Royal Wedding Celebrations

I went along to our local street party to help celebrate the wedding of William and Kate on Friday. It was held in St Austell town centre and featured the wedding on a big screen, street performers, a fantastic band Nervosa (progressive folk rock - well worth a listen here if curious) fairground rides and most importantly, cake!

Pirate FM broadcasted live from White River Place and the St Austell Voice and Cornish Guardian came along, so I am sure (better) photographs will be on their websites and in the paper next week.

I took a few shots (more to follow...)click on the photograph for larger version.

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Sparrows

I went to a fantastic talk at St Austell Camera Club the other day. Sue Earnshaw showed us some amazing wildlife photographs taken all over the world, but also shots of the birds in her garden which she practises her skills on.

I felt inspired and since I enjoy sitting on my window sill and watching the world go by, having a camera in my hand seemed the natural progression.

These sparrows live in my roof, so they are always about.

Click on the photographs to view large versions.

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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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2008 - The Beginning...

Click on photographs for larger version

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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