Snow days

Been a bit of a gap in posting, what with dark evenings and I've been busy the last couple of weekends. Managing to get out and about a bit before work though and snapped this Robin this morning on a suitably snow covered photogenic branch. Straight from camera except for some noise reduction.

400mm, ISO1600, 1/50s, f/5.6, +1ev

Pretty slow shutter speed for 400mm zoom, even with image stabilising!

River Sunrise

A rare saturday blog post! Sunrise taken from a bridge over the River Avon before work.

ISO100, f/11, 23mm - two exposures 1/5s and 1/8s (-1/3ev)

The third of my summer flashback images, this time a dragonfly perched at the edge of a field, isolated enough to get a great blurred and shaded background.

ISO100, f/3.2, 1/500s, -1/3ev, 105mm

Summer Damselflies

Another damselfly image of the past summer, two flies this time. Not quite Wildlife Photographer of the Year material, which I was suitably impressed by again this year. Even though I only took 7 photos in London, I managed to pass my next 10,000 photos and reset back to IMG_0001 again. Is that 30,000 now? I can't even remember!

ISO100, 1/320s, f/5.6, -2/3ev, 105mm - taken on 22nd June 2010, 6:30pm.

Flashback

It's cold, rainy and dark outside, not exactly conducive to (most) photography, these next few blog posts are a reminder of the summer sun. While sorting back through some photos taken earlier in the year I found some dragonfly and damselfly shots which I liked and can't remember posting, so here is the first one.

f/5.6, ISO160, 1/200s, -2/3ev on my trusty 105mm.

A bit of a clear out

A few photos from the last couple of weeks that didn't make it to their own post.

Church window and ironwork - an appreciation of the light and form.

Amazing old stained glass-work.

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Warming up for the coming season, a festive Robin. [Insert frost and snow here!]

.. and finally a Red Iguana, found being exhibited in a shopping center. Just shows you never know what you're going to see when you're out and about!

Autumn wild mushroom

All straight from camera except for some selective de-saturation of the Iguana background.

Bath Abbey

Amazing architecture and late afternoon light in Bath Abbey.

ISO 1000, 1/25s, f/6.3, 16mm, -1ev, evaluative metering

Curves and a slight transparent lightening blur applied in post processing.

Kes

A Kestrel hovers in an up draft moments before swooping down on its prey.

Taken in overcast conditions which have helped make a relatively balanced exposure, between the highlights and shadows. I used ISO 800 to get the shutter speed up (noise reduction applied), no exposure compensation (although it could have used +2/3 ev as I lightened it when I processed the raw image). 400mm focal length (and cropped), aperture f/5.6.

Interestingly, I also took a set of 5 photos of it hovering using high-speed continuous drive mode (hold the button down and the camera takes continuous photos) and in each one the bird was in exactly the same position. As the 50D takes photos in this mode at about six frames a second, I guess that the Kestrel just happened to be flapping its wings at about 6 beats a second too! So each photo was taken with the wings in the same place. Bizarre!

The Crow

Crow flying through a graveyard in Avebury.

Several photoshop adjustments made to levels and curves and some noise added

to enhance the dark, gritty feel I was looking for.

Bathscape

Bath under autumn, stormy skies.

Straight from camera. I like the naturally subdued tones and colours, think they give it a painted feel. Pleased with the composition too, with the way the Sun is falling creating nice natural lines and points of focus. The sky is perfect for the shot too, the clouds were racing fast enough for me to only have to wait a few seconds for them to line up the way I wanted.

Autumnal Chromatic Aesthetics

Nothing screams autumn colour quite as brashly as the Japanese Maple. With Westonbirt Arboretum awash with photographers gathering in desperate clusters around any rare streaks of sunlight I decided to avoid the madding crowds and find some simplicity and tranquillity.

Straight from camera except for cloning out some small dots on the leaf. I took a few different exposures with varying aperture settings and a set of varying focal point images, with the idea of focus stacking them, but decided against all these in favour of this simple shallow depth of field capture taken at f/2.8.

Pump Tower

Stumbled upon this old pumping station while randomly exploring at the weekend. It was crying out for conversion to black and white thanks to all the texture and subdued sunlight, so I've gone pretty photoshop heavy again for this image. I've added some selective levels and curves layers, some dodging & burning, two texture layers to add some age and grit and a tweak to the colour balance, then cropped square for a nice balance and an old school 6x6 looking composition.

I did have second thoughts about all this photoshop malarkey, but toggling it all off, back to the original photograph looses so much atmosphere and interest that this time I'm happy with the artificially enhanced approach.

Trainspotting again..

Trainspotting, not commonly associated with being an adrenaline junkies hobby, but the buzz you get with 165 tons of stunning steam locomotive screaming past at full steam just two feet away is something to behold. Yet it makes for such a pleasant photo.

Taken at ISO 800 despite the bright sunny day to push the depth of field wider by using f/8.0. Shutter speed was 1/400s, which as it turned out - with the speed on the train, was a little low and there is still noticeable motion blur present. The circular polariser came into its own yet again, enriching the colours in the trees and engine. .

It was night time by the time it came back through, which was nice, gave me the chance to just leave my camera in the bag for once and soak up a bit more of the experience as again it hurtled past at near top speed.