The Young At Rest

I was looking through the firework photos and I found a few more that I liked, but I thought I would break the pattern today so I don't completely bore you with fireworks. So as I haven’t got much material at the moment, I thought I should look through my computer and see what inspiration I can find.

While I was looking through some previous holidays from a long time ago, when I stumbled across this one. This was taken before I got really serious with photography so the quality wasn’t perfect. But I had managed to get the composition right. I waited until the lamb was looking next to the camera, as I thought this would create the best effect.

To edit the photo I corrected the white balance by adjusting the colour temperature, and I also decreased the highlight brightness. By correcting the white balance the sheep are now properly white and by adjusting the exposure the highlights have been blown out to much.

I plan on going out for a wander this weekend so I’ll see where that takes me. Bex sends her apologies, unfortunately she has been ill quite recently and so has been unable to do a post. She is getting better and will hopefully be able to carrying on posting towards the end of this week.

Mat

Circular Explosion

As I said yesterday we had taken a lot of photos at the fireworks night, so I looked through for another photo to upload today. I looked towards the end of the display, they were using larger and brighter fireworks and the photos looked astonishing. This one of the best that I took during the evening so I thought I should upload it.

To capture the trace of the whole firework I slowed the shutter down to one second. So as the shutter was open the whole firework was captured. The camera chose an aperture of F3.9 to correctly expose the photo. I really like how the explosion of the firework was caught and the trails of it zooming off in every direction. I also really like the symmetry created by the circular explosion pattern.

I decided against changing anything because I really liked how the photo had been captured. The camera had exposed the image correctly so I didn’t need to change that. And the colours have been replicated so I didn’t need to change the colour temperature either. And I managed to frame the photo to get the best composition as well.

I’m glad I’ve been able to upload these two photos because i really liked both of them and there was no way I could choose between either of them!

Mat

Fireworks

On bonfire night Bex and I went to a fireworks display together. The display was truly fantastic it was very well organised and everyone who attended had an enjoyable time. Bex and I must have taken around 500 photos between us so we had plenty of material to choose from. This is one of my favourite photos that I had taken.

They were firing multiple fireworks at a time so I thought by using a slow shutter speed I could make an interesting effect by blurring the individual fireworks into one big blur. I used the camera in shutter priority so I could have complete control; I selected a shutter speed of ½ of a second. This gave enough time for the light to hit the sensor and for the fireworks to be blurred. The camera chose an aperture of F4 to let the correct amount of light through; the depth of field is irrelevant because the distance was quite large and everything was in one plane.

When editing the photo I decided to change very little, except for: the contrast and the colour temperature. By increasing the contrast the photo becomes a lot more vivid and striking, this is the effect that I was trying to create. Also the camera hadn’t calculated the white balance correctly so I had to increase the colour temperature; this made the photo warmer and corrected the colour of the fireworks.

We both loved the fireworks, and as I said previous took around 500 photos, so we both have quite a few that we can upload. I’ll keep looking through for the best of my photos.

Mat

Starting Fires

I hope you’ve been enjoying yourself over the past week of fireworks and bonfires!! I love this time of year, as there is so much to take photos of- both inside and outside of events.

I took this photo at one of my town’s local events, which I attended to support my grandmother as she had the honour of lighting this year’s bonfire!! After she had lit it, it was left to burn down completely (which was rather nice, as it was freezing!). It was a really interesting subject for a photograph, as the combination of smoke, flames and ashes made for a unique effect at every press of the shutter. I like this photo in particular.

I experimented with exposure times to get different effects; in this picture I used a shutter speed of 1/4000 with an aperture of F8. I used such an incredibly fast shutter speed because I didn’t want the patterns made by the smoke to blur, and there was a lot of light coming from the fire.

I haven’t edited this image as I was pleased with the original. I love how you can see the ash around the outlines of the fire along with the silhouette of the wood. I hope you’ll join me in saying congratulations to my grandmother – she did well!!!

Bex

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Stalls

This is another photo from my holiday, as I still have many to upload and so little time to take new pictures!! I took this photo on the first full day of our holiday when we went shopping.

As described in a previous post, the shopping centre opens out to reveal a long high street with small pathways spiralling off of it. I’ve visited the same place several times, so I’ve been down most of them. The trouble is that they ALL lead to another winding alley, which leads to another and another, and so on.

I walked a little further down the street before turning off this time, and I found two large archways in what seemed to look like a long forgotten part of town. I heard noises so walked in to see what was going on and was faced with the buzz of a traditional market place.

I took this picture using ISO 1600 so that I could get a fast enough shutter speed whilst still being able to use an aperture of F8 to get a deeper depth of field. I didn’t do any editing apart from noise removal, as I wanted to keep the photo as close to the original as possible.

It’s near impossible to find the same streets more than once, but I certainly hope that I’m able to find this one again- I love it!!! Retro sweets anyone?

Bex

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Violent Sky

I managed to go out for a walk today, so I went to my favourite spot in the nature reserve. A lot has been happening recently and I needed some time to relax. It was quite late so the sun was just starting to dip below the tree line. I really liked the effect I had created and I wanted to try and capture it.

To capture the whole scene in sharp focus I decided to use an aperture of F8, as I was quite a distance from the trees the depth of field would be large enough to keep the whole scene in focus. To get the lighting effect that I wanted I decided to metre off the sky, then underexpose by 1/3^rd of a stop. This puts the trees into shadow and turns them into a silhouette; this was the effect that I had seen while sitting around and I was aiming to capture. I framed the photo so to fill half the frame with sky and half with the foreground; this gives a very pleasing composition.

To edit the photo the only thing that I decided to change was the exposure, I increased the contrast and the brightness of the highlights. By increasing both I made the photo look much more dramatic. Also it made the trees go very dark which made the effect even better I think.

I’m so glad that I managed to go for a walk today; it really made a huge difference. It just proves, photography can sort any problem, no matter how big or how major.

Mat

Lit Up Weed

This photo was taken on the wander earlier this week. One of the effects I was trying was with the flash, it was bright daylight but I thought by using the flash I could make the photo look much more dramatic.

So for this close up photo I programmed the flash to be very powerfull because I was using point metering of the stem. By metering off the stem this caused the background to be massively underexposed. This is the precise effect that I was trying to make, with the background being blacked out and the stem being very sharp and bright. As I was using the flash, the camera selected the aperture for me (in this case F8).

When editing the photo I decided to crop the photo to make it more symmetrical, I did this to enhance the composition. I also increased the colour temperature; this makes the photo look a lot warmer is another effect I like to have in my photos. I think the editing I have done has made the photo much better, particularly with the enhanced composition.

Bex and I have decided on our plans for this weekend, we won’t tell you them yet but there will be plenty of new photos to show you when we get back.

Mat