Thursday 24th February 2011

It was a beautiful day today and I headed to yet another park that I can reach in my lunch hour, isn't Stoke great! It was mostly a recce trip and I just snapped all sorts of things. There were four that were okay and I've gone with this, nothing special but I kind of like it.

18mm, 1/100s, f/8, ISO 100

Wednesday 23rd February 2011

I was drawn to some sparkly barbed wire as I was leaving work, and captured this by accident. I love it.

141mm, 0.5s, f/5.6, ISO 400

Tuesday 22nd February 2011

Quick and simple one tonight. This is the hammer showing the nails who's boss - they broke the last one. The image is a little 'noisy' (digitally speckled), that came about when I adjusted the colours and white balance to get rid of colour casts from the light and make the walls the right colours... but I kind of like it (certainly prefer it to the version that came off the camera), plus I don't want to spend hours editing photos this evening, so it's staying like that!

100mm, 0.3s, f/5.6, ISO 400

Monday 21st February 2011

With a little bit of research and the help of my friend James at the weekend, I discovered that I can do reverse lens macro with my camera and lens which I'm quite exited about, so decided to give it a go tonight. Reverse lens macro is just what it sounds like - you remove your lens from your camera and turn it round and hold it back in situ, which means you can get achieve magnification levels greater than 1:1 (screen versus size in reality) i.e. items can appear a number of times larger than they are, e.g. 5:1. You must have a filter on your lens to protect it from inadvertant scratching, and there are various other accessories you can buy to make it easier, but you can do a basic test without the extras. It's quite tricky though, as the depth of field (the area of the image that's in focus) is much smaller than normal, so you have to be very precise with focussing, which is hard when you're an inch or two from your subject, hand holding a floating lens while changing the zoom and focus dial, don't have aperture control once you've taken the lens off the camera, and using two head torches jossling for the same space as the end of the lens to cast enough light on the subject. I'd like to experiment with this more taking pictures of insects, so I've ordered a reverse lens adapter ring. For tonight though this beautiful sand dollar served perfectly as a stationary subject. I like the way it looks so abrasive, whereas if you look at and hold it it seems reasonably smooth. The wonders of the world of Macro!

About 35mm (not recorded), 1/100s, about f/11 (not recorded), ISO 1600

Sunday 20th February 2011

This little pied wagtail was too busy strutting about looking for scraps of food to be worrying about a weird girl stalking him with camera in hand. I whacked the ISO up as I was handholding the camera.

250mm, 1/250s, f/6.3, ISO 1600

Saturday 19th February 2011

This is Nancy, and she was soooo cute!

92mm, 1/20s, f/5, ISO 800

Friday 18th February 2011

Decrepit bench

29mm, 1/60s, f/5, ISO 200

Thursday 17th February 2011

Something I spotted the other day and came back to. I climbed up a death-trap of a climbing frame (it's modern but seemed rather dangerous!) to get this angle.

39mm, 1/15s, f/11, ISO 100

Wednesday 16th February 2011

I pass this place every day on the way between home and work and it fascinates me. I've twice read the history and although mostly factual I find it compelling, it was the first colliery in the UK to mine one million saleable tons of coal in a year so not dimunitive in scale. As it stands now it is run down but impressive, it was made an Ancient Monument as it's one of the best examples of a coalmining complex still standing in the UK. They've just re-opened the land around it which they've spent a little while landscaping so all manner of new vantage points are available.

In photographic terms I took a photo I liked the composition of but it was such an overcast day the colours were very dull and distracting, and it seemed such a shame to put up photo that had so much more potential. So I've gone for a different choice for now and I'll be back to re-take the other.

42mm, 1/50s, f/8, ISO 100

Tuesday 15th February 2011

Part of a beautiful Valentine's Day bouquet, singled out and desaturated to create a certain vibe. Ooh they smell lovely.

42mm, 1/15s, f/5.6, ISO 400

Monday 14th February 2011

"Old and new"

29mm, 1/128s, f/16, ISO 100

Sunday 13th February 2011

Angles up in some roof beams.

32mm, 0.5s, f/4, ISO 200

Saturday 12th February 2011

Back to Kynpersley for a little longer today and following the final in my line of tip-offs to head to Gorton's Well, which is in the centre of a circle of tall, curving trees - I couldn't quite work out the shot I wanted to take of those so one to return to. In the meantime, after a little picnic, I took this.

39mm, 2.5s, f/16, ISO 400

Friday 11th February 2011

Today I managed to get the shot I promised you on Wednesday. I got that one - this cute little nuthatch, and more - bullfinch, dunnock, jay, and a few others, hence the dead heat for today's post of the day. The trouble with getting a new camera, taking photos non stop, spending an inordinate of time in front of the computer post-processing them, and doing all manner of periphal research, is that you can no longer judge the quality of your shots. However even though I can't *see* how good or bad these photos are, I *know* that they're the kind of shots I dreamed of taking with my new camera, and you've got to be happy with that. I'm sure the ability to see the quality of what I'm taking will return after I've gone away and come back to them - and in the meantime at least I know I'm in seventh heaven while I'm actually taking them, excited about what I may end up with and enjoying getting out and doing it.



This nuthatch was actually a little bully, it didn't come down to feed as often as the others but when it did NO other birds were allowed at the seeds, it kept turning around and stamping towards them to scare them off. The bullfinch arrived just as I was about to reluctanty return to work - it pays to wait!

250mm, 1/400s, f/6.3, ISO 800 (both)

Thursday 10th February 2011

A shot of the Bridgewater Pottery on the canal in Stoke. I'm very much not a winter person, and am excited that the days are getting longer, but it'll also be a shame that I'll no longer be able to take photos of the city in the dark without roaming the streets in the dead of night.

29mm, 20s, f/8, ISO 200

Wednesday 9th February

Yesterday was quite a mission to run to the waterfall and back in my lunch hour, but I was quite enamoured with the variety of interesting and relatively tame birds (and various other things - that park is a photographer's paradise) that were a lot closer to the car, so I decided to return today. I didn't quite get the shot I wanted, but I won't give that away as I plan to return with some bird seed another day, so in the meantime here's a photo of a cheeky little handsome Great Tit eyeing me up to see if I was going to feed him.

250mm, 1/640s, f/7.3, ISO 800

Tuesday 8th February 2011

I followed a tip off from some nice people I met yesterday and headed back to Knypersley reservoir to a waterfall in search of Kingfishers and yellow wagtails. I saw more birds on the walk in (actually a fast run) than at the waterfall itself, but I managed to get a nice photo of this little fairy glen. This is an HDR image which means it is a composite of (in this case) three different shots with different exposures, so that it exhibits a larger range of luminance between the lightest and darkest areas, more akin to what our eyes see.

18mm, 1s, f/22.0, ISO 100

Monday 7th February 2011

32mm, 1/50s, f/5.6, ISO 400

Once more the Heavenly Power
Makes all things new,
And domes the red-plowed hills
With loving blue;
The blackbirds have their wills,
The throstles too.

Opens a door in Heaven;
From skies of glass
A Jacob's ladder falls
On greening grass,
And o'er the mountain-walls
Young angels pass.

Before them fleets the shower,
And burst the buds,
And shine the level lands,
And flash the floods;
The stars are from their hands
Flung through the woods,

The woods with living airs
How softly fanned,
Light airs from where the deep,
All down the sand,
Is breathing in his sleep,
Heard by the land.

O, follow, leaping blood,
The season's lure!
O heart, look down and up,
Serene, secure,
Warm as the crocus cup,
Like snow-drops, pure!

Past, Future glimpse and fade
Through some slight spell,
A gleam from yonder vale,
Some far blue fell;
And sympathies, how frail,
In sound and smell!

Till at thy chuckled note,
Thou twinkling bird,
The fairy fancies range,
And, lightly stirred,
Ring little bells of change
From word to word.

For now the Heavenly Power
Makes all things new,
And thaws the cold, and fills
The flower with dew;
The blackbirds have their wills,
The poets too.

- Alfred Lord Tennyson, "Early Spring"

Sunday 6th February 2011

I left it a little too late for photography today so I must confess this one was taken after midnight (I was recovering after a non-stop week, but it should be a slightly less hectic week this coming week so normal service resumes now). Two items you wouldn't normally see together but it evolved from a completely different idea, as is often the way. I like the simplicity and minimal colour palette, not my usual style.

70mm, 1/100s, f/5.0, ISO 400

Saturday 5th February 2011

This was taken at Peveril Castle in Castleton on a fairly wet, grey day that provided a few interesting photos despite the weather, mostly due to the great company.

29mm, 1/100s, f/4.0, ISO 400

Friday 4th February 2011

Today was another rushed one but in the evening I was in Sheffield where there's always something of interest. I was going to walk up to a high rise building with interesting angular wall features but walked past this light feature on the way which suited me as it was blowing a gale. I didn't have my tripod but braced against a wall to keep the camera still enough.

27mm, 2.5s, f/5.0, ISO 400

Thursday 3rd February 2011

I was driving to a gig this evening and went past Belper Mill, with various lights shining out at all levels, and a nicely illuminated low waterfall. I was running late but resolved to stop by on the way back - which I did, but unfortunately all the lights in the factory were extuinguished to I had to make do with just the waterfall and I'm not hugely enamoured with the result... but I'll be back.

50mm, 8s, f/5.6, ISO 400

Wednesday 2nd February 2011

(Apologies for the delay in these few updates, it's been a non-stop week).

I only had a few minutes spare today so I drove down a street near work I've never been down before hoping to find some ramshackle building or other. Instead I found a path down to the cycle track and a pleasing stream with a short wooden dam which seemed worthy of a photo.

50mm, 1/5s, f/11, ISO 100

Tuesday 1st February 2011

A new month and new exciting opportunities! I go running with a club one evening a week and I've started seeing it as a chance to explore the city's photo opportunities... after running I then head back out into the dark streets with my camera and tripod and record the night-scapes that I eyed up on the move. I was very pleased with how this one turned out, just how I'd hoped but it's an idea I was trying from a book and I was still excited when I took the first exposure. This was the last out of 22 images that I took, from slightly different positions and with slighly different exposures.

As a general rule I like to take photos that are representative of what you actually see at the time (or could see with telescopic eyes, in the case of macro which I'd like to experiment with). As you can tell, this is is a slight departure from that as it isn't quite what my eye saw tonight, the colours and light are different, but all I did was put a fluorescent white balance on and take a longer exposure than our eyes do, so not altered as much as you may think. Likewise in photoshop I only like to go so far as to tweak images so they are closer to how they appeared at the time (or at least try to!) without overly enhancing them, so I've deliberately done very little post-processing to this, only applying a single unsharp mask.

18mm, 10s, f/5.6, ISO 400