Photo Project 1, 24. Traditional or Lifestyle

Lifestyle? Well I thought about picturing my other half, she runs her penny saving themed blog and regularly returns with items she's reclaimed from charity shops and the like, but this seemed a little too obvious.

How about feeding pigs wearing black tie? Seems like a lifestyle choice to me.

The only change from the original was saturating the colours.

This picture is of a gentleman referred to as Mutley, who was hosting a wedding reception on his farm – naturally the pigs still need feeding regardless of attire. The wedding was of the lovely couple Kate &Rob Crothers. 

Photo Project 1, 19. Light and Dark

Light and dark meaning Silhouettes?

Photo Project 1, 18. Texture or Pattern

Its a pattern, amazingly complicated... and normally dogs don't stay still enough to notice this detail. Luckily for me Jazz was fast asleep at the time.

Photo Project 1, 17. Mirror or Window

Well out the window it was pretty rainy, sadly the view out of our windows is onto an office car park... which is only entertaining when it's covered in snow.



So instead I have a pirate getting rained on.

Photo Project 1, 16. Pastel Palette

Pastels remind me of excel 2003's colour choice... but not wanting to put a graph up here is a flower which went through some effects to make like a comic book page.

Photo Project 1, 15. Sunlight

Sunlight, honestly?! Oh I'm loosing my rag with this project.

F13 1/250 ISO100 @ 34mm on a 400D with polarising filter.

This is possibly my favourite photo of all time (that I've taken anyway), it was taken on my old camera with what I'd class as a 'knock about' lens now... but it goes to show that being in the right place at the right time is often more important than the gear you have on you. The best camera for the job is the one you have with you... and other such expressions.

Infact I like this picture so much we have a variation of it printed on canvas and hung in the living room.

Photo Project 1, 14. Faceless Portrait

This is easy... B loves to hide behind things.

Enjoying last autumn (2011) in a national trust garden.

 Or here's me playing with a home-made light ring idea I had...

It looked a little like this:

It’s quite simple to do, just buy some cheap LED lights from Ikea and poke them through a piece of cardboard in a shape of your choosing, then cut a hole the right diameter for your lens of choice. While interesting to try, it's not really sensible outside the house.

Photo Project 1, 13 Mother Nature

Again, I picked this photo project because it was suitably vague and girly enough to present a challenge. Mother Nature could surely be nearly anything?! Well I'm guessing we're supposed to go down the weather route, and I don't enjoy photographing in the rain. So here is some water hitting a rock instead.

This actually turned into quite an expensive shot to get, a that tide of water coming in hit my tripod... and it's never been quite the same since it got salty water on it.

Photo Project 1, 12 Favourite Colour

Hmm... I'm sure I change my mind every time somebody asks me what my favourite colour is, normally it's orange.

This picture was taken at the Eden project, at F10, 1/200sec. ISO100 on a F2.8 100m Macro Lens. It's rare I go as high as F10, but here it was important to keep the depth of field, and it was a very sunny day.

Simple colour filter applied to the orange.

Colours and blacks tweaked a little to add a little more drama.

Photo Project 1, 11. Ordinary Beauty

OKAY... maybe this is just my translation, but this post has the possibility to get me into a lot of trouble!

What does 'ordinary' mean to you?? I'm taking it as "not different or special or unexpected in any way"  Which isn't exactly faltering!


Well to avoid any problems with ordinary ladies, here are a couple of picture of the other lady in my life, Gladys. She's a Gladius 650 Suzuki I bought for myself as my 24th birthday present. She's definitely ordinary, looking identical to THOUSANDS of others which came off the production line in the same period.

F2 1/50sec. ISO-1600 taken with a F1.8 50mm prime on an old 400D, the poor low light performance of a 400D required some tweaking to smooth the grainy'ness.

F3.5 15sec. ISO 100 18mm - taken on an old 400D with a sturdy Tripod.

Using just street lights you can get some very powerful shadows if you're prepared to wait for a long exposure.

Photo Project 1, 10. Fur

Well fur was always going to be a pet related post...

Here is Jazz, she's a collie who loves to play... to get a good picture of her staying still it requires a good 20minute run before she'll consider posing. Even then I only got a couple of shots before she came to lick the camera some more.

If there wasn't quite enough fluff on Jazz's fur then this is Princess Lilly, she looks cute but harbours the mind of a twisted criminal villain. Again, not a pet to stay still for long... stretching was a weirdly still pose!

If you want to take a 'good' pet picture try these simple tips:

• Most importantly, get down to eye level. It sounds simple, but it makes such a difference.
• If you can manage this without them licking the camera or running towards you you're on to a winning shot
• Keep backgrounds neutral (unlike Lilly pictured above).
• Keep the rule of thirds.
• Rule of thirds on Wikipedia
• Don't use the flash, certainty not a direct flash.
• To keep the shutter speed fast use a bright sunlight, not backlit obliviously.

Photo Project 1, 9. In the Kitchen

B regularly has me on call to take pictures of her culinary delights, which she then uses on her blog... so again this was an easy one to source an image for.

F5 1/60 sec. ISO 1600 at 38mm on a 15-85mm + Speedlite.

I love the colour on this picture, it's a bit like that vomit of colour you get from HDR photography... but it's all berry red. This cheesecake did not last long.

And if anyone thought it'd been a while since I posted a coffee related picture:

F2.8 1/00 sec. ISO 100 on a 100mm Canon Macro + Speedlite.

I had this as a wallpaper for a long time, but it led to me wanting to drink too much coffee.

Photo Project 1, 6. Floral

Flowers? Easy!

F2.8 1/800 Sec. ISO100 100m Macro and loads of sunlight on a good summer's day.

Boom.

Photo Project 1, 5 Shades of White

Really lost interest with this one... any B+W picture is surely shades of white, there was a lot of snow a few weeks ago and I got a bit carried away trying to capture it melting... but it was hard to work into a single picture.

 

So here's a simple picture of lots of white, which has shades. (From left to right) My brother, our Dad and myself up a mountain skiing for my brother's stag do back in January.

This was a rare chance to get a photo in-between blizzards! And the 10second timer was a real challenge, as I refused to take my skis off.

Oh, and heres a prettier landscape picture from the same trip... looking down on the valley as we descended down the windy road in the French taxi with so many flashing warning lights it looked like the Vegas strip (including the ABS). Anyway, photography came up as a subject of conversation and he pulled over for me to take this shot.

Photo Project 1, 2. Simplicity.

It was nearly coffee... I've got a cracking photo of a plant reflected in a black coffee. But I thought this would lead me down the track of trying to make all 24 pictures coffee related. My heart can't take that amount of caffeine.

Instead I decided smoke was quite simple (although capturing it is incredibly hard).

Taken with a black background and 2 flashes, 100m Macro, ISO-100, 1/60, F2.8. Again, a little tweaking of balances and the smoke/background was made B+W for extra contrast.