Day 7 - Tone Mapped HDR Landscape

As I was driving home tonight there was a bit of pink in the sky and I thought I might be able to get a nice sunset image.  I stopped a little way from home and walked along a path that was fairly high up over New Mill, where I live.  I had been on a different part of this path quite a while ago and taken some sunset photos when there was a lot of colour in the sky.  The path is really an old road that usually has quite a lot of big pools of water along it and I had used these to get reflections of the sky last time I came here.

However tonight the sky was more layers of cloud and I soon realised that it was not going to be as pink as it could have been.  I took a few shots along the path, across the valley and over to the distant horizons but none of them were inspiring me much.  As I walked back towards my car I kept looking for something interesting, some weeds along the side of the path or the broken down stretches of dry stone wall.  Finally I stopped at this point where there was a wooded valley with some yellow flowering gorse bushes on the hillside beyond and I felt there was a shot here.  Behind the hillside there were other hills stretching back into the far horizon and then the slightly pink coloured grey and streaky clouds.

It was getting a bit dark by now so I figured that the best way to make an image of this scene was to make a tone mapped HDR.  This involves taken three shots, one at normal exposure, one two stops darker and one two stops lighter.  This is called bracketting and my camera will automatically do this by using different shutter speeds.  When the three shots are on the computer they are merged together using a program called Photomatix which has a vast array of controls to determine how the images are merged and presented.  The program uses the dynamic range of all the input images to produce one output image so can use the extra two stops at the top and the extra two stops at the bottom to put extra detail into the final images.  At one end of the scale the resultant images are close to reality whereas at the other end of the scale the final image takes on more of a painterly appearance, almost cartoon like.

As there was no particular subject in this image I decided to go for a more ethereal look.  The one thing that I don't like about this image is the halo effect in areas of high contrast, most noticeable along the tops of the trees.  I guess it's quite hard for the program to reconcile the high contrast so there's no option but to live with it.  Maybe it would be possible to counteract the effect in Photoshop but I haven't given that a try as yet. 

Day 6 - Experimenting with Flash

Just before I went on holiday I bought a cheap flashgun to experiment with.  I took it on holiday with me and one day when it was too hot to sit outside I played around with it for a while to try and get some idea of what worked and what didn't.  I've been reading the Lighting 101 course on the strobists blog and I decided it was time to give it another try.

The subject is an artificial flower display which sits in the corner of our dining room on a wooden pedestal.  For the image composition I haven't moved anything in the room and I decided to use the portrait orientation so that I could include the flowers, the vase and the top of the pedestal.  I placed the main subject off centre and lined the picture up along the right hand side of the frame.  I included the green curtain down the left hand of the frame to break up the straight edge a little.  Looking at the image now I'm thinking that maybe the bottom right corner is lacking something, but then I feel that if there was something else there then the image would become too cluttered.

I used the flashgun as a secondary light which was on my tripod against the wall to the right of the flower display.  I had the flashgun turned down quite low and pointing up toward the ceiling to bounce the light down from above and try to minimise the shadows.  I also had the on camera flash on so that it triggered the flashgun when I took the shot and I had the flash on the camera turned down also so that it balanced with the light from the flashgun.  I had tried a few different light settings and positions but I think this one achieved what I was wanting the best.  Most of the others were under and over exposed or had lighting that was very unbalanced.  It took a while but overall I am happy with the final shot.

I now have a better idea of what extra equipment I need so here's a list. 
  1. A second flashgun so I can light from two places and not use the on camera flash
  2. A wireless remote system to enable me to use the flashguns without using the on camera flash
  3. A couple of light stands and brackets so I can use my tripod for the camera
  4. Some umbrellas so I can defuse the light without having to rely on a white ceiling to bounce off
I'll have to have a good look on Ebay so I can get the bits and pieces on the cheap.  I might also have to start using one of the spare bedrooms as a studio and perhaps get a background for taking portraits.  Maybe I could even start to make some money instead of spending it for a change.

Day 5 - Pieris in the Moonlight

It's a very clear night tonight and the moon is almost full.  As the moon rises it has lit up my back garden so I thought it would be a good idea to make some images in my garden.  I tried a few shots of the decking and garden furniture but I was finding that getting anything in focus was quite difficult.  I had the camera lens set to manual focus but in the dark it was hard to see anything through the viewfinder.  So I changed to taking some photos of the plants and I think the best one was of this Pieris flower.

I used my LED torch to light up the plant while I set the focus but the photo itself is purely using the light from the moon.  I set the aperture to f/2.8 to give a little depth of field, set the shutter speed to 30 seconds (which is the maximum without holding the shutter open manually) and then balanced the exposure using the ISO setting.  I underexposed by one stop because I didn't want the image to be over bright so the ISO ended up at 320.  I added blur to the leaves on the right because they were on the same focal plain as the flower but I didn't want them to look in focus. Then I darkened some of the other bits in the background that I felt were too light and distracted from the main subject.  I think it's not bad for a late night effort.

Day 4 - What!

Evey was trying to sleep on the settee next to me so I thought I'd take her photo.  My camera beeps when it gets auto focus and when she heard it her ears immediately pricked up.  Unfortunately the focus wasn't going where I wanted and with a wide aperture there wasn't much depth of field so I switched to manual focus.  My camera also beeps when you get manual focus at one of the focus points so now Evey was starting to pick up her head to look to see what I was doing.  I fired off a few shots which made more noises as the camera focused and the mirror went up and down inside the camera.  As she moved I kept re-focusing and taking more photos and she just looked at me as if to say "What!".  She's cute but doesn't look happy at being woken up.

Day 3 - Rainbows End

It has been a very windy day today and there was sunshine and showers most of the day.  I took Evey the dog for a walk and part way around there was a lovely rainbow right across the sky.  I was travelling light so I just had my camera with the 50mm lens because I thought I'd find something for the PAD blog.  What this meant was that I could only get part of the rainbow in the frame.  I did consider taking multiple shots and then stitching them together but I decided that it would be too much trouble.

The rainbow was in the sky for quite a while although at one point I did have driving rain into my face so it wouldn't have been ideal to take a photo then otherwise I'd get water on my lens. I found a spot where I thought the composition was quite good and then waited for the ideal time (decisive moment) to take a photo.

I had moved to a position where the rainbow started (or ended)  from where tree on the left met the trees along the bottom and then went diagonally to the top right of the frame.  The tree on the left was much closer than the other trees although when I look at the picture now that isn't immediately obvious.  I was hoping that it would give the image a bit more depth.

In post processing I have boosted the contrast and saturation to bring out the colours more.  There were a couple of birds in the sky below the rainbow but I cloned them out because they were distracting.  I love the way the cloud in the middle is light above the rainbow and dark below it and that the rainbow is almost exactly across its centre.  The shape of the cloud also rhymes with the shapes of the trees to givethe image a bit of repetition.

During the walk I took quite a few more photos of different things, all with the 50mm lens so now I'm not sure whether to post some on my main blog or to keep them to post on this blog later.  I do think that setting of with just one fixed length lens is making me look a lot more closely at things that I walk past.  Maybe I should just store up the ideas for future posts.

Day 2 - Early Morning in the Office

It's Friday and I'm into work about 07:50.  The traffic was light on the motorway.  So there's no-one here (actually Donna was here but was out of shot) and all the blinds are still closed.  Usually Chris is in before me but he's on holiday in the USA for a few days and the early shift of support team are in the Manchester office today.  Fridays are usually quite in the office because all the project managers and executives are "working from home" but today the place is deserted.

Anyhow, as in my study it was quite gloomy, especially with the blinds down, so I set the sensitivity high again.  I didn't use the flash this time because the area was too big for it to make much difference.  In fact it would have lit up the foreground and left the background dark and I didn't want that.  So the shutter speed was a long 1/10 of a second which is a bit too slow to stop camera shake.  So I had the camera resting on top of a cabinet and I held it down while I pushed the button.

The lighting was giving a bit of a yellow cast so I adjusted the white balance to try and make it look more normal.  However it looks very blue outside through the gaps between the blinds and the blind at the end of the office.  Anyhow it's the weekend now (as I add the post) so maybe chance to get out and make some non work related shots.

Day 1 - My Study

So this morning I was excited about kicking off with my Picture A Day so I rushed through my breakfast and took a picture of my study.  It was about 7am and still quite dark, but I took a couple of shots and uploaded them to my computer.  I wasn't too happy with the quality but I had run out of time because it was time to go to work.  I took my camera with me because I thought I'd have to take a different photo for the blog because these first ones were just not good enough.

As I was driving to work I was looking around at things I might photograph later for the blog.  A sunrise shot on my way to work is a definite but this morning it wasn't colourful enough.  I've lots of ideas now and I ought to write them down because at my age I tend to forget a lot of things.  When I got to work there were some small trees in the car park of the hotel next to the office that had some beautiful autumn colours so I need to catch them soon.  The sun was behind them and the yellows and reds were lit up wonderfully.  Unfortunately at lunch time the sky had clouded over somewhat so they weren't showing off their colours quite as well. 

On the way home I made a mental note of lots more photo opportunities so they'll be forgotten by tomorrow.  So back to my study and some more photographs.  It's still not too bright in here but I used my built in flash to try and balance with the natural light.  I used a high sensitivity (ISO800) so I could narrow the aperture but keep the shutter speed at 1/50 second to avoid motion blur.  So here's the final result .  My god, my study is a mess.  I have an idea for another photo, "my study when it's tidy".  Right, so where's my astrological calendar?   When's the next blue moon?