Friday 30th September 2011

I really really wished I'd had an SLR with me this evening - coming home from a motorbike ride and there was mist lying on the fields and a moon in the red sky. Beautiful! Thankfully this field mist happens quite often in the Churnet Valley so I shall have to see it as an opportunity and head back.

14.7mm, 1s, f/5.6. (auto)

Thursday 18th August 2011

Another thing I can do with the Ixus is continue with a theme I started early on in the year. Two themes in fact - highlight some of the cool buildings in Stoke, and do a series of photos of Stoke sub-stations, since most of those are in cool buildings with cool brickwork. I've taken photos of this one before but wasn't happy with them. This one is better, but having reviewed what I took I also know what I'd do if I returned. Which I may, I just love the intricate patterns and the variety of tiles and bricks!

4.6mm, 1/125s, f/2.8. (auto)

Tuesday 19th July 2011

"Soooo many roooses" - can anyone get the reference?

2s, f/11 (approx), ISO 200

Friday 8th July 2011

I took a stroll round the lake at the end of my road hoping to find grasshoppers, but there didn't seem to be any around. I took in one more field before heading home, and happened upon some gorgeous salmon coloured damselflies that let me get REALLY close to take photos. I think they were female Common Blues. A spot to return to!

1/250s, f/10, ISO 800

Wednesday 6th July 2011

Another play with light-painting. After I took this I realised I hadn't managed to point the torch completely away from the camera (the idea was to strangely illuminate the subjects, not to make light trails), so I took another. However I got the zoom wrong (I'd forgotten a tripod so had the camera resting on the ground and the zoom changed when I picked it up and replaced it). Then I tried a third, but I used too much light and there wasn't any subtelty or pattern to it. Then my friends had to leave! So I'm going with this one.

18mm, 1/30s, f/5.66.3, ISO 200

Tuesday 5th July 2011

My crocosmia are coming into flower and they're an absolute pleasure to photograph, I took a few different shots and could barely choose a favourite.

129mm, 1/320s, f/5.6, ISO 400

Monday 13th June 2011

A viaduct I spotted a couple of years ago on the way to the climbing wall - at the time it was catching the glow from the sunset on each of the arches. Despite arriving in the 'golden hour', this isn't the photo I went for (it's taken from the side that the sun was hitting for a start, the opposite side to the one seen from the road), but I forgot my tripod so I was restricted to where I could balance the camera!

141mm, 1/6s, f/16, ISO 100

Wednesday 11th May 2011

I'll freely admit this was a bit of a disaster. I've been looking at some other people's photos and thinking how I'd like to work on simplicity. However the time to do this is possibly not by taking any old photo when heading out. This is neither suggestive, artistic, nor does it have interesting light or subject, but it's still a lesson to me!

250mm, 1/200s (auto from aperture priority), f/6.3, ISO 800

Friday 6th May 2011

Experimenting with lighting, albeit only a head torch. Something I need to look at more.

59mm, 0.3s (auto from aperture priority), f/5, ISO 800

Tuesday 5th April 2011

More splashes!

200mm, 1/100s, f/11, ISO 800

Tuesday 29th March 2011

I'm quite excited that my reverse lens macro adapter has finally arrived, a mere 34 days after it was dispatched from China. This means that I don't have to manually steady the lens to take macro shots now which makes it a lot easier (see previous attempt here for an explanation of what reverse lens macro entails). My subject today was a sea anenome that sits on my windowsill next to the sand dollar in that photo. The photo was a little rushed as a lot of my time at present is being occupied by decorating my lounge, so this photo was squeezed in at one minute to midnight with bad lighting, but it was a useful test to see what settings work best, so I can go out and use my new toy with a vengeance. The dust and dirt shows up fairly well, can't see this at all with my eye, nor the tiny holes.

About 18mm (not recorded), 1/15s, about f/20 (not recorded), ISO 400

Friday 4th March 2011

A little bit more experimenting with water and food colouring. After looking again at this gallery and chatting to some friends I've come up with a revision on this idea that I'd like to try so watch this space.

10mm, 1/100s, f/14, ISO 400

Monday 28th February 2011

I reached this evening without having come up with a plan of what to photograph, but there are always experiments to try and I'm surprised I haven't tried this already.

183mm, 1/100s, f/11, ISO 1600

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

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

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

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

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

Thursday 27th January 2011

I had another landscape lunch today, taking a wander up to a monument to John Wedgewood on Bignall Hill. Unfortunately I drew blanks again (I had suspected as much since it's on the summit of the hill so you can't look down on it, but it was a good excuse to go somewhere I've been meaning too for ages). Instead I went to capture car headlights which I've been thinking about since the 10th January and have found a better spot for. I think I still need to revisit this though (soon), as I went later in the evening than I'd planned and there aren't as many car headlights as I would have liked.

42mm, 4s, f/22, ISO 200

Friday 21st January 2011

Today I wanted to re-visit the park where I took this. I still didn't make it to the lake as I got waylaid by a shower of frost continuously falling from trees (which was stunning given that there wasn't any wind), and while wandering up to them I saw this ice studded weed glinting in the light. With the 20 minutes I had left before I had to return to work, I snapping it from as many angles as I could without getting my feet too wet, hoping that at least one of them would turn out okay. I was experimenting with specular highlights by trying to turn the background sun into a out-of-focus perfect circle, although it didn't seem to be working so I quickly gave up and carried on just snapping. However when I viewed the photos on my computer I saw that I *had* got specular highlights on various of the photos where the sun was reflecting off the chunks of ice and frost all around - see the colourful circles across the top of the photo.

77mm, 1/800s (auto from aperture priority), f/5.0, ISO 100