Wedding #5

A selection of shots from my last wedding a couple of weekends ago..

Simplicity

ISO1000, 105mm, 1/200s, f/4, -2ev, noise reduction

7 Spot Ladybird on a reed, with rain drop

ISO100, 105mm, 1/640s, f/4, -1.6ev, transparent lighten blur

Sunlit window-ledge flower

Off to Bournemouth Air Festival this weekend, always up for budget friendly free events!

Local birds

ISO1250, 560mm (400mm + 1.4x teleconverter), 1/1000s, f/8, -1ev

Noise reduction, cropped

A family of Grey Wagtails feeding in a town centre stream

ISO1600, 400mm, 1/500s, f/5.6, -1ev, noise reduction, cropped

A new born Moorhen waves its "wings" for attention.

ISO400, 380mm, 1/2000s, f/5.6, +2/3ev, noise reduction

A chorus-line of finches.

Note: high shutter speed is because I was photographing them flying on and off of the lines, but decided upon a static shot in the end instead.

Playtime

A toy train steams out of Bristol.

I'm absolutely not a fan at all of false tilt-shift photos, but I found it vaguely amusing so have decided to share it anyway. It was originally part of an extreme wide Bristol panorama that I didn't deem worthy...

Hometown Tornado

ISO1600, 35mm, 1/800, f/8, -2/3ev

noise reduction, dodge/burn, selective curves, desaturated

Probably the best kind of Tornado to have sweep through your home town, todays lunchbreak challenge finally left the macro lens packed away in the bag for once.

Just past her 3rd anniversary since being constructed in 2008, she spent today ferrying passengers between London and Bristol as The Cathedrals Express to help pay off her construction bill of £3million.

Chippenham station isn't without interest either. It is a grade II listed building, with much of it still dating back to the 1850's when it was a major station, being just one stop away from the Swindon Great Western Railway works.

Old photo of Chippenham rail yard (uncredited):

Things have been somewhat downgraded these days, but it did win the prestigious Station Excellence Award in 2005.

Green fly

ISO1600, 105mm, f/3.2, 1/160s, -1ev, noise reduction

Simplicity, a clean colourful background and a sharp point of focus make for my next blog worthy photo.

Off to Bristol (br-iz-ol) this afternoon, so with a little luck, a bit of spare time and the weather playing ball you might just get something a little different next post!

Macro Clearance

Norton Dreams

ISO400, 100mm, 1/1250s, f/4.5, -1.6 ev, retouching

An old Norton glints in the dappled sunlight of a leafy avenue.

Taken after the end of a local motorcycle meet, where bikes of all kinds line the streets. Thankfully the owner of this very photogenic machine felt the need to stay late.

Using ISO 400 to add some noise - rather than adding it in Photoshop as most people recommend. Exposure compensation dropped almost right down to capture those bright highlights and deepen the shadows.

Wednesday

ISO800, 105mm, 1.200s, f/5, -1/3ev, noise reducation

A bit more colour for the mid-week.

Shot quite a few strong patterned butterflies today, with the idea of possibly converting one to black and white, but this photo was the one that I felt was the best of the collection and impossible to turn off those colours. A nice shiny 7 spot ladybird with simple flowers and nice background composition.

Monday

ISO400, 105mm, 1/640s, f/8, -1.6ev, noise reduction, cropped

Starting the week off with a fantastic splash of colour and a nice photogenic pose.

Meadow Brown

ISO400, 105mm, 1/320s, f/5.6, -1ev, cropped, noise reduction

On a lunch-break when every butterfly seemed too busy to pause for a portrait, this Meadow Brown was the only one whose curiosity/fear overcame it's compulsion to take flight. Very nice patterning on its lower wings, and nicely up-lit by the natural leaf reflector, if a little bit green. (shot with Sunlight pre-set white balance - as always)

Cropped square to make the most of the luscious green surroundings

and simplify the frame.

With hindsight maybe a couple more clicks of aperture, but its possible the background bokeh would have suffered for it. The tilt on the photo I decided at the time was to point the end of the leaf into the bottom right corner (taken portrait orientation), but I decided against that format in post-production and maybe for this format a more anti-clockwise angle would have been more favourable, but again I quite like it - sometimes it's nice to have something tilted the "wrong" way - even if it was by accident.

Hope everyone has a photogenic weekend. If it ends up raining alot you might even see a lesser-spotted MWT weekend blog post! - Mark

Nice weather for ..

ISO1600, 300mm, 1/320s, f/8, -1/3ev, noise reduction, cropped

I'm not sure I'll ever get comfortable with letting more than a few rain drops fall on my camera, even with weather sealed L lenses on it, but with no umbrella available (or my rain cover safely left back at home?!) a few riverside trees enabled me to get a few rainy shots while I was waiting for my MoT yesterday. An eye catch-light, bubbles, raindrops, splashing droplets and water dripping of the beak making this one the pick of the batch.

Two duos

Belltower

Composite of bracketed, focus stacked images. Noise reduction.

Two photos from a lunchbreak trip to a local village church and two photography quotes I liked after a quick search aroung the web...

"Having a camera does not make you a photographer any more than carrying a hammer makes you a carpenter"

"Which is your favourite photograph?" - "The one I am going to take tomorrow"

Clearance

A clearout of my blog folder from the last few weeks of pics, which I didn't feel deserved to host their own post.

Two macro bugs, a lame midday stop-off at a lavender field and a Bee Orchid.

.. and the macro keeps coming ..

ISO400, 105mm, 1/500s, f/9, -1 2/3 ev, noise reduction, cropped square

The background in the areas that I've cropped off was quite interesting, but I wanted to put full focus on the vortex-like pattern of the flower and the hover fly.

These flies are shiny little blighters, so I set exposure compensation significantly down to avoid the glare burning off the end of the histogram (pattern/evaluative metering).

Grasshopper

ISO1250, 105mm, 1/200s, f/11, -2/3ev, noise reduction, levels

Amazing detail and texture in this grasshoppers carapace and wings.

Usually jumpy little things, but you can find the odd one whos curiosity overcomes

it's desire to flea.

Last Day

ISO200, f/5.6, 260mm, 1/500s, -2/3ev (pattern), desaturated, dodge & burn.

Buskers, special offers and empty shops encapsulating the current financial climate.

Taken in Swindon high-street with my extremely un-stealthy 100-400 which can make candid shots pretty tricky.

RAF Lyneham - Final Fly-by

The last C130 Hercules' flying out of RAF Lyneham perform a final flyby over the north Wiltshire coutryside.

They have flown the skies over my home town all my life and the area will never be the same again. I've had a soft spot for them since flying in one as a child over the Bristol channel with the tail gate down and have very happy memories of cycling out to Lyneham in summer holidays to sit at the end of the runway and watch the Hercs taking off. A sad farewell.

More macro colour..

ISO400, 105mm, 1/2500s, f/4, -2/3ev, noise reduction

Wearing out my macro lens this summer! Three more shots from photos taken in this weeks lunchbreaks, just trying to hone my attention to composition, clean backgrounds, sharp focus and aperture. Not an ideal ISO setting on this first shot, I guess I was flitting between in-flight shots, but happy with the composition, pose, background and aperture.

ISO800, 105mm, 1/800s, f/8, -1ev, cropped (from portrait), noise reduction

Been avoiding bees a bit this year since they're everywhere and I've done quite a few in the past, but pleased with this shot since I successfully predicted it's next destination, set suitable settings and took just one frame in the space of a couple of seconds.

The thistle was well away from any background distractions, so f/8 turned out nice (I pre-focussed on the thistle), with the fast shutter speed freezing the bees motion, but still blurring the wings and a -1ev exposure compensation (pattern metering) as I was shooting into bright Sun.

ISO400, 105mm, 1/2000s, f/5, -1ev, noise reduction

Another thistle, another Skipper. Amazing to see the colour difference between the thistles in these shots, I'm not sure if they're different species or just gain colour as they mature?

As before, trying to keep that background clean and/or nicely blurred and let the amazing colours, patterns and textures of nature do the rest.

Large Skipper

ISO400, 105mm, 1/2000s, f/4.5, -1ev

Large Skipper moth on a wild Early Purple Orchid.

Excuses: I'd left the ISO high from a previous shot, but at least at 1/2000s I didn't have much worry about camera shake! As always with macros this year - trying to get my backgrounds cleaner, so happy with this one. No processing, straight from camera except for noise reduction (thanks to my ISO blunder).

Michael

An amazing stained glass window of Saint Michael.

Michael is an Archangel (the only one mentioned in the bible) meaning a leader of angels, he is commonly portrayed in a more angelic guise, but is shown here much more in his form as a warrior dressed in medieval armour.

He commanded the armies that fought Satan in the Book of Revelations, coming down from Heaven to imprison Satan (embodied as a dragon) for a thousand years. Hence, like St George he is often illustrated standing over a dragon. Also similar to St George he was made a patron saint of Chivalry in the medieval period and is patron saint of many police and warrior groups today, most popular with airbourne units.