady View

A well balanced shot thanks to the height of the sun. In particular the shadow seems critical to this shot to me. If we zoomed too close to the subject that element of the picture would be lost; therefore I'm quite pleased with the outcome.

[DW]

A View from Saudi Arabia

Looking out over the Persian Gulf from Saudi Arabia. The thing I like about this particular photo is the lighting is just perfect.



Technically speaking this is quite a mad photo: I shot this using my ED AF-S 70-200mm lens with its x1.5 multiplier as it was hooked up to my D70.

Now I know that might seem unwarranted, but the lens is just so much better than anything I have, its magnification is well worth a little planning; particularly based on the shot's clarity.

[DW]

Remote Flashing

Well it might not be a night shot, but it's still of interest.

Happy New Year!

For Christmas I got the fantasic Nikon SB-800 Flash. It has filters, a defusion dome and most importantly can be used as a wireless remote. This test shot is a good example.



Note the light coming from the bottom-right of the picture. The SB-800 was placed just of shot behind the door and remotely fired.

The flash had an incandesant filter on it such that the ambient light above the table and the flash matched in colour.

The effect, a fantastic and technically impossible shot to do just with a camera flash. I love it, Nikon roq.

[DW]

Nighttime Action

My next puzzle is going to be motion. Nighttime lends itself particularly well to such things so I'm going to see what I can grab. My initial thoughts are traffic, as who can beat a stop-light line for speed?

Watch this space as I concoct different aspects. Initially I'm thinking:

• Busy multi-lane traffic
• Street life
• Attractions

Lets see how I get on.

[DW]

Success! We have colour!!!

Okay - this is MUCH better, by working with a shutter speed we can optimize the light and stop over exposure of the lights. As you can see, elements of the photo came out perfectly with all colour retained.

This picture is well worth clicking on. The larger version really shows the detail (the original is even better still at 3000 pixels wide).

One thing I will say though,

It is unbelievably critical to ensure the tripod is firm.

Either by apply downward pressure to the frame when taking the photo or investing in an expensive tripod that doesn't twist. Personally, I'm very happy with my tripod (the weight-size is unsurpassed), but it comes at a cost, low-speed work requires more care ... I forget that sometimes.

Anyway, enjoy.

[DW]

Take 2: Christmas Lights

You may remember this photo from a few nights ago:



Well the time has come for a re-shoot. I'll cover what I said before (check Marshmellow World - as we've moved over from there).

In summary - the aim to to capture this scene well at night. This time we're going to preset the WB and speed up the shutter.

Watch this space.

[DW]

What's Going On?

Welcome to a new sub-blog. This will be the home of all my digital photography projects.

I've fragmented the blog into logical units. I'm sure the clutter of Marshmellow World confuses many.

[DW]