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
Sunday 24 March 2013: Boy in trees
Our friends son, Lilian had fun in the garden today with our two.
More catching up from the weekend, plus my print job went off yesterday. More anon about that.
Here we have a depth of field photo taken with my Tamron 300mm lens, where due to the branches in the foreground, I focused the shot manually. As children move quickly, including little Lilian, I upped the ISO. Lighting wasn’t brilliant either that day.
Post production just involved adding a little more contrast to bring out his face a little.
DSLR-A200:f/6.3:1/640″:300.0mm:ISO 3200
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
Thursday 7 March 2013: I’ve made a mess and I’m proud of it…
My daughter calmly reading Tchoupi and almost unaware that I was taking her photo… that’s how I like it!
As for the mess… I’ll forgive her just this time.
Uprating the camera to 3200 ISO helped to get all the available light for the shot, despite my daughter sitting in front of a well lit large window. In Photoshop I used the “Convert to Black & White > Scenic Landscape” option. Then altered the contrast slightly to give the image more definition.
Three shots were needed to get the right expression on her face.
DSLR-A200:f/5.6:1/40″:70.0mm:ISO 3200
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
Thursday 28 February 2013: Carambar!
My kids favourite, but a bit of a challenge to photograph indoors in low light. Carambars are very smaaalll !
Upping the ISO to 3200 with the macro selected on my Tamaron 300mm lens, this shot was do-able. Otherwise with the standard Sony 70mm lens the macro just doesn’t get you close enough. So, of course in low-light and being at least a metre and a bit away from the Carambars, meant that blurring was more likely… I took at least 6 or 7 shots to get one that was sharp enough.
With help from Photoshop I was able to change the contrast and colour saturation to bring the shot alive.
DSLR-A200:f/5.6:1/25″:300.0mm:ISO 3200
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
