Sunday 21st August 2011

I really love this photo. I love the angle of the tree and I like the way the carpet of fallen green leaves reflect the leaves on the branches against the sky.

I gave this version a tweak with HDR/tone mapping and it really brought a nice balance to the scene - it took some of the contrast out of the leaves at the top so they're not too stark against the sky, and brought some warmth to the fallen leaves in the foreground so your eye is drawn to them more.

10mm, 1/6s, f/8, ISO 320

Here's the non-HDRed version for comparison:

Also here's a photo of the same tree the day before. On this occasion the sun had just come out powerfully after a downpour, and the tree was steaming in the damp heat. I needed more time and a tripod to get a good photo of it though, so this didn't make it as my photo-of-the-day for yesterday.

10mm, 1/8s, f/9, ISO 200

Thursday 5th May 2011

Dandelion seeds. I also got a photo of a green lacewing which has beautiful shimmery translucent wings (less so in the photo), but I prefer this one.

1/80s, f/10 (approx), ISO 800

Sunday 23rd January 2011

I have Gasman (my first follower!) to thank for this idea. He told me about 'multiple exposure', where you take two photos on one piece of film (or the digital equivalent). Unfortunately my camera doesn't let me do this, Canon dropped the feature on their DSLRs as it's easier to do it in post-processing. However post-processing, barring enhancements that make the photograph closer to how it was in reality, seems like cheating to me, so I decided to have a play with a trick I read about to achieve a similar effect. You need dim light and a long-ish exposure, and move part of the subject half way through. The moving subject here was myself.

The mood is my mood this time. I've been feeling a little odd this weekend, spent most of it on my own doing useful stuff around the house, but I really wanted to be with company, and anywhere else, so I felt a little detached from reality. Ghost-like.

21mm, 10s, f/11.0 (auto from shutter priority), ISO 200

Thursday 13th January 2011

Loved up pigeon and disinterested pigeon.

"What do you mean you don't want to be my lady pigeon? I put a lot of effort into puffing my neck feathers up for you!"

When I took this I accidentally had the white balance still set to fluorescent or tungsten leaving the whole image in various shades of blue, and they flew off before I could take on on the correct setting, but thankfully I managed to recover it in Photoshop.

70mm, 1/80s (auto from aperture priority), f/11, ISO 1600 (auto)

Tuesday 4th January 2011

 Day 4. The mood - grey and drizzly. The image - raindrops on my car window, with me hiding behind them and avoiding the blurry world behind the glass... work :-)

65mm, 1/80s (auto from aperture priority), f/5.0, ISO 800 (auto)