Everything must go!

The trip to Bournemouth Air Festival didn't quite go to plan, so no shots of Spitfires or the Red Arrows as a nine. RIP Flt Lt Jon Egging. With my tour to Europe and North Africa only a week away I'll be trying to keep my camera kit charged, ship-shape and empty of shots. My folder of discarded shots has been stacking up a little lately and as I've not been too active posting (and probably won't be the whole time away) I thought I'd just post them all up...

The Watchers

ISO100, 16mm, 1/25s, f/8, -1ev, de-saturated, levels, curves, dodge/burn

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.