First Experiments with Studio Lighting

St Austell Camera Club had a practical night recently where I had my first experience of using studio lighting for portraits. I was quite pleased with the results considering.

Click on the photo for a larger version.













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Lanhydrock

I went for a photography wander around the Lanhydrock Estate last Saturday with members of St Austell Camera Club. The grounds were a stunning mix of Victorian gardens surrounded by acres of grass and lovely old trees.

I took a few shots (click on the photo for a larger version)

I loved this old door, it reminded me of The Secret Garden and made me wonder what was behind it...

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Candid Kids

Went to a BBQ the other day and chased the kids round the garden with my camera. Was reasonably pleased with the results. Click on the photo for the large versions - they look better that way.

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Strobist Experiments

Inspired by a rainy day and an excess of garlic, I thought I would experiment with off camera flash.

I used two strobes, one fired into a white umbrella to the right on 1/4 power, another bounced on the ceiling above set to 1/2 power. I tried to balance the flash with the natural light coming in from the window to the left.

I then did a spot of dodge/burn in photoshop. Here are the results - which look much better in a larger size - click on the image for a larger version.

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Monochrome

I have been playing around with monochrome images lately and thought it was about time I posted some of them here.

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To Touch the Clouds

Taken at Hells Mouth, Cornwall, a notorious suicide spot.

Just Like Old Times...

Seine Net Fishing at Hemmick Beach, Cornwall

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2009 - Faces

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Portraits. Still so much to learn!

I bought a cheap strobist lighting kit at the end of the summer - experimenting using an umbrella and a couple of strobes resulted in these:

and a few without all the fancy *coughs* equipment

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2009 - Summer - Daisies and Painted Ladies

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With a boom in the population of immigrant butterflies such as the Painted Lady, by the time summer came around, my macro lens was itching to get out.

I couldn't have asked for a more beautiful day!

(these really need to be seen larger - check out the butterfly tongue!)

Other Macro / foliage shots I took over the summer included:









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2009 - Winter - Snow, Frost, Graffiti and Kittens.

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I was beginning to think it would never snow like it did when I was a kid - you know, enough to close your school and deep enough to build a snowman in - and then 2009 saw the return of some decent wintry weather.

It always makes me laugh how the most mundane things suddenly get photographed because they have a few inches of snow on them. Benches for example. Surely everyone at some point has taken a photograph of a bench covered in snow.

I was up in Shropshire staying with family, and the beautiful countryside a short walk away made it impossible not to grab my camera, pull on some fingerless gloves and go out and explore. It was the first time I had ventured out alone with a camera, and it's amazing how much more you take in when you aren't half focused on people around you.

Even graffiti on the railway bridge demanded my attention - normally it's just background noise.

As I walked off the bridge, I was totally smitten by the frost on leaves by the side of the railway. I took this shot, which has astonished me with its popularity on flickr - 220+ favourites and increasing daily!

I would love to show you the rest of the beautiful photographs I had taken that day... but I had a computer malfunction which resulted in the loss of all the other photographs I had taken that day. Including the bench photograph.

Frustration.

Even more annoyingly there was a thaw overnight, and I never got to retake the bench I had found, when it was all snowy and abandoned.

Not quite as atmospheric, but just as abandoned - here is my bench.

The thaw brought about some other photo opportunities though :

Birmingham provided more frosty scenes later that January, so I decided to take some photographs of someone elses garden:

I love the texture frost gives when you convert a photograph to black and white!

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2008 - The Beginning...

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In the beginning there was a birthday.

Finally I had a real camera. Not the convenient shove-in-your-handbag point and shoot I had used forever, but a shiny new Canon EOS 450d, complete with an 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 IS kit lens, and a Tamron 70-300mm f4/5.6 DI LD Macro lens.

I had to take it out for a trial run, so headed up to Warrens wood at St Blazey to make the most of the Autumn colour scheme. I had a quick look at the manual, but with so much to take in, decided to dial it to manual and experiment with the settings in the hope that I might take a shot that I liked.

My macro lens still needed testing, and with the Autumn weather giving way to the chill of Winter, I felt some indoor practice was in order. Water seemed like a good place to start, so to the bemusement of those around me, I spent a weekend taking photographs of various combinations of water, oil and cds... as you do!

Flowers seemed like the logical progression, and since I was new to the world of macro, I headed outside to shoot the only flower still standing (in my defense - it was December by this point!)

What my back garden lacked, the supermarket provided, and I bought some flowers. I must be naive, but I didn't realise they actually dyed flowers... I thought I had bought blue flowers, but it turned out I bought white ones that someone had dyed blue.

I felt duped, but they were still pretty!

I finished the year trying to make a crap Christmas tree look better.

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