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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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My kit list

I wrote a kit list when I first started my blog but I’ve not re-posted it here like most of my other old entries. This is a current list of my kit with links and all.

• Nikon D300 – my second digital SLR camera and a fine upgrade. It has taken a while to convert and learn how to use it but it’s a class machine
• Nikon D50 – first bit of equipment and is to blame for my shift of interest into the world of photography
• Pentax Optio 550 compact camera – slightly broken now the shutter cover is slightly ajar and blocks out the top corner of photos slightly
• Sigma 30mm f/1.4 EX DC HSM
• Nikon 50mm f/1.8D AF
• Sigma Macro 105mm f/2.8 EX DG
• Sigma 10-20mm f/4-5.6 EX DC HSM
• Sigma 18-50mm f/2.8 EX DC Macro HSM
• Nikon 80-400mm f/4.5-5.6D ED VR AF
• Nikon Speedlight SB-800
• Nikon ML-L3 remote
• Nikon ML-3 remote
• Manfrotto 679 monopod
• Manfrotto 190XB tripod + 390RC2 head
• Joby Gorillapod

In addition I have various Hoya circular polarising and UV filters plus Cokin P-series adaptor and filters.

I chose Nikon (over Canon) for the simple fact that Nikon use SD memory where Canon use CompactFlash cards and it didn’t make sense to me to have a Canon with a different memory format when all my other equipment (mobile phones, PDA, etc) used SD/MMC cards. Other than that there was very little between the two manufacturers. The D50 camera itself is amazing anyway so it wasn’t a hard choice and the price was just about right at the time. I thought it was a good choice for an entry-level SLR. Now I’ve upgraded to the Nikon D300 and just starting to get to trips with the semi-pro camera.  But guess what, it uses CompactFlash memory.  No a big issue now as I’ve been able to purchase a unit that converts my SD cards into CompactFlash cards.

As well as photography gear I have a load of computer equipment, which you can find out about over ‘ere.

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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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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.