Burst Of Colour

I took this photo on one of the trips Bex and I went on to our local town. I was trying to capture a photo of a group of daffodils but they were in direct sunlight which made setting the exposure very difficult. I didn’t get the effect that I wanted so I moved on to a different subject. When looking back through, I came across this photo which didn’t look as bad as I thought when I took it.

I had the camera in aperture priority with an aperture of F8 selected to give the best trade off between depth of field and a fast shutter speed. I locked the ISO at ISO 100 for maximum image quality. I didn’t have my flash gun on me during this trip as I couldn’t balance the harsh sunlight. The camera selected a shutter speed of 1/125^th of a second to complete the exposure.

To edit the photo I increased the contrast and lowered the highlights. After I did this I started playing with the colour temperature settings, I used the custom setting and selected the yellow leaves which turned them white and turned the background a rather pleasant blue colour! I stopped changing settings after this as I didn’t want to spoil the effect that I had (accidently) made. I really like the modified colours and I think it makes the photo look much better than before.

Hopefully things will get back to normal soon and Bex and I will get a chance to go for a photography wander very soon.

Mat

Light In The Mist

I took this on my recent photography wander, it was late at night and there were a lot of lights on. It had just started to rain and the powerfull lights were lighting up the misty rain. I really like the effect that this created.

To make the most of the composition I had the camera in aperture priority with an aperture of F8 selected. This ensured that the whole light was in sharp focus but the background was blurred out of focus. I didn’t use the flash because it would cause the housing of the light to white out and would ruin the composition. I had left the camera with the ISO in auto so the camera selected an ISO 12800. The camera selected a shutter speed of 1/60^th of a second to complete the exposure.

To edit the photo the first thing I did was to use the noise reduction tool to attempt to reduce the noise created by using the high ISO. I then cropped the photo down to focus the attention onto the light itself, and to remove some distractions in the foreground. I didn’t edit the colours as I was happy with how they had been reproduced by the camera.

I like this photo now that I’ve done some editing to it. The composition looks much better after cropping the noise reduction has made the photo more pleasing to the eye. I very much look forward to the next photography wander that Bex and I go on.

Mat

Onlooking

I have been looking at a lot of black and white photographers recently, which has inspired a lot of my work. You may have noticed that a few of my images recently have had hints of grey scale, if not fully black and white such as today’s upload. First of all, let me promise that this will be my final falconry image for the next few days!

After the final demonstration had finished, the owner of the birds came over to talk to everyone on the BSR stand, and bought this gorgeous creature with him, as it was the last bird used in the display. It was incredibly well behaved, and stayed perched on the man’s arm for the entirety of the conversation, keeping his owner in sight. As the bird seemed settled, I decided to seize my chance, and take a close up photo. I used my kit lens, as I was too close to use a telephoto. I tried to take the photo from below the bird, in order to convey power.

The top half of the background remains unchanged apart from being turned black and white, but the bottom half of the background was a funfair, which I removed using a combination of the magic wand selection tool, cut, smudge and the pencil to remove finer remains of the background. It took me quite a long time, but it was worth it. It was made much easier by the fact that the sky went from blue to white at the bottom. Having removed the background, I turned the image black and white, then increased the contrast and brightness to make the bird more striking. I’m incredibly pleased with the final image; I think greyscale suited the subject well, and made it more prominent against the background.

Bex

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An Obvious Name for a Hawk

This is Dave. There’s not really much more you can add to that sentence because it’s quite an odd name for a hawk, but according to the owner of the falconry stand “everyone needs a mate named Dave”.

When not taking part in displays, the birds were placed on platforms, behind a small fence, next to the arena. One of the calmest birds was Dave, and was easy to photograph, as the trainer managed to get him to look at me. I was using a telephoto lens, as I wanted the wider aperture for a more shallow depth of field. I tried to under expose, as the camera metered off of the black feathers and over exposed the image. I placed the bird to one side of the frame, as I didn’t want background on each side. By doing this it places the beak in the centre, making the image more striking.

Once again, I selected the background in Photoshop using the magnetic lasso. This time, I reduced the brightness, contrast and saturation to make the image seem more washed out. I then selected the hawk separately, and reduced the highlights, increased the contrast and sharpened the selection, in order to make the separation between each of the feathers more prominent.

I have perhaps one more falconry image I would like to upload, then I’ll move onto another topic!!

Bex

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Peanut

After such a long wait, festival fever has come and gone, and we are back to mundane Monday. Each year, our town has a 3-day festival on the playing fields. The first day consists of a child’s picnic and treasure hunt, the second sees the field lined with stalls and entertainment, the final day featuring a range of sporting events, such as cricket and football.

I feel that before writing about my photo, I should first introduce the subject. This is Peanut, a 2-year-old eagle owl, no taller than 7 inches. A complete poser, and possibly the cutest thing I’ve ever photographed! I met peanut while covering a falconry display in the main arena. I was taking photos from inside the arena, so I probably should have foreseen meeting someone new!! While taking part in the display, Peanut decided it was time for a well-earned rest, and landed no more than 2 feet away from me! I used my telephoto lens as this was what I already had on the camera, but it worked well as I could get closer, and blur the background more.

Later, having packed up and made the mistake of sitting down, I decided to review my photos. I had forgotten what a lucky shot I had gotten, so this image bought a smile to my face. I used the magnetic lasso tool in Photoshop to select Peanut, then inverted the selection in order to work with the background. I tried reducing the brightness, but it made the image look fake, as the white balance was different. Instead, I decided to de-saturate the background, which I thought worked well. I then increased the contrast and darkened the highlights of the entire image. Finally, I increased the hue and saturation to make Peanut stand out more against the grey background.

I managed to capture this shot more by luck than skill, but I am really pleased with both the composition and the final image. I love festival weekend; I can’t believe it’s over already! Expect some more falconry photos over the coming days.

Bex

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Burning Lights

I managed to get out on a photography wander tonight, I was in our local town for the afternoon. It started to get late into the evening and the sun and hidden behind the horizon for the night. One of my aims was to capture some of the street lamps after day; as I thought the light would make an interesting composition.

To make the most of the composition I had the camera in aperture priority with an aperture of F5.6 selected, as this gives the best combination of narrow depth of field and still allows a moderate shutter speed to be used. I didn’t use the flash as it would spoil the lighting effect that I was aiming for.

 To edit the photo I used the noise reduction tool to try and reduce some of the noise created by the high ISO. I also increased the contrast to give the photo a bit more punch. I didn’t change anything else as I was happy how the colours had been replicated and I like how I had composed the photo.

Hopefully I will get a chance for some more photography at some point soon. As I’m a bit low on photos, and I would like to make the most of the good weather.

Mat

Tropical

First of all, I should apologise for the shocking lack of grammar displayed in yesterday’s post. It’s been a very long week full of exams, and the blog has suffered (as evidenced by my lack of posts).

This is another photo taken at the lake. The lake is split into several sections, split by small roads. This section of the lake was lined with trees, down each side. I positioned myself at the end of one row, and decided to hold the camera on an angle, in order to create a more prominent “tunnel” effect with the branches. I achieved the effect that I wanted to, but the original photo looked dull and under-saturated. To fix this, I edited the image in Photoshop.

Initially, I took the contrast to what I thought looked acceptable and adjusted the brightness to match. However, I decreased the brightness slightly more than intended, but decided I liked the effect of dark shadows, so increased the contrast to make this more prominent. I then increased the saturation. I prefer to over-saturate, then work backwards. Having done this, decided that I like the bright blues of the sky and yellow tones of the trees. I also adjusted the hue, as I wanted to give more of an impact.

I decided to name my image “Tropical”, as it reminds me of the kind of thing that you might find on the side of a juice bottle, and the bright colours against the shadows make the image striking. Considering that the image was uninteresting before, I’m incredibly pleased. I shall apologise for any grammatical errors now, but hopefully I’m more literate this evening!

Bex

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