Day 14 - The Decisive Moment

A bit of a grand title taking the name of a book by Henri Cartier-Bresson but I've had a burst of enthusiasm because we're into a new month.  I'm breaking all the rules by having two images today in the hope that it makes up for a two week gap.  Anyhow I was out walking with Evey dog near the house yesterday morning just after the heavy rains had finished and I was wanting to make some nice autumnal pictures with lots of freshly fallen leaves.  I also shot some images of the stream in full flood and some new pictures of the remains of Mytholmebridge Viaduct which was demolished about thirty years ago.  I'll probably make a post in my normal blog with some of those images later in the week.

It hadn't actually stopped raining when we set off so I had my camera with just the 50mm lens stuffed into my little pouch (a bigger lens on the camera just wouldn't fit in the pouch, I tried).  As we walked the rain eased off and then eventually stopped so I fired off a few shots as we walked.  As we crossed over the road into the other woods we started to get some small patches of blue sky and occasional sightings of the sun.  This time of the year is quite good in the woods because not all of the leaves have fallen but the canopy has thinned out enough to let some of the sun get through to the ground.

So the first shot is when the sun was shining and making shadows with the trees across the ground and the tree themselves.  The second shot was just ten seconds later when the sun had gone back behind the clouds to make the light duller and more even.  For the second shot I had bumped the ISO setting up from 100 to 400 so I could keep the same shutter speed and aperture.  I did exactly the same post processing on both images so that it's a fair comparison.

Which is the better image?  Well, it depends on what you are looking for I guess.  The first image is very contrasty and the colours are much brighter which is nice but the dark areas have lost detail and the light areas are a bit blown out.  The whole image feels a lot softer, although I think it could be that the focus point it a little further back making the nearest tree slightly blurred.  The second image has far more detail in the dark areas and the only part that is blown out is the sky in the background.  However the lack of contrast makes it quite flat and the absence of shadows on the ground don't give as much depth as the first image.

In conclusion, neither image is a masterpiece for many reasons.  There's no real subject and no particular path through the composition so I find my eye just jumping around the frame.  They're too busy, although I suppose there is an element of repetition but it's not very strong.  Between the two I prefer the first because I like the high contrast and I'm not too concerned about the lack of detail in the shadow.  Not really a decisive moment but I guess it's a fair illustration of how ten seconds can make a big difference.

Day 13 - The Kiss 2

As I suggested yesterday I thought I'd take the last image and spend some time trying to improve it and  these are the adjustments I have made.  Firstly I have blurred the hair of the girl a little to stop it looking as though it's in sharp focus so that it doesn't pull the eye away from the heads.  For the same reason I have also darkened parts of both bodies especially where there were areas of high contrast.  To accentuate the heads a little more I've added a bit more contrast and sharpened slightly.  I cloned out the light patches in the top right hand corner and between the two bodies.  Then I added a vignette to make the corners darker and bring out the statue from the background.  Finally I have increased the colour saturation to really make the whole statue pop.   I think the improvement was well worth the effort.

Day 12 - The Kiss

We have this little sculpture which we have in our dining room that was bought for us some time ago.  I can't remember who bought it or what the occasion although I suspect it could have been a wedding anniversary.  We had a party for our 25th but I felt that we'd had it longer than that (7 years ago I think).  Anyhow the sculpture alternates its position, with the artificial flower display from Day 6, between the window sill and the wooden pedestal in the corner of the room.  The sculpture has the window position during the summer because it doesn't obscure the garden as much as the flower display.  The flower display has the window position during the winter as there are no flowers out there during the winter.

I always thought the statue was called 'The Kiss' like many other sculptures (for example Rodin and Klimt) so I decided to look it up.  It has a signature on the back which reads 'Martel' so started out by searching on Google.  Not too much success to begin with but eventually tracked it down and found out that it is actually called 'Exchange of Rings'.  The holes in the head signify the rings and the kiss is the first kiss after taking the marriage vows.  I haven't been able to pin down who the sculptor is although there were a couple for French cubist sculptors called Jan and Joel Martel so it could be them.

As with day6 I've been experimenting with my flashgun again.  I was using a shallow depth of field and concentrating on getting the focus on the kiss (or the rings).  Because of the angle I have taken the picture the girls hair is also in focus which is pulling my eye away from the main subject of the image.  I might have a go at blurring the hair to see if it improves the image and I might replace this version of the photo or just add the new version for comparison.

Day 11 - Tree Fungus

After finally managing to rid my daughters computer of the fake anti virus program I went out for a walk in a nearby woods.  Just a quick post today as I'm so far behind. Here's an impressive fungus I saw as I was walking around.  I've lots more photos from the walk and I'll put them in my main blog later in the week.

Day 10 - Antivirus Pro 2010

A bit of a late post but the photo was taken on day 10.  I thought I'd be a bit late with the post as I was going out shopping with the girls to get a birthday present for my wife but it ended up being a lot later due to this spyware on my youngest daughters computer.  Last Sunday was taken up trying to sort it out and then I've been putting off looking at it during the week but I thought it was time to tackle the problem today.

This spyware is a fake anti virus program that tries to scare people into registering for a program to get rid of all the viruses that it pretends to find on their computer.  Fortunately my daughter wasn't fooled by this and didn't click the link.  I read on the internet that people have given their card details to these scum and ended up having money being spent on their debit and credit card.

I have to say that the program looks quite convincing and also has a wide ranging effect on the computer.  Such as blocking real anti virus websites, putting up a fake Windows Security centre screen, patching regedit to give a message that it has been disabled by the administrator, popping up a variety of official looking messages and somehow replicating itself on reboot if you do manage to delete the .exe file. After spending several hours trying to get rid of it I finally found a program 'Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware' that appears to have got rid of all traces of it and several other things as well.

All I can say is that I hate all the bastards that produce these virus, adware, spyware and malware programs. I've got better things to do with my life than spend my time sorting out the mess they make and trying to prevent it happening again.  My daughter was so upset that she was going to lose all the stuff she's been doing at university for the last four years.

Day 9 - Sunrise over Soveriegn

When I set off for work this morning I could see there was some colour coming into the sky so I tried to find a spot to get a good vantage point.  I took a detour from my normal route to work around some of the small country lanes on the hills above New Mill.  The first place I stopped and took some photos was just over the hill from where I'd taken the image for Day 7 so it was more to the South East than to the West.  As the sun crested the horizon there was some beautiful colour in the sky but I had the roofs of some houses and telegraph poles and lines which I wasn't too sure the I liked.  So I moved on to another spot where there were just trees on the horizon which I thought looked more natural.

Unfortunately the sun was rising fast so I was shooting directly into it by this time.  However that had the effect of completely blacking out the foreground to give this lovely silhouette.  Where the sun is on the horizon has produced quite a nice bit of flare into the silhouette which I also like quite a bit.  The part of the picture that is black is actually a working quarry at Sovereign where there is also a pub and a petrol station on the crossroads.  Fortunately it is completely black so the workings of the quarry are hidden.

I took a few more pictures in different directions from here because there was also a bit of mist in the valleys below which also looked quite good.  I moved on again to the windmills near Ingbirchworth but the sun was well above the horizon by now and the stunning colours had given way to some quite pleasant oranges and blues.  You only get ten to fifteen minutes when the sky is at its best and anyway it was also time to get going towards work, although there'll be no-one there this time on a Friday (see Day 2).  I might post some of the other images from this morning on my main blog or maybe here tomorrow because we're going shopping and I might not get the opportunity to take any new photographs.

Day 8 - The Old Tree

Tonight I have spent some time working on this image that I shot on Saturday (or to put it another way, I haven't taken any photos today).  I posted a colour version of this image on my main blog but I did feel that a monochrome version might improve the dark feel of the this old tree.  I'm not sure what type of tree it is.  It looks a bit like an Oak tree but the leaves are the wrong shape so I think it could be Lime. 

When I converted the image to black I wanted to make it very dark and also retain as much contrast as possible to bring out the texture in the trunk and branches.  I used a blue filter for the conversion because it seemed to add more to the contrast then I burned in areas of the trunk and branches to accentuate the shapes. Finally I gave the image a bit of a sepia tone to warm it up a bit.  The pure black and white image still looked a bit flat so the hint of colour perks it up a little.  I'm not sure if the image is a bit dark overall.  I'll live with it for a while and then I might come back and lighten it up a touch if it still feels too dark.