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Yellow

Photo taken in the garden on one of those rare sunny days here.

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Cornfield

A slightly long walk away from the house I found these fields ripe.

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Sheep and the lamb

I was out with the long lens one day and captured a few shots of the sheep and their pups who were in a field behind out vet.

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First snow

Hello, this is my first proper new photo in ages!! Sorry for being away for so long. Just lack of time, lack of motivation and lack of access to Photoshop CS. Hopefully I’ll be able to get a few more done before my trial runs out in 12 days time.

This was taken in the fields near my house after a we got covered in snow (for the first time in years) in February 2009. We don’t get much snow here so I made the most of it and took lots of pics.

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Kaz at sunrise

 

A shot of my Golden Retriever, Kaz. He’s a poser as you can tell.
Seriously though, it’s very hard to capture him as he doesn’t stay still for more than a few seconds. At just 3 years old he’s is so full of energy especially when I take him out for his walk! I reckon he could keep going all day long!

But luckily on one of my early morning expeditions I caught him here. He was standing up on a mound near a pond while the Sun was coming up and the sky was a wonderful yellowy-orange. I think he might have heard a train coming and so went into ‘alert mode’ – Kaz loves to chase the trains, but so far he’s never caught up with one.

Again this is Edenbridge and at a place called Prettymans Pond. I’m not sure what it’s called that but it’s fantastic little pond and I’ve spent many an hour here practicing my photography and taking shots of the pond and the trees in every way I can think of. I’ve found that by going back to the same place over and over again you eventually see different angles for shots and find different ways of capturing the same subject. I’ve also tried to go here at different times of the day in different weather conditions. It’s been very interesting to see the changes these bring and I’ve certainly learnt how to look at things with a ‘photographer’s eye’.

This is a slightly adjusted photo (see below for original). I’ve cropped the top and left a little and increased the saturation throughout. Also I’ve lightened Kaz a little as he was a bit too dark. What does everyone think? I still think the sharp foreground branches are a little distracting?

In the process of creating this photo I thought of two questions:

Question 1: What is the best way to convert an image from Photoshop (PSD, TIFF) to JPEG? What I normally do is save the PSD as a TIFF then go into ACDSee and convert it there at max. quality to a JPEG (thus keeping the EXIF data). But this photo really highlights a problem (or two) I’ve noticed in that converting to JPEG reduces the saturation and darkens the brightness. Is there a better way to convert to JPEG to keep the exact tone of the image as well as the EXIF info?

Question 2: I had to refine and touch up the selection of Kaz in Photoshop as left alone he stuck out too much and his hair (especially his underneath) had a nasty line where one part of the image was dark+saturated and the other was bright+lightened. What’s the best way to blend these areas? I used the smudge tool on the selection layer and the result seems OK but is there a better way?

The original photo has been printed in the UK newspaper, Kent & Sussex Courier on 01-Feb-2008 (my first print!) and made it to onto Flickr’s Explore on Jan 8, 2008 at #434. The scan of the newspaper print is below:

Blog entry at Dark Matter Magazine is here.

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Up on the farm

 

Shot taken near Boxham Farm in Edenbridge, Kent (UK) and not too far away from my previous shot. The light was amazing that morning!I had scouted this area out previously and knew I had to be there for sunrise. So on the next occasion of a bright morning I was up and out the door at about 6:45am. I trekked up to here in the near-dark (which was a good half hour) and then basically waited for the sun to come up through the trees.

When it did, I was up and down this hill over and over, taking lots of different shots from different angles and of course with different light. If anyone saw me they would have thought I was a right nutter. But it was all worth it and got this and many other wonderful shots.

Second entry on Dark Matter Magazine’s web site. Blog entry is here.

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Painting of a tennis championship

Shot from 2007’s Wimbledon tennis championship. What I’ve done here is converted from an original photograph into a painting-style piece. I wasn’t too happy with the original – it was basically a reflex shot and not particularly in focus. But I thought the composition was pretty good and took the option to play around with it a little more and perhaps give it another look. I’ve tried many variations but thought this one came out best.

The player is Klara Zakopalova from the Czech Republic in her game with Hana Sromova against Anna-Lena Groenefeld and Tatjana Malek of Germany where she and Hana eventually lost. The part of the match we saw was great, even with a small rain break in the middle but this is Wimbledon so you wouldn’t expect anything else.

I went with my brother and it was our first time at the tournament. It was a superb experience and we’re hoping to go back in 2008. My brother has this idea of tenting outside the grounds overnight to get centre court tickets the next day, but will just have to see about that.

For a more detailed report on our day, head over to his entry and head here to find the better pictures of the day. And it’s well worth looking at a larger version of the picture to see the painting detail.

Here is the original has and it been used on a home page for a outside television broadcasting company:

Blog entry at Dark Matter Magazine is here.

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A morning walk in Kent

I’ve been selected to post on the Dark Matter Magazine site. I feel very honoured to be among such fine artists so have a look. So here’s a copy of my first post there.

This is my (currently) home town of Edenbridge. A small place in the UK county of Kent, bordering Surrey and Sussex. This particular shot was taken near Boxham Manor which is found near Marl Pit. I get a lot of my shots from walking the vast amount of farmland here. It generally means very, very early mornings to beat sunrise, scouting around a bit then picking my spot. Sometimes, though, the spot is already in my head from previously seeing it but this shot was a ‘there and then’ and happy how it turned out.

If anyone is interested I used this picture to create one of my first HDR-style images. It’s an interesting way to create a picture but I’m not quite there with the technique yet. Have a below (second image). To me the photo becomes more like a painting?

As a second attempt I also produced the picture below (third image), but felt that the top left part of the image was too dark (and dark in general). Again, each had slightly different tonemapping settings. Let me know which one you prefer? I’m quite keen on the original myself.

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Boxham Tree HDR

This is my second attempt at an HDR image. The photo shows the farmhouse at Boxham Farm in Edenbridge in Kent, UK. I took the shot while on one of my early morning walks in the local fields. As you can see it was a cold, cold morning but it’s worth it when you get such a great tree in the wonderful sunlight. Unfortunately I was only carrying my 18-50mm lens and could step any further back to get the whole of the tree in shot, so alas this won’t make it into my portfolio. But ignoring that I really like the shot and experimenting with HDR for the first time was fun. Flickr liked it too, so much so it made #11 for 22-Feb- 2008 on Explore!

The way I created this HDR (High Dynamic Range) shot was from one RAW file. I saved it out from Camera RAW to a TIFF file and created 3 images one at -2 EV, one at 0 EV and another as +2 EV (so 3 exposures, one dark, one normal and one light). I then dragged these into Photomatix, generated the HDR then tonemapped it. It took a bit of fiddling with the tonemapping settings but eventually I got the result above. The first thing I’ve noticed is that the clouds are far more dynamic but this is at the cost of a lot of added noise. I’m not sure I really like this style of HDR but it’s an interesting alternative and was fun to try. I’ll be posting a more detailed entry on how it was, so please check back soon.

The original photo is below, so please compare it.

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Day out at the London Eye

Again, very old news but they are worthy of an entry. It was my brother’s 28th birthday (December 2006) and I decided to take him and my Mum and Dad out for the day. We had a meal lined up and a boat trip down the Thames. We also have tickets for the London Eye. Have a look at some of the pics I took of the Eye itself:

 

And these were taken when we were going around:

 

 

You could use this as a guide to the City of London. If you click on the thumbnails above and then the link to the Flickr pages I’ve added lots and lots of note boxes to the photos to list what everything is. Anyway the trip…

 

We went up to London Waterloo for a mid-morning timeslot and walked along the South Bank to the Eye. We got a snack to eat in Country Hall as we were a bit early. We then collected our booklet from the desk and joined the queue. The timeslot didn’t seem to matter, we probably could have queued straight away. It was a fairly long queue but moved steadily. After a security search we stepped into a pod. Now you would have thought it would stop and let you on. But no it continuously spins so we literally did hop on (when it lined up to the floor for a mere few seconds!). About 15 or so people got on and the door closed behind us. Then we were off!

 

The trip around was steady, you weren’t tumbling around the pod but you wished it lasted a little longer. Of course the best bit was when we were at the highest point. I think you get an idea from the photos what you can see. But I reckon if it was a clear day you could see a whole lot further. The weather wasn’t great but the ride on the Eye was amazing!!

 

We thoroughly enjoyed the day and recommend it to anyone. Tip though, try and go at the not-so-busy times else get a fast track ticket so you don’t have to queue. Expect to have your bags searched before you get onboard and be prepared for it to be busy as the Eye and the surrounding area are very popular.

I hope to go up on the Eye again one day, perhaps a night trip next time.

More photos are of the London Eye from this trip and others are here.

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