Yesterday had a fun and informativfe evening at my photo club in The Hague (Images Photo Club). Of course I entered the Photographer of the Year competition with my first entry and got nowhere (nothing changes). Anyway the winner was a smasher so I don’t feel bad. Here’s my entry. The competition title was “Green”.
grapje = joke (NL)
As a club project with the title “graffiti”, I challenged myself to take some night shots of some near-by street art (sic). These are some of the results. I used exposures of around 10 to 15 seconds whilst my beautiful assistant (aka the wife) shone a 5 euro LED strip-lamp along parts of the wall. I also fired my flash in some shots to highlight the wall furthest from the camera.
10th to 12th September was the Strandwalfestival in Rijswijk.
This annual fesival is the town’s excuse to allow all the local bands and clubs and societies to show what they can do. It’s also a great opportunity for some street photography. I took my 70-300mm Canon lens and Metz flash set to HSS (High speed synchronisation) to see what I could do.
Something I always wanted to try and finally decided to make a go of it…. A high speed photo of an object falling into a liquid. I decided a strawberry into milk would make a suitable subject and it fitted well with a task I had been set to capture something that suited the title “bon appetit”. My setup was basic with my two Metz flash heads set at 1/32 an 1/64 power and placed diagonally at 45 degrees from the camera (one bottom left the other top right. As this was my first try at such a thing I simply left the heads unmodified but believe a diffuser would have been to my advantage to try to remove some of the shadows. I dropped that strawberry into the milk so many times the poor fruit started to become strawberry jam. It was not easy to synchronize the shot and hitting the milk. More often that not it was too early but mostly just too late. Also it does splash a bit. Next time I’ll wrap some cling-film around my flash head bodies. Anyway, here are some results….
After a pleasant week in and around the bay of the Somme, here are some photos as a result. The weather was variable with some grey days that tested the skills of my camera’s exposure metering.
Here are a few studies I’ve been working on.
Here are a couple of hand-held panoramas I shot in Prague.
Some minor pre-preparation in Lightroom then sent to Photoshop for stitching. A little cloning at the edges.
Just back from a week visit to Prague. Nice, compact city with loads to see (and loads of tourists). Great photo opportunities even if you’re walking around as a snap-happy tourist. Anyway, this posting is a “work in progress” and I’ll upload bit by bit some of the shots I liked the most.
I guess you don’t have to go too far to take a photo if you have a garden, the sun is shining and you have a few willing plants to act as models. Don’t ask me what this plant is called but it certainly appeared happy to have its photo taken.
Had a great chance for a fun shoot of lots of different people this weekend. The weather was the best we’ve had all year and my photoclub (Images Internation Photo Club) met at the Westbroekpark in The Hague to simply have an excuse to take shots of everyone and see what could be done. Some of us tried to use our 50mm fixed focus lenses with the aperture wide open to get some practice with shallow depth of field. I did too, but noticed with my Canon at least, the 50mm F1.8 is very slow to focus in comparison to a USM motor in a better lens. Still, it’s all good practice. Thus the park probably had around 50000€ of photo equipment if you add everyone’s kit bags together. What we are going to do with all the photos is not yet clear. Watch this space. For the time being, I had a go at using CS4′s photomerge function. It does work but it’s not quite as “straight out of the box” as it looks. Those who hate panoramas please look away now…..
