Day 147 - Leeds Uni Skyline

I was at an evening meeting on carbon footprints at Leeds Uni tonight.  It would have been nice to take more of the great skyline but I was dashing for the train so this had to do.  Shot with the toycam filter of FX Camera for Android.

Day 146 - I spy with my little eye

I think this is my most frequent view of Jessica, so it's good to record it for posterity.

Day 145 - lemon on a DIY lightbox

I made myself a quick DIY lightbox to take this shot.  I stuck a sheet of baking parchment over the hole in a tissue box, ripped open one of the ends, stuck the flash inside and triggered it using the Cactus V4 wireless trigger.  All very technical you understand...

Day 144 - Dandelion head

I've been wanting to try something like this for a while but needed to recruit a volunteer to do some blowing.  I used the Sigma 530 DG  Super set to manual to get the exposure right on the flower head.

Several dandelions later...

Day 143 - Acer leaves

Shot flat on my back looking up through the leaves of a little tree in our garden and given a cross-process look using Gimp afterwards to suit my hazy summer mood that day.

Day 142 - St George's Square

Kirklees Council have had some stick for the renovation of St George's Square, but I don't think anyone watching the kids (and big kids) splashing about in the fountains on a sunny afternoon could have any complaints.

I could fill an album with the shots of the girls enjoying the water, but this was my favourite, just for the expression on Jessica's face.  Shot with a blip of fill in flash to lighten the shadows on her face in the harsh midday sun.

Day 141 - Nicola Toomes

Nicola manages a hyperlocal new website, Aboutmyarea, for the HD7 postcode area.  She very kindly volunteered via Twitter to pose for me as part of my project on people in the Colne Valley.  Nicola grew up in Slawit and this was taken in her Aunt's back garden, looking over the reservoir where Nicola used to play as a girl.

Day 140 - man heading for a beer

Snapped with the camera phone on my way home using the Polaroid filter of FX Camera for Android.

Day 139 - Impressionist blur and a short rant

I saw a photo magazine piece recently about creating an impressionist style picture of woodland using Photoshop's motion blur filter.  It struck me that this is a perfect example of the side of digital photography that really annoys me.  More accurately, it is the absence of photography that really annoys me.  Techniques like this are interesting, but can equally be achieved in camera with the same, or sometimes less, effort.  It just takes a bit of thought with the camera in hand, rather than more hours spent in front of the laptop.  Photographers, and photography magazine editors in particular, seem to be forgetting the photography part of digital photography.

The most ludicrous example of this that I've seem was a recent magazine focusing on the use of flash.  One article spoke about the use of fill flash to improve daylight portraits.  The following piece was about how to replicate the look of fill flash using Photoshop.  Is there anyone out there incapable of finding the button to pop up their flash?  Is there anyone reading a digital photography magazine who doesn't have a flash on their camera?  Why on Earth should anyone need this technique?  Even most mobile phones have a flash capable of giving a usable bit of fill light.


This reliance on digital to fix things that shouldn't need to be fixed goes right to the top of the photographic tree.  In "Annie Leibovitz at Work" the great photographer talks about her famous portrait of the Queen.  Famous in part for the controversial editing of a BBC documentary that cost the Controller of the BBC his job...  You can read an extract from the book here, but the most interesting thing for me was that Annie shot Lizzie W in front of a grey backdrop and added the garden later.  Now, Annie Liebovitz is one of the greats of modern photography, but I have to say I was disappointed when I read this.


So, at the end of all that, here's my impressionist woodland with motion blur.  Technical details - Blur created with the moving-your-damn-hand tool in Photographer 1.0 with my camera phone.


If anyone else has examples of cutting edge in-camera techniques (or "photography") used in place of old school Photoshop, let me know and I'll post them!

Day 138 - cycle snap

I was too busy enjoying the sudden onset of summer this evening, so I had to snap on the go.  Strange shadow.  I look like some sort of preying mantis.

Day 137 - Blue Iris

Back to flash today.  Single flash with shoot through umbrella, nice and close to get the fall off before the background.

Day 136 - Jess on Moonraker

Here's a picture of Jessica on the Moonraker floating teamrooms in Slaithwaite.  More natural light.  Whatever next?

She might look thoughtful, but I suspect she's just wondering where her bacon has got to.

Day 135 - Hannah

Hannah makes another welcome appearance on the blog, today helping me try out a technique for a natural light portrait.  Yes folks, that's actual natural light coming from the sun!  Not a flashgun in sight.

Having said that, this is an interesting example of a lighting technique I wouldn't even have thought to try before I started experimenting with off camera flash.  The warm, evening sunlight is being used for backlighting and the soft light in front comes from my big white board, held by my glamorous assistant.  That way, I get those fantastic golden shades, a more flattering soft light on the face, a halo effect on Hannah's blonde hair, separation from the background and a shallow depth of field from a fairly wide aperture.  Happy news all round.

Despite the different subject, light source and resulting feel, this is actually a very similar technique to the one used indoors for the sea holly the other day.

Day 134 - Sophie Nova

Something a little different today.  I had an unbelievable shoot with Sophie from Model Mayhem out on the moors near Marsden.  Despite the cold wind, it was a fantastic experience to work with someone as professional and creative as Sophie, who brought something new to every location and shot we worked on.

We covered a number of different styles and I haven't had chance to edit all the best shots yet.  I'm hoping I can show more from the shoot locally later in the year.

Strobist: Cross lighting using YN460-II (1/2 power) camera left rear as hair light, Sigma 530 DG Super (full power) camera right as key.  All working about 2 stops below ambient to darken the sky.

Day 133 - Sea Holly

Sian kindly bought me some flowers to play with this week and my first subject was a spiky little sea holly.

I used a single YN460-II (left rear) with a Cactus V4 trigger to give the strong backlighting.  The soft front light was achieved with a big white foam board reflector very close (5cm?) to the right.

Day 132 - Annabelle's Trolly

There was a pleasant evening light coming through the kitchen window, but not quite enough to get away with a low iso for a toddling subject.  To get enough light I put a single flash with wireless trigger on the table (camera left) to provide fill off the ceiling, with the bounce card up to throw a little direct light onto her face and give us some nice catchlights in the eyes.

Day 131 - Straw

This is a curly drinking straw, placed in front of a black board and lit from below with a bare flash.

Day 130 - Lighting test

A little lighting experiment today, looking at a hard key light (bare flash, top picture), on-axis fill (shoot through brolly, middle picture) and the combination of the two (bottom picture).  All other settings kept equal.  The idea is to keep the detail of the hard light, but soften the shadows it creates.  Thanks to my model for the day, Poppy the horse.

Once again, I missed a day.  Back on track now!

Day 129 - Night Portrait

I was hoping to get another interesting dusk portrait shot in the garden tonight, but Sian was a bit later home than anticipated and the blue evening colours were gone, leaving me with some inky blackness to work with.  Cheaper than a velvet backdrop I suppose.  Nothing if not determined, I stuck with the original lighting gameplan of a single flash in a shoot through umbrella with a warming 1/4 CTO gel.  Instead of a wide open aperture and long exposure to maximise the background light I decided to stop it down, shorten the exposure and up the flash power to compensate.  There was no sky light to maximise so I might as well have the extra depth of field and guarantee I had no camera shake.

Here's the final result.

Day 128 - reflections

Although this is a photo blog, there's been a lot of talk recently about the convergence of film and still photography with many of the new DSLRs featuring pretty impressive HD video capability.  I don't have one of these marvels of modern technology, but I decided that this frame wasn't quite the same without a little movement.  Huddersfield Narrow Canal on a glorious Sunday morning:

Day 127 - Swishing

This weekend I had the pleasure of doing some event photography for Marsden and Slaithwaite Transition Towns Clothes Swap night.  This followed on from the very successful Ethical Fashion Show held last year.  The Tiff, Marie-Claire and Rowan organised a fantastic event and kept everyone well supplied with canapés and cocktails, including the Slawit Bellini featuring a cube of frozen, locally grown rhubarb.  Only in Yorkshire! But trust me, it tastes an awful lot better than in sounds.

The pictures from the night will be up on the MASTT website soon and I'll post a link here when they do.  For now, here's one of the less animated punters eyeing up some shoes.

Day 126 - toy train

I thought I'd have a little go at the tilt-shift lens effect that people have been using to make toy town style pictures.  I might be a little post-zeitgeist here as these were all over the place last year, but we won't let that worry us, will we?

Day 125 - Old Leeds

Snapped on the way to work, I liked the triangle of people in black across the middle.  When I saw the "old Leeds" story on the board I decided to give it an aged look.  I used the mono high contrast option with vignette in the toycam setting on fxcamera for Android, then added some sepia tint and a softening round the edges in Gimp.

Day 124 - how long until dinner?

Very much a quick snap today as I wait for my tea to cook.  Selective colour popping in the post processing isn't usually my thing, but I quite like the effect on this one.

Day 123 - ferns

More signs of spring for you, as the ferns alongside Huddersfield Narrow Canal suddenly uncurl and burst into life.

Day 122 - moody me

As I was a bit grumpy this evening, I thought I'd take a picture to match.

Using the Sigma 10-20mm wide angle lens, I stopped down the evening light to f/8 to get some brooding clouds, then lit myself with a single flash camera left with the Lumiquest mini-softbox.  I only managed a few frames before the rain came down, but I think this one works reasonably well.

Post-processing has a mono overlay to give the bleach bypass look.

Day 121 - fluffy jumper

Inspired by the cover of my last Photography Monthly (last until they get a new editor anyway), here's Sian in a nice fluffy jumper with some tasty backlight to make it glow.  Key light provided by single flash with a shoot-thru brolly.

Day 120 - Escaping snail

This evil gastropod was making a dash for it over the garden gate, but I caught him.

Day 119 - a shadow falls

Good heavens, I nearly missed a day!  In fact, this was taken slightly late.  Luckily the girls woke me up in the middle of the night and I couldn't get back to sleep knowing that I'd missed a snap.  This is our sofa and the shadows of the tree in the garden, lit by the street lamp outside.  I had to sit the camera on a toy box as the exposure was 30s and I wasn't going to go hunting for a tripod at 2.30 in the morning.  I hope you'll all forgive me ;)

Day 118 - Stacey at Marsden

I've got another great photo shoot to show off in this post.  I met Stacey from Model Mayhem near Marsden for some shots on a country chic theme...

These shots were both taken with the sun behind to light Stacey's hair and a bare flash camera right for fill.

After a bit of that, we tried something a little different...

Bare flash behind with a purple gel and another flash camera right with Lumiquest Softbox III.

Note - Once again, I've got a little out of sync with my days, but I think we're back on track now!

Day 117 - Green shoots

Not the green shoots of financial recovery, but the wonderful site of seeds starting to grow.  In this particular case, an aubergine.  No idea if we'll get it to fruit in Yorkshire, but at least I've got a snap from it.

This was lit with one flash above with shoot through umbrella and another tightly snooted directly above to light the inside of the pot.  This gives the crisp, bright look to the compost and seedling, without spilling over on the outside surface.

Day 116 - Marmalade

I've been looking at a jar of marmalade I was given and loving the fantastic colour.  I might do another shot that shows off the juicy lumps of peel in it, if there's time before I eat it, but here's a slightly different approach.

Day 115 - Sian in the garden

One the signs summer is on its way is the evening light hitting our little garden, creating the perfect spot for a nice glass of red wine.

Day 114 - Dandelion

Jess picked me a flower, bless her little cotton socks.

Day 113 - loo

There's an Edward Weston photo of a loo, I think taken in Mexico, that shows off his incredible control of lighting.  This shows that I've still got a lot to learn!

Day 112 - Jess on the stairs

This was a snap in natural light, using the wide aperture of the excellent (and cheap) Nikon 50mm f/1.8 lens that I use for almost everything to get a manageable shutter speed and shallow depth of field.

I need to looking at using our stairs for some proper portraits.

Day 111 - eye in the sky

I've always thought this lampshade looked a bit like an eye...

Day 110 - old leather

Another aspect of my photography that I wanted to develop this year is being able to pre-visualise the shot.  In this case I knew exactly what I was hoping to achieve with a toned, low key picture of an old much-loved shoe.  First, some soft but directional light with the Lumiquest Softbox III, then some post work with a sepia tint and different levels of Gaussian blur, all as layers with varying levels of opacity over a sharpened up original.