Defection

After a little bit of confusion I have defected. Following the break and our eventual return to college it was a little unclear which days the classes would be running. In the end, however the Tuesday class continues to run on a Tuesday and the Wednesday on a Wednesday. This was unfortunate as I had booked up a couple of Wednesday nights.

I have therefore defected!

I am now attending the Tuesday group and will continue to until the end of the course. Granted that is only two weeks but it means that I have now spent half of the course in the new group, or at least I will have done by the end.

I have enjoyed the last couple of classes and the new group who seem quite vibrant. We're on a break over Christmas but we have been tasked to bring our best picture in RAW format after the holiday. We will then process out images as a class and send them off to be printed by ProAm. We will then compare pictures on our last class.

Introduction to Digital Photography week 6

Bottles

After four weeks off we return to college. This week Ian was off sick and we had another tutor.

When I walked into the studio (as this was where we were this week) there were 4 different still life set ups around the room. The setups were a bottle on a table with a light shining on to it. Each one had a different colour bottle and a different light. 3 out of the 4 lights were remote trigger flashes and the 4th was a daylight light. We were also given a light meter to read the conditions for optimal images using the M (Manual mode) on our cameras.

This is what the daylight setup looked like

When I saw this and found out that this was what we were doing today I thought "this is going to be boring". However when I started working my way around the room and working with the other students and comparing notes I found the session really interesting.

I really liked the way some of these pictures turned out and how the different lights worked in different way and gave different results.

Here is a small selection of pictures that I took over the course of the evening

F8 1/15 second

The focus on this one is half way down the bottle, so inside the bottle is in focus and the neck and wall behind are slightly out.

F11 1/60 second

F11 1/60 second

F22 1/80 second

Using the overhead light you can only see the bottle and nothing else that was present in the room. Brilliant

F22 1/60 second

 F22 1/60 second

I liked the way the light reflected on the table surface here

London November 20th

I popped down to London over the weekend and had a mini adventure. Here are a couple of pictures I got of Tower Bridge after the light dropped and the lights came on. Unfortunately I did not have my tripod with me so I had to rely on walls and a lifebuoy to steady my camera.

Hope you like what I got

F6, 2.5 Seconds

F3, 1/2 second

I like these shots but I would like to try these again using my tripod

Bonfire night 6th and 7th of November 2010

I was very much looking forward to Bonfire night this year for the chance to get out with my camera and experiment with taking pictures of Fire works. I was once told by a photographer that taking pictures of fire works is a great way to practice the technique used for taking pictures of lightening.

With that in mind I set my camera to M (Manual), with a 2 second shutter speed and an aperture of F8, grabbed my tripod and headed to Barking park's display on Saturday 6th November.

Here are the pictures that I took on Saturday at Barking Park

F8, 2 seconds

F8, 2 seconds

F8, 2 seconds

F8, 3 seconds

F8, 5 seconds

This one is my favourite

F8, 5 seconds

F8, 5seconds

F8, 5 seconds

F8, 4 seconds

F8, 2 seconds

Here are the pictures that I took on Sunday in Ashford

F5, 2.5 seconds

F5, 2.5 seconds

From the photos above I had a better day on the Saturday than the Sunday. I believe that F8 was a better aperture to use than F5. With F5 some of the fire works looked a little out of focus, but with F8 they looked great.

The Barking Park display did have more large explosion fire works than Ashford and this also helped with the quality of pictures.

F5, 3 seconds

I had seen this done on the web and wanted to give it a quick try. This picture looked good, although we only had one try and could not really change the location as I was already set up to take pictures of the fire works.

To make this better what I needed to do what to have a dark background without the lights and flash at the end of the shot to show off the subject who is waving the sparkler.



Introduction to Digital Photography week 5

Back at college after missing a week. We started the session with a little show and tell. I showed some of my environmental alphabet (I'll add these later) and also some portrait shots I had done as well. The feedback that I got from Ian was that I was a "centre" photographer. Meaning that all of the pictures that I had tended to have the subject in the centre of the shot. He said that it may have a greater impact if I move the subject out of the centre a little.

I am therefore going to set myself a project to do some photography over the next week where I intentionally place my subject(s) outside the centre of the shot. Lets see how it works. I'll put these on for next week.

We don't have another class for three weeks now, but I will endeavour to give myself mini projects over the weeks and put up a blog entry as well.

I am awaiting delivery of my new flash gun from Hong Kong. When this comes I will be doing some flash photography to see how the gun works both directly and bounced off objects.

I will put up examples of these pictures on here each week with a little bit about how things went.

Here are the pictures that I brought this week

This is an advert for a Timber yard down on Thames View Estate

Environmental alphabet

T

X

O

H

A

This is a shot I took of a friend one evening whilst at the pub 

Web Site

Hello all, my web site has now gone live!

Going Wild Photography, there are some photos on the site for sale and you can also contact me to book an event.

I haven't got my portfolio on there for events yet, but I will have one event worth of photos on there soon.

http://www.goingwildphotography.co.uk/

Enjoy and keep coming back to see how Going Wild Photography is improving and maybe even book an event.

Introduction to Digital Photography week 4

Unfortunately I missed the week 4 class due to having congested sinuses.

I was relieved by the thought that Ian had told us last week that we were ahead and would probably be playing around in the studio this week. It is sad that I missed the experience but at least I didn't miss out on the main chunk of teaching.

Well I'm gonna hold on to the pictures that I was thinking of bringing this week and if I don't get out between now and then I will bring them for feedback.

Introduction to digital Photography Week 3

Well it has been a busy week. I have been walking around with my camera all week but have not had much of a chance to look for the Environmental Alphabet.

On Thursday I started work on my Web site for Going Wild Photography, which is going to be the name of my photography company.

On Sunday I was the event photographer at my nephew's 1st Birthday party. This was lots of fun and I got some great shots. I was shooting in RAW all day and as the light wasn't great and I wanted a shutter speed of 1/200 to capture movement in the children while they were playing I used my on camera flash.

On Monday I invested in a Flash Gun for my camera from E-bay. Looking forward to getting that. I also decided that I need to produce some marketing material for my business and created some business cards, compliment slips and postcards advertising the Event Photography part of my business. I also created a photo book, from the birthday party, which now needs to be published. I will give this out with some business cards to help spread the word that I'm available for Events and people can see the kind of work that I can produce.

I also sent off my application for BFP membership. That is British Freelance Photographer, who send out monthly new letters to inform you what the market is looking for in regards to photographs and where to send them to. I.e. Magazines or Card companies.

I am going to dip into the Birthday event from Sunday to get a couple of pictures for Wednesday's class but will not be able to put them on here. When my website is up and running I will link to it so you can see my portfolio.

Introduction to digital Photography Week 2 - Photographs

This week I have experimented with loooooooong shutter speeds

All of the following pictures were taken using a tripod

F11 - 40 seconds

In this picture I opened the shutter (using bulb mode), sat down for 20 seconds, and then got up and closed the shutter. You can see that my legs cannot be seen as I was wearing BLACK trousers which give no exposure.

F11 - 27 seconds

In this shot I opened the shutter (using bulb mode) and typed some before closing the shutter.

F22 - 10 seconds

In this shot I set the shutter speed to 10 seconds and took the shot. When the shutter opened I walked slowly past the camera standing still in one spot for a few seconds.



Introduction to digital Photography Week 3

Week 3 of the course started out really well. I think everyone is starting to get used to each other (well at least a small group within the group) and people are starting to talk.

We started the session with a show and tell. I went first and showed my long shutter shots (I'll add these very soon).

Tim showed us what he had done over the week and introduced the group to some Internet tools he had set up. These included a Flickr site, some learning material and links to the groups blogs (at the moment just his and soon mine)

Assignment number 1

At the end of the class we were given our first assignment. It was entitled the Environmental Alphabet. We need to look around our surroundings or environment and look for things that look like letters of the alphabet. I.e. a ladder against a wall could look like a letter A

I'll add the photos that I brought along this week soon and then I'll start on my alphabet.

I am also planning on starting work on a web site to show off some of my work. Keep your eyes peeled I will post a link here!

Introduction to digital Photography Week 2

We started the second session of the course by having a little show and tell. We got to present photos that we had taken and printed for this weeks session.

I showed the three photos from my last blog entry. By the time it came to my show and tell Ian wasn't giving a lot of feedback, however he did feed back on one (below). He did say he liked the colour in my red leaves picture.

Composition - This was the feedback from this picture. Ian challenged that this picture may have been more effective if the diagonal of the path hit the corner of the picture. He also said that it may be effective if the top was cropped slightly to allow the post to completely intersect the picture dividing it.

Take a look and see what you think

The rest of the session we discussed the history of ISOs and how to set up our cameras for daily use.

And this week by the end of the session I had talked to a couple of other students and one of them even introduced the group to using a Blog (which is why I'm writing this).

We were told that we may be given an assignment next week! How exciting, it'll be my very first assignment. Perhaps the first of many.

Well I now have to decide what to do with my DSLR for next week's session. I'm thinking of playing with shutter speed and capturing some quality movement

Introduction to digital Photography Week 1

The first week of the intro DSLR course was interesting. It was a bit of a change from my previous college course, which was counselling. Over the course of the class the students didn't interact very much with each other, but did answer questions posed by the tutor (Ian Atkinson).

The first session went well, we kind of dived right in and started talking digital photography. Ian managed to stay on track (mostly) and by the end of the sessions we all knew what an F stop was and what shutter speed means.

We were sent away to practice over the course of the week and asked to bring some shots in for the next session.

Here is what I took over the week

Upminster Bridge Windmill

1/1600 - F5.6 - 50mm

This picture captures the difference in light from the bright windmill to dark clouds behind

 Sign post for the London Loop walkway in Gayne Parkway

1/250 - F8 - 50mm

In this picture the sign post is in focus and the background is blurred

Some leaves hanging over a fence

1/250 - F5.6 - 50mm

I absolutely loved the look of these red leaves hanging over a fence with the bright sunshine coming through them. I really tried to capture the red in this one.