Monthly Archives: April 2010

Mass shoot

portrait, street photos

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…..

Anyone for Tea

Flowers, Gardens, still life

Went to the Keukenhof this weekend.

If you’ve never been then it’s well worth battling the crowds for. I didn’t go to take photographs per se but I took my camera anyway. Who wouldn’t.

Th weather was cold but sunny. The longish winter we have had did mean that the amazing bulb displays were a little behind schedule. However the pavilions were magnificent. Displays of orchids or flower arranging or just gazillions of tulips were very spectacular (as were the prices in the restaurant).

Instead of row upon row of flower photos I have chosen just one. Taken with natural light in the flower art pavilion, the lighting was rather subdues and as my camera was hand held I upped the ISO and took a good stance. Back home, the arrangement and colours really spoke to me as a sort of abstract collage. I decided to try something new and exported the adjusted shot to Photoshop as a smart object. This allows the RAW file to be adjusted at any time. I then duplicated this, resulting in two smart objects. I then blended using differing blend modes and double clicked on the duplicate smart object layer to allow me to adjust exposure (just like HDR). Here’s the result. I could have started masking etc., to enhance certain parts of the photo. Maybe I will do that later and make a large print of it.