…and four others.
Suilven | Gallery
…and four others.
…and four others.
Another go at ICM with wires, this time - SCART!
From two ideas - count ‘em: TWO - from Penny Reeves.
Here’s an irritating discovery. If you denoise your raw image in Topaz to start with, then push the texture, clarity, exposure - basically anything - afterwards, it gives you a big ugly grid of artefacts. So denoise afterwards. And hopefully I’ll get DxO for Christmas….
Experimenting with extreme close-up of my eye. Learning that the real challenge is blocking reflection while also sufficiently illuminating things. And attaining sufficient depth of field at the same time. And sitting really still.
This is a lesson that should be learned. If I take a bunch of raw images, process one significantly to the point I like it, but still have adjustments I want to make at the point of taking the shot (because the first shot was step one in learning something), I struggle to work objectively on subsequent shots because I want to edge them towards what I achieved in shot one, rather than develop them to whatever they naturally want to be. In shot two (on the right) for example, I controlled the light as far is humanly possible, and lined up the reflection of the camera lens perfectly with my pupil. But…… I still prefer shot one despite everything I sought to correct subsequently…
Curiously my eye is much less moist in shot 2. Probably because I had a megawatt lamp inches from my face frying off the moisture…
Strike 3. Clear your mind and start afresh. The frustration with this one is that (although the lens flare is added in post) the lens in the pupil is genuine, but looks pasted in there! Grr.
Strike one at some ICM with wires a la David Day. Clicking that link will put this effort into some stark perspective - but I’m learning through doing…. I’m going to build a little dark tent in the studio to properly give this sort of thing the space it needs to develop.
This was Cat 5 ethernet cable (de-sheathed). It would be easier to make the images more abstract if they weren’t striped, but I’m interested in that as an option. It makes it more circusey than it would otherwise.
1:20am
and I’m wide awake again.
Have you stopped breathing?
Went out with a 50mm to make myself interact with folk more (!). Had a lot of fun. A great atmosphere on a freezing day.
Sunday I attended a (2:1!) long-exposure workshop with Antony Zacharias. These are my shots. I did not do an awful lot of long-exposure stuff, not least because Antony showed me some of his images (see the link to his website) and I was distracted by how wonderful and inspirational they were. Nevertheless, here they are. I quite like some of them and, regardless of the quality of these efforts, the workshop was excellent.
Click to view full-size.
There’s probably a way to get the moon not blown out, and still benefit from the moonlight, but I’m buggered if I can work it out.
Experimenting with off-camera flash. I mean - really back to basics. Well, not back. Just… basics. Like… why isn’t the flash working? Oh. Electronic shutter. Dimwit. I need to play with flash more to understand it. And I need to play with kittens less, because they’re a fucking nightmare.
Yet another image of a heron. But I like herons.
I found a remote trigger that also allows burst firing (Hähnel Captur), so put the R5 in a cage, and hung it at the bottom of a monopod for street-level captures of dogs. Click for full images.
There were some quite cool kids too.
Click for bigger…
On reflection, it appears that I am obsessed with groynes. Also, that I am a big fan of symmetrical portrait formats.
Click to view.
A long weekend in Norfolk, despite the weather. Minns’ book tucked under my eager little arm… Click to embiggen.
Frankly, just working out how to add a key-line to an image…