The Woods

It’s been far too long since the last post. Since that, I got the chicken pox, got tonsilitis, spent far too long laying down, spent even longer watching home improvment and food shows (Man vs Food is awesome!), watched Ice Age 3 about six times (it’s for the kids…. for the kids) and my Canon 100mm Macro lens arrived. YAY! Not used it yet though. Boo. The doc has me signed off until the end of next week which means I’m housebound (boo) but, it does mean I have lots of time with my two boys and a camera (yay). So, I’ll aim to stock up on a month’s worth of photos

Here’s a photo I took last month. I don’t much care for it, but it was kind of like the best of a bad bunch. It was one of the last photos I took before I started blogging, and where I was finding myself with no ideas, desperate to take a photo of something vaguely interesting. I failed but, who cares, ideas started flowing after that.

Photoless Friday – Mister Good Guy

I thought I’d try a new thing, a day of no photos. I figure that I can use this day to write a bit more about myself or more likely, hi-light some of the photo related websites that I love. For this, the first Photoless Friday, I shall do neither. Through the magic of twitter, I learnt about Mister Good Guy and his project, Mona Lisa Million. David (Mister Good Guy) is a stay at home father of four (I have two, I don’t stay at home and I know how tiring it is for the small amounts of time that I am at home!) with a great project. He’s selling the Mona Lisa. Okay, not the original Mona Lisa, he’d need a crime syndicate like the Ocean’s Eleven crew for that, no, he’s selling a grid of the mona lisa to website and blog owners just like yourself, with a fair amount of money going to help a variety of charities. In return for your donation, you get a piece of the mona lisa and an advert for your site. Go check it out, it’s a worthwhile cause and it’s still early days where you can be a pioneer!

The (Keeping it Real) Thing.

So, here’s a couple of odd photos taken with my iPhone. Basically, I used Hipstamatic to take the second image. Nothing clever, just pointed and clicked in  a position I liked. After that I pushed it through PhotoShop Mobile and got the Warhol type image. That’s about it. Hope you like it.

I’m scheduling this in advance. My four year old is just finishing his bout of chicken pox, now the youngest has it and, I think I’ve got it. Still, at least it’s better to get it now, at the same time as the him, rather than after he finishes! It’s good to get it before I reach my mid-30s, right? :p I have no interest in a Summer of Pox . So, I may be a bit slow with posts, answering/approving and posting comments… but I’ll try my best!

Allsorts

I can’t stand Liquorice Allsorts, they taste horrible; however, the blue one looks quite nice. To create this photo, I got a black marble kitchen chopping board, piled up the allsorts and placed a black (or white) card behind them.  These photos were taken with the 60mm Canon macro lens. The white card image has a grey looking base, this was down to the flash. I think for the black image, I left the light on and did a longer exposure. I prefer the whiter image, although a line where the card meets the board is clearly visible and quite distracting.

The Droplet

Okay okay, it’s a little blurred but, it was one of the better images in my somewhat difficult shoot. Please feel free to advise me via the comments how I could improve this technique (no light triggers!). This is a photo of a water droplet (no surprise there) coming out of my tap. The set up for this was to put a large piece of white card behind the tap and then focus on the droplet with the 60mm macro lens. The problem here are as follows: 1) I couldn’t use a tripod for this as the lens was going to be too far from the subject. 2) I wanted to take the photograph with the light off using the flash (regular built-in flash). So, to focus (with no light and no tripod, i.e. no pre-setup) I needed to use manual focus and keep firing the strobe to find and focus on the droplet. All hand held. With well over 100 photos, I got about 3 that I liked. I’ll post another one of these soon (I need to keep a backlog until I take more photos)

SF – A Novel Idea

With the exception of my hipstamatic posts, up until now all the images I’ve posted on here have been photos that I’ve taken over the past few months. Blogging and visiting blogs has been inspirational for me, given me new ideas and got me back and enthusiastic about taking more photos. Over the weekend, I worked on three new ideas for photos. One needs a bit more work, one is completed and the other is this one. Sticky Fingers hosts a photography gallery based around a theme. This week’s theme is ‘ A Novel Idea’ and here is my (rather simplistic) entry. I’m trying to think of a few more novel related photos which are a bit more intelligent than this one.

If you’re interested in entering the gallery, click on this link, and, if you want to guess what the novel is, please do so in the comments. I’m sure someone will guess it very soon.

Do you tweet?

I use twitter, mainly to follow companies, i.e. my mobile provider, a company for whom I hold an annual membership pass etc… I don’t really follow people but, I’m sure twitter can serve a great social purpose as well. If you do tweet, and want to be followed, let me know, I’d like to follow real people (rather than those that just follow me to gain followers) and see what the fuss is about. If you don’t want to post your ID here, feel free to email me at my wordpress ID  @ gmail.com or click the link on the right hand side and follow me. I may start to say something useful then.

To Alice

This photo was taken on a cold and frosty day in Oxford. My wife had to attend a course over there and my mum was happy to have the children (two boys aged 2 and 4) so this was my first opportunity to really head out there with my SLR. So, I went to Oxford and wandered around. It was very, very cold and I discovered that fat gloves aren’t good for taking photographs, and bare hands get very cold, very quickly. So, as I went round I had to keep heading into the various beautiful churches that Oxford has to offer. They proved to be great points for photography. After wandering around for a while I decided to try to find Alice’s Shop, the shop where Alice Liddell (Alice in Wonderland) used to by sweets. I walked through some of the side roads and saw these scene. I decided to use the monochrome function on my camera (which, I’m sure is frowned upon), and, although some people don’t like it, I decided to blow it out a bit (in PP). I preferred the overly white look to the standard black and white, I liked the look. Hope you like it too. What I really love the most though is the fact that this cycle is just left there, and the owner has no fear that some scally will steal it. I hope his/her faith was rewarded.

About Me

Finally, I updated my about section. If you want to know a bit more about me, click the link under ‘pages’ on the right-hand column. (Don’t expect to learn too much though). :p

Pencils

This photo was taken when I borrowed a macro lens from a friend a few months ago. I wanted to create a photograph to satisfy the theme, colour, and for me, coloured pencils would suit the theme and give me an opportunity to try a macro shot. So yes, this was my first macro shot that I worked on (not the first out of the camera of course!). The first one is my favourite, but I’m fond of the other three as well. The photo was taken with a Canon EOS450D, a Canon 60mm Macro Lens. I used a sheet of thick black card from HobbyCraft underneath it, and just the regular built-in flash. In case you’re wondering, Microsoft gave me these pencils free for watching a demonstration of Office 2007 (in 2010!), they’ve never been written with and they’re still in pristine condition.