I mentioned I was in Galway this week. Well, the weather was a bust from a photography perspective – and I was in a grump anyway.

Sometimes it’s better I don’t pick up the camera.

Anyway, as I was checking out of the hotel yesterday morning, they were getting ready for a wedding party later that day. The manager was putting flowers into a vase, and while she was running through payment I decided to see if I could take a shot of one of the flowers on the hop.

I think its a Chrysanthemum, but I know as much about flora as I know  about fauna so…

Anyway. The lighting in the room sucked, so since flash and off camera cord were to hand, I tried a little unusual lighting by illuminating it from below and just left of the camera.

Considering I had all of two minutes to grab the shot before going to work, I quite like it.

Tuesday night was the second camera club outing of the year, and yet again we were blessed with blue skies and good weather.

Unless you were me.

Yet again I fell foul of the burned out skies problem.

Now, either there’s some magic to this that I haven’t worked out yet or the other photographers there found the joke very funny cause no one else was complaining!

I’m going to have to break out the books or the googles or something before next week.

One of the few shots from Tuesday that I actually liked was this grab shot of some barbed wire. I just liked how the flowers were ignoring it and growing regardless.

My father was showing me a flower today in his garden. He has a bunch of yellow tulips (I think) and a single red one.

Annoyingly. it was close to a fence with really bad light for taking a picture – I know, I tried. There was lots of cross light and dense shadow because of a fence right behind the flower.

I was about to give up when I remembered I had my flash gun and off camera remotes with me and, never having used them outside the house before, it seemed like an opportunity to try some form of fill in flash.

OK, my understanding of “fill in flash” is that when you have a subject that’s back-lit or has a shadow on it, you can use a little “pop” of flash to compensate. It doesn’t matter whether it’s a compact or an SLR, if you can turn on your flash you can use it to help fill in the missing light. Using this, you can expose the image, front and back equally.

I guess I took it a little further, by using the flash off camera (with my father holding it) and deliberately under exposing the background I was able to mostly isolate the flower. A little photoshop later and I ended up with this.

I was chatting to a friend after work tonight and doing the usual procrastination about things. to get me motivated (and because he’s mean) he set a challenge – to take the best photo I could in the garden in the next 10 minutes.

It’s actually quite tough to work under a time constraint. I guess it’s something professional photographers deal with – that knockout punch only lands once, that couple get married only once (we hope). As an amateur, if I miss the shot, it’s a pain, but nobody gets sued.

Anyway. As I grabbed my camera, I suddenly realised how constraining 10 minutes actually was. Realistically I needed to take one lens. I then realised I had to pick my shot as well – I could take a lot of shots quickly, but since I’d to pick a final choice as well, I had to draw a line so I had to get the shots I took right….first time.

I spent 6 minutes in the garden. I took 8 pictures. I then spent 2 minutes uploading and another 2 picking and tweaking my shot.

This is it…

As challenges go, it’s good fun to try. I guess repeating it will help focus your mind on the shot, but in future I’d allow as much time as you want for post processing if nothing else!

I’ve been trying to improve my manual focusing recently. This is the closest from a batch of macro shots I took looking at weeds from a slightly different angle.

It’s still softer than I’d like, but I’m wondering if the viewfinder is out or my eye is out when working at silly angles.

There’s a “Flora & Fauna” competition next week and it sent me scurrying into my photo library to see what I had for entry.

I ended up stumbling upon the pictures in this post:

The Automatic Rose

Now at the time, these pictures caused dissention, slit families, drove wedges between nation states…. (OK, a friend in work and I disagreed about whether they were any good). But since I liked it, I decided to use it for the competition.

But, being one of natures fiddlers and having seen some amazing stuff by a local photographer called Stephen McWilliams I decided to see if I could improve on it.

Here’s my new version:

Essentially, there were changes to contrast and vibrance, as well as an edit in photoshop to perform the selective colour element.

I quite like it, but my friend (yes, I too am amazed I can call him that after he was rude about the original) made the immortal comment -

“it doesn’t matter how much you polish a turd, it’s still a turd”

Humph.

Again with the macro lens.

(f/4.5, 1/125sec, 100mm, ISO-400)

I haven't been seeking to improve my photography for a while now. I guess it's showing in the pictures I'm taking and posting. There's no reason for this really. I'm enjoying my photography and I'm taking the pictures that please me.

It's a useful lesson if you're like me. You're not getting paid for this, so do what you like and sod the world.

Oh, and another reason you should do what you want. Remember I talked about the water competition I'd entered and how the judges comments were very harsh? Well, the inter-club results are out and the picture of the dripping tap got a low score whilst the droplets on silk shot got a quite remarkable  joint 2nd place in the beginners set. It's not important. It's just a good example of how photography is subjective.

OK, so a week or so ago I posted the picture of the water drops on the sepia coloured rose. I've kind of decided not to use that picture for the water round of the competition. (Not because I don't like it, more because it's a rose bud with water rather than water on a rose bud).

... Anyhow, I was playing with the picture in Photoshop and decided to raise the exposure of the right side before removing the highlights from the water droplets to see what effect it had on the picture. It's left me in a dilemma about which I prefer.

So, which is better?

I think I'm beginning to appreciate the club competition on a new level now. Never really having to work to an agenda before, I've always just taken pictures of things I like or things I thought might look nice. If I got a picture out of it, that was great. If I didn't, it was no big loss, like buses there'd be two just round the corner.

However, a subject as simple or as varied as "water" forces you into looking for shots which fulfil a brief, the sense of the clock ticking in the background is ever present. It took until today before I got past the deadline doom of the competition and realised that I wasn't actually that bothered about winning or losing or even just doing OK. I was in it for fun. Even if nobody liked my stuff (and believe me, the last photo I showed them got hammered), I was doing this to try and improve.

Funnily, right around the time I had that thought, I took the picture of the rose (see previous post) and the picture below.

In all honesty, I don't know if they'll be permitted in a competition where the theme is "water", but I like them and that's pretty much all that matters.

(f/5.6, 1/1000sec, 100mm, ISO-200, 05/10/08)

(f/5.6, 1/2500sec, 100mm, ISO-200, 05/10/2008)

I've no idea if this will be allowed as an entry for the "Water" round of the competition, but it's grown on me over the course of the day so it may well get an outing regardless. Maybe the top right is a little dark, but I'm not sure.

Sometimes it's a blessing that you can enter multiple prints.

This started of life as a yellow rose, but I just really like the sepia toning on it. It kills off the yellow in the flower and lets the water drops stand out a little more. And no, before you ask, these are natural water drops!

I've noticed what WingedMonkey seems to concentrate on macro flower shots in a lot of his updates and whilst I'm still a long way from some of his stuff, I am starting to see the attraction as you can end up with some lovely pictures.

(f/8, 1/1000sec, 100mm, ISO-200, 05/10/08)

I've kind of fallen into flower mode because of that water challenge. "Raindrops on roses" and all that... I'm still just shooting flowers in available light and I wonder what difference it would make if I was to start using reflections. Honestly, light is getting ever higher on my list of things to play around with. Maybe one day...

Nothing to say about this really. I was messing with the camera and liked the colour on a Friday night was all...

(f/2.8, 1/100sec, 100mm, ISO-400, 3/10/08)

One thing always annoyed me about post processing and that was the capability of the machine I was doing it on. It's hard to mask something when the pc is 30 seconds behind you. It's impossible when it's 2 - 3 minutes...

Well, in an effort to make life a little easier, I've upgraded my pc to some new dual core thingmabob and bought some new peripherals and such. I'll let you know how I get on.

But in the meantime, hopefully this post will prove I can still post to the blog, and this picture will continue my experiments with de-saturation.

(f/4, 1/400sec, 50mm, ISO-200, 07/09/2008)

I'm hoping to make a final selection of the photos I'm going to use for the Peoples Photography exhibition this weekend. (I'm going to choose the photos this weekend, the exhibition is a few weeks away). As a result, I've been going through a lot of my photographs again trying to decide which were important for me over the last year.

It's an interesting thing to do. Whilst many would doubt it, I can see definite changes in the pictures I've taken and the way I approach things. I've a huge distance to go before I'd call myself competent, but at least now I have a better idea of where I'm going.

Anyway, whilst trawling through some of my pictures from Germany, my eye caught this one and I thought "Oh, what a lovely bunch of...."

(f/6.3, 1/60sec, 50mm, ISO-200, +4 close up filter used)

Months ago I mentioned my obsession with taking pictures of red flowers after Dermot said it was difficult.

Well, I think I'm getting closer.

(f/6.3, 1/100sec, 50mm, ISO-200, +4 close up filter, 15/07/08)

As a point of reference, in the last two weeks I've taken in the region of 700 photographs and I'm likely to shoot another 200 over the next two weeks. I may jump around a lot with my train of thought in here as I review and post pictures.

I promised two little girls (well, their dad anyway) I would put a picture of a flower from their garden online.

(f/8.0, 1/80sec, 10mm, ISO-200, 15/07/2008)

Hopefully you can find this when you're next outside?

Ever since Dermot told me that taking photos of pink flowers was a nightmare I've been obsessed about trying it again. Basically any bright red or pink or purple flower.

These are still too contrasty or something. I'll get it one day.

(f/14, 1/30sec, 50mm, ISO-200, +10 close up  filter, 08/06/2008)

"I've a little challenge for you" he said...

"for the next week (or even 10 days), go out and take a picture, just one, and that one has to be the best of all the many other photos that you could have taken. Don’t crop it, edit it or enhance it in any way. The photos can be of anything at all, as long as you take one and only one each day."

Dermot had finally pulled together his proofs from our trip to the North Coast and after seeing them I was feeling a bit down. It's hard to find a good excuse as to why your photos aren't great and it gets harder when you lose the obvious "sure, he had better weather" or the best selling "I could have taken that if I'd been there". I was left with the classic "His toys are better than mine" and the self effacing "I suck bigtime" (copyright 'Yerman', 2008).

So, in an effort to help me focus (Lord I may suck at photography, but I'm the pun master!) on what I'd learned and to give me a short term goal, Dermot set me the shot a day challenge.

I accepted.

I may have been mad, and I quickly had to follow it up with some caveats about still being allowed to snap my family and make use of the camera for the purpose of the macro project (the close up filters have arrived).

But apart from that, I'm allowed one shot.

In an effort to make it really interesting I've decided on a few other terms. I'm only going to use the camera and kit lens. I'm also going to make use of the manual function. I'll also try to explain here exactly what I wanted to achieve and an honest assessment of whether I did or didn't. Feel free to comment.

Day 1

I guess a lot of these shots are going to be around the house. I can't see me travelling 30 miles for a sunset when I have just one chance to get it right. I also can't see my missus and kid being too happy if I head out every night. (Though, they might like the peace and quiet).

(F/5.6, 1/100sec, 55mm, ISO-200, 23/05/08)

The idea was to pick out this cluster of flowers and throw as much of the rest of the background bush out of focus as possible.  What I wanted to achieve was just a simple shot of some flowers.

I think it would have worked better if I'd gotten closer to the flowers I wanted to help throw the DOF a little more. I also think it would have been better if I'd isolated the flowers more, maybe tried to lift them out of the image by removing or adjusting the flowers directly behind the front set. In the end, I think it's probably too noisy with not enough area for the eye to settle on if that makes sense?

Comments?

OK, it's a little late, but I've been away.

I spent the Easter break in Donegal with my wife and baba at her folks place. All in all, much relaxing and eating. God bless people who buy 2 year olds Easter Eggs, knowing full well it's daddy's responsibility to make sure they don't eat too much chocolate and that it doesn't go to waste...

More importantly, this trip was a great chance for me to plan some camera activities into my days. Whilst not all of them came off and most of the ones that did didn't work out, it was a valuable learning experience and I picked up or proved out some ideas. I'll post stuff over the next few days as I work through the 300 (yes, 300. That's 100 a day) photographs I took.

For now, Happy Easter.

(1/500, F2.2, 50mm, ISO-400, 22/3/2008)

(1/25, F1.8, 50mm, ISO-400, 22/3/2008)

(1/50, F2.8, 50mm, ISO-400, 22/3/2008)

The middle picture is a little soft, but I really liked the colour of the rose. I'm growing to like taking pictures of flowers, (flowers...growing... I crack me up, I really do). After spending an hour trying to photograph my daughter and her proving that the baby is quicker than the eye (or the camera), the lack of movement in the flower is a godsend.

I’m going to be away for a few days this week and, having just packed my bag, I made the executive decision not to take my camera.

I’d always planned that it would become part of my standard kit, but I’m guessing an industrial estate in Staines isn’t likely to give me a lot of time or opportunity to take good photo. I have packed my current photo read though, so expect a review of it when I get back.

In the meantime, since there are flowers in the house at the moment…

 (1/400, f/2.2, manual, focal length - 50mm, ISO - 800, 18/11/07 13:33)

 This was taken with the canon 1.8 lens that I’m playing with at the moment. It’s taken a while, but I think the whole aperture thing is finally sinking in and I’m finally getting away from the “must use extremes” approach that’d I’d defaulted to on this lens.

In terms of post processing, this shot is based from the raw image with the white balance (left on auto on the camera) changed to auto using Lightroom. You’d think this wouldn’t make a difference, but surprisingly it does. Geoff mentioned a few posts back in some comments that the cameras all use their own algorithms to decide on colours etc, and he’s right. Take a look at the original below.

I’ve also cropped the image to push the rose out towards the top right corner. There is a whole theory about this in the various magazines and books and I’ll try to explain this sometime soon in “snap speak”.

I'm quite concious that all photographs are subjective and that people will prefer the second over the first (or just hate them both). for me, I feel the first one draws you in more and maybe gives a softer feel - course I'm an IT geek, so what would I know about flowers...

One final thing... Having just grabbed the camera settings for this shot I look in horror at the ISO figure. Once again I’ve fallen foul of a night of messing - ISO 800 was not intentional!