Blog Archives
Sunday 31 March 2013: Filming & filming…
Going back to Easter Sunday recently I *could* have written about photos of my kids rampaging around the garden hunting for Easter eggs…
…instead we have my nephew taking a pic of my partner filming the kids rampaging around the garden…
A chance photo taken with a 300mm lens is usually a good thing – I hadn’t intended posting this to my site, but felt it worked once I had given it the black & white treatment.
Minimal changes in Photoshop came up with an interesting image, if only someone had taken a photo of me taking a photo of my nephew etc etc…
DSLR-A200:f/5.6:1/320″:90.0mm:ISO 100
Thursday 28 March 2013: Whoozat lyin’ in MY bed???
My daughter seems to love the comfort of our dogs basket, much to the bemused annoyance of Toffee… She’s a lovely dog though and takes it all in her stride, patiently waiting… waiting… waiting…
Like an earlier photo of my daughter, the light is coming from a window behind the subject(s), upping the ISO took care of this to some extent, but so did using the Shadows/Highlights dialogue in Photoshop Elements 10 under the Enhance menu.
This allowed me to lighten up certain important parts around the dogs head and my daughters face which are both well in shadow.
Also I used the clone tool to clean the tiled floor a bit, proving that this Home Dad needed to do some cleaning… I only wish it was as easy in real life!
DSLR-A200:f/5.6:1/25″:50.0mm:ISO 800
Tuesday 19 March 2013: Bisoussss Daddy!
Have not been taking a photo each day for a little bit and those images I have taken have stayed on the back burner, so a bit of a catch up… School holidays plus typesetting work on the local village magazine has kept me busy. That has now gone to print, so I have a little bit of spare time again.
So here I am… with a photo of my daughter, taken on our walk back home from dropping my son off at Judo this evening.
Taken with the little Nikon, I have made the best of an over-exposed job. Enhancing the bright colours of her coat and giving more contrast so she really stands out on this photo.
Took a good 5 minutes to get the right pose though, still a natural portrait shot as she wasn’t really aware I was taking a photo! I love the angle too. What do you think?
COOLPIX S2500:f/3.2:1/30″:4.9mm:ISO 250
Friday 8 March 2013: Friday evening rooves
After a very wet Friday, the afterglow of daylight fading to night made up for a very grey and dismal day…
Even though I opened up the ISO of this shot to 1600, there was enough light at 7.50pm to take this at a fast shutter speed. After that it was a case of giving the image more contast in Photoshop to get that interesting “silhouette look”. The “Shadows & Hi-lights” menu came into use here too.
DSLR-A200:f/5:1/400″:230.0mm:ISO 1600
Sunday 3 March 2013: Next doors cat…
Meet next doors cat…
The cheeky so and so loves our garden so much that it is almost a permanent resident. Despite the fact that we have a dog… that doesn’t like it one little bit.
Soon I’m going to start charging it rent!
Another chance photo taken from my office window using the 300mm lens. It was already a good photo, but I felt it looked better with a few enhancements in Photoshop notably enhancing the colour saturation and contrast.
DSLR-A200:f/5.6:1/500″:300.0mm:ISO 200
Friday 1 March 2013: Anytime… Anyplace…
It struck me after I quickly took this photo this afternoon, and arrived home and dowloaded it to my PC, that this could have been taken anytime and in anyplace.
You could be in any European country… perhaps Russia even… the photo could have been taken at anytime in the last 50 years or so. Having a little play, I decided to add a few black and white bits to frame the whole shot leaving the colour in the centre and the martian-looking (Jeff Wayne?) “War of the Worlds” monsters imposing themselves on the landscape.
Taken with my little Nikon Coolpix, the original shot was very dark, reflecting the horribly dull lighting we’ve got this afternoon.
COOLPIX S2500:f/4.8:1/80″:9.8mm:ISO 80
Wednesday 27 February 2013: A job that should’ve been done last year…
Hands up! I own up to it… the garden picnic table has weathered a Winter since last Summer and so has a pot of varnish and a brush. Maybe this year I’ll get around to it, after buying a new brush and breaking a screwdriver when opening the varnish, but I’ve made work for myself when it comes to doing the prep work.
Ah well… *sigh*
DSLR-A200:f/5.6:1/160″:300.0mm:ISO 1600
Friday 22 February 2013: End of school Friday
At hometime I went off to school with my daughter to get my son, although today an end of term display of childrens work was the order of the day. So we took a quick look around. It appears that it was all collective group work so nothing that personal as such. Shame really.
On the way out of school I took this photo of my two monsters near where the parents wait for the gate to be unlocked to the school. By this time most of them had gone. Crouching down behind the pushchair to take it, Monsieur le Maire stopped to say hello thinking I was another kid… wearing my “Russians are coming” hat might have given me a child-like appearance…
COOLPIX S2500:f/3.2:1/125″:4.9mm:ISO 250



























