The camera club organised an outing today to Down Railway and Inch Abbey.

If ever there was a good reason to join a camera club, it’s this sort of event. We were given access to the building yard, switching rooms and all sorts of other behind the scenes event. The staff were great and took their time to tell us what was going on as well as being happy to pose for photos.

It being fathers day, it was also a great way to spend a Sunday with the family.

Course, my slightly lobster colouring tonight may make me reconsider things in the morning…

Last night was the first CPA outing for 2010. A trip to St. Malachys church in Belfast was organised

We got about 2 and a half hours in the church by ourselves to take photographs of the wonderful architecture and imagery. It’s a fantastic place and worth a visit whether you’re religious or not.

Unfortunately, extreme bad timing meant there was some repair work ongoing and part of the alter had scaffolding on it. This got me thinking about the detail though, so most of the night was spent with a macro lens.

Anyway, this is one of a few wider shots I took. Thanks to Frank for sitting still!

Learned a useful lesson last night. Don’t just check your camera and batteries before you leave the house. Check ALL the gear you’re bringing. I was setting up a shot and lost maybe 20 minutes and a several handfuls of hair before discovering one of my remote triggers was receiving signal from the camera but not actually triggering the flash.

Yeah, it’s been a quiet few weeks. Great thing about a hobby is when you get distracted it’s not quite the end of the world. My couple of weeks staring sullenly at my camera have passed and hopefully things are getting back on track.

Anyway….

This time last year I was tinkering with a set of cheap Ebay triggers and whilst they were fun, there was lots of issues with range, misfires and just general reliability. So much so, that they were almost a chore to use at times. Don’t get me wrong, they had their uses and I got some fun shots with them, but I hated relying on them for anything which involved people.

I was reading Paulo’s blog again recently and he mentioned picking up some Phottix Strato triggers, so I dropped him a line to see if his initial recommendation was holding up. Whilst it was, it turns out they weren’t made anymore. He recommended a look at RF-602 triggers.

Tonight I managed to get playing with a set I picked up.

First impressions are they’re fantastic. No misfires at all. Easy, clean operation with good signal lights to tell you what’s happening. And the range is to die for – they claim 100metres, but I don’t have a house that big – I was able to trigger the flash from 2 rooms away with no line of sight (OK, not sure why I’d ever need to trigger a flash I can’t see, but….)

All in all a cool set of triggers, and at £26 for a set it’s well worth a punt.

While playing with them I took a few self portraits (using Strobist for inspiration). They’re nothing special, but I couldn’t post and not post an image now could I?

(Yes, my eyes look odd. You hold a fekking flash under your chin and see how your eyes go…)

I’ll come back to the light box and other lighting tool another night….

About new year time last year I was at my brother in laws and we did a spot of Clay Pigeon shooting. At the time I took this.

Well, since we spent Christmas at their house, it only seemed reasonable to go out and shoot some more. After all, you really need to keep on top of that Clay Pigeon population in case they… erm… they… OK. So after two days of feasting, pretty much any excuse to get outside works.

Continuing my current obsession with mono conversion. I’ll not get into how much tweaking the image got, but I’ll own up to moving the exploding clay a little (It was in the shot, just a little more to the right than I liked and I wanted to crop it a little).

there’s a photo essay competition coming up soon and I’m seriously considering using this image in it – I’ve abut 15 images of clay pigeon shooting from the last two outings.

Like I said before, I was lucky enough for a mate to volunteer to model for me. I’ve taken plenty of pictures of friends, and Kevin isn’t the first to let me take a photo of them. However, he was the first mate I specifically set out to take photos off rather than just shot as part of a days activities.

The difference is, this time the sole objective of the evening was to get some good photos, not to play poker and have a laugh.

I also got myself worked into a bit of a tizzy coming up this this as I really wanted to impress.

Looking at the photos from the night, I don’t think I did.

So, where’d it go wrong?

I think my first mistake was not planning the shots more carefully. I knew I wanted the lighting effect in the third picture above and I wanted a sort of head on B&W pose, but I never considered what sort of approach to actually take to achieve that. I also never considered that taking 60 pictures of Kevin with similar looks on his face would become problematic – the expressions are not his fault!

I think I got the gear a little wrong to. I obsessed over using a single light for the subject and a reflector, but because there were just the two of us I couldn’t get the reflector to set up how I wanted. In retrospect I should have just set up a second strobe on low power and lived with the impact.

One interesting thing which I’d been told and tried but really only became convinced off during the session was the power of F/11. These are all taken at F/11 around 80 - 100mm and they give a nice feel. Possibly helped by the nice plain wall, but it’s nice to see peoples heads in focus…

When all is said and done though, I did have a great time doing this. I’ll be hassling more mates to volunteer in the future.

This isn’t the mate who offered to pose for me a week or so ago. I’m still working up the courage to check he’s happy with the pictures I took of him (though at least one is on his facebook page, so…)

I’m finding that models aren’t like your mates or your family. Sure, they’re motivated to help you get the best picture you can and they’ll follow instruction really well, but they also know what to expect and know what you’re doing. Unlike friends and family, there isn’t that natural history and experience that lets them and you be comfortable in each others presence and if you’re shooting in a crowd there’s a lot of distraction going on.

Strikes me that you need to build something of a rapport with the model, good or bad. I’ve read about photographers in the 60’s who’d be almost confrontational to get the “angry young man” shot. Not sure I’m up to getting people to hate me on purpose (I do well enough with that by accident).

Certainly, when I look back on the shots I took of Christine, the better pictures are later in the session when I’d given up trying to act like I knew what I was doing and was just chatting with her and taking pictures.

Funnily enough,  I noticed a similar effect when taking pictures of my mate. The more I tried to take“modelesque” pictures of him, the worse they became. Indeed one of his favourite shots was when we were goofing around and I was trying to explain what the lights were doing. I think my stress at trying to get things “just so” and look knowledgeable was translating into awkwardness and tension in the pictures.

Maybe for me, that’s the most valuable thing I got out of taking pictures of people recently. Have fun and enjoy the experience and it’ll translate into your pictures.

If you want to practice portrait photography, the only realistic option is to have someone model for you. Self portraits are fun, but you’ll always be a little out of sorts with the process.

I’ve lined up a few friends for the next few weeks, but the club had a session on Tuesday which was a great place to start.

There’s a portrait round in the club coming up and I’ve been trying to come up with a different style of shot. I expect there will be an abundance of traditional portraits doing the rounds and I fully expect I’ll submit a few of those myself.

But I also wanted a few more unusual shots.

And after watching the Matrix a few months back, I couldn’t get the idea of a computer lit shot out of my mind. I lined a person up for the shot, but had no idea about lighting it. So rather than waste their time, last night I used myself as my test subject.

OK. It’s maybe a little 1999. But I kind of like the effect.

I started out by just lighting my face using the glow from a laptop monitor with a series of lines of bright green text on it. This just wasn’t generating enough light though and holding still for 30 seconds was a nightmare. So I settled on reducing the exposure time to around 15 seconds and firing a flash with a green gel from my right during the shot.

An overlay layer, a graduated filter and some curves later and the shot was done.

I’ll do the same shot again with the friend who’s volunteered, but I’ve learned some lessons along the way.

1. Long exposures are impossible to manage for the model.
2. It’s impossible to auto focus a Canon 400D in the dark, so you need to get the focus set and then stay still until the light goes off and the shot’s taken
3. Make sure the strobe is behind a diffuser otherwise you’ll get hot spots
4. The text on the monitor needs to be bigger to be legible (and will be reversed (duh) on the image
5. Even if you’re planning on having one side of the face dark, you need to be careful – no light means no detail. If I lift the image on the left side the ear is just a lump of noise
6. Straighter on to the monitor would have helped the text a little more

Honestly. How he was able to sit beside me for two days listening to my rambling madness and still keep a smile on his face is beyond me…

One of the nice things about being out and about with a photography club is the availability of unwilling subjects to pose for shots!

It was model night at the club again last night.

It’s still an intensely uncomfortable experience, but I’m actually finding I’m growing to enjoy it once I get past the “you model, me idiot who hasn’t a clue” stage.

It’s made me want to take more shots like this. Not sure when the opportunity will present itself though.

There is definitely a lot of magic goes into lighting these sort of shots. A lot more than my pictures give credit. One of the club members took charge of lighting and set up three lights -

• One firing into a white umbrella high right
• One firing into a white reflector left
• One firing through a snoot (I think that’s what it’s called) to the right rear

It’s maybe why I’m frustrated when reviewing these. I can see a picture I took, but not a photograph I composed if you know what I mean? I’d like to get some experience actually making lighting decisions and to do that I need to both understand lights and have access to the environment to do it.

It may be time to break out all the off camera strobe gear again.

I've mentioned the camera club I've joined a few times now. (And every time I've forgotten to link to their site- so here's the CPA Website). It's roughly week five of the season and to date we've had one round of the annual competition, two talks by visiting photographers and the opening night talks by some members.

Last nights talk was from Jim Crone, a professional fashion and beauty photographer. He spent the first half of the night talking about his work and his experiences, being candid and helpful in the face of questions and sharing some fantastic lighting and framing tips.

Then, while we drank tea, he set lights and with the aid of a local model gave us a practical demonstration of how to take pictures in a studio environment. After showing us how the professionals worked, we were able to take some photos ourselves.

It's quite a surreal experience taking photographs of a model. You see the professionals on TV having a dialogue with them but when it's your turn you just freeze. Fortunately for me, Lisa, the girl modelling was brilliant. As a result I managed to get a couple of shots I'm really pleased with.

(f/3.2, 1/160sec, 50mm, ISO-200, 30/09/08)

The setup was pretty simple. It consisted of a plain roll in the background with two tungsten lights. The main light was sitting directly in front of Lisa at about 2 metres off the ground and contained in a soft box. Directly under it was a silver reflector to provide some reflection. The second light was off to the right, just behind her shoulder. It was shining onto a piece of the roll which had a few cuts in it to give that pattern of light and shadow on the background.

(f/3.2, 1/160sec, 50mm, ISO-200, 30/09/08)

One interesting tip Jim provided which you can (hopefully) see in these images, is the use of white balance. In the first image, the camera is set to tungsten and as a result the picture is a nice natural set of colours. In the second picture, the camera is set to Daylight. As a result, the colours are much more creamy and warm.

This weekend saw the start of the annual Burtonport Festival. Given we've family there it's always a bit of fun and since Mad Dog McRae were playing it seemed like a good chance to try something I'd been wondering about for a while.

How exactly do you take a photograph of a band without using a flash?

The answer, it would seem is - "With great difficulty".

The band were playing on a converted trailer (I did mention this was happening in Donegal right?) which was lit by fluorescent tubes (Donegal, remember) and some simple stage lights. The sun was a setting and the music was a pumping.

(f/5.6, 1/50sec, 208mm, ISO-800, 19/07/08)

(f/3.5, 1/15sec, 50mm, ISO-400, 19/07/08)

Even with lighting on stage, it was very difficult to get enough light into the camera from the angle I was working at to keep shutter speed down. Also, given the light setup was "different" there were a lot of shadows obscuring faces in many of the shots I'd taken.

I tried a few things, initially using my zoom lens but quickly realising it wasn't fast enough (if that's the right term) and so switching to that little f/1.8 50mm I own. Whilst the second shot might have been cleaner if I'd upped the ISO a little more and reduced the shutter speed by opening the aperture, I just kinda liked this version.

Of the thirty or so shots I took, these were probably my favourites. By no means the best I've taken, they're definitely soft/blurred and unimpressive compared to concert shots I've seen elsewhere.

That said, it was Saturday night at the festival and the beer was flowing so I'm lucky it wasn't a picture of my eye or my toe.

There's two more weeks of festival fun, so if you've any suggestions or tips for this sort of shot please let me know. (the band, not my eye or toe).

Oh, and if you're in the Donegal area you'd probably have a good time at the Burtonport and Dungloe festivals. alternatively, if you get the chance to see Mad Dog McRae, they are much better than my dodgy pictures suggest.

Honestly, nearly a year of posting and I don't post a shot with recognisable people in it, then suddenly it's two out of three....

Liked this shot because of the way the blue flag frames his head and the exhausted expression on the blokes face. Whilst I'm sure he's happy to be out on a nice sunny day doing what he loves, I'm guessing that armour weighs a bit.

(F/10, 1/200sec, 171mm, ISO-200, 01/06/2008)

A few tweaks to the image. Mainly to make the blues a little darker and the chain a little sharper.

You know I almost made it through this post without using the immortal line

"Once a squire, always a squire. But once a knights enough...."

So close, and yet...

This is kind of an ode to "NothingtobeSaid". I sit opposite the bloke in work and we often spend five minutes over a cuppa at lunch debating the merits of certain pictures, the objectivity of art and other such topics.

We have a very different style. Whilst I'm trying to find mine, Andrew is very into his street photography - urban architecture, people, that sort of thing.

We also have a very different approach to kit. Whilst I spend hideous sums on digital cameras and lenses, he spends similar on film cameras and lenses... OK, maybe not that different.

He's been on at me for weeks to try street photography, but I'm not sure it's me. the idea of taking a photograph of someone in a street is a bit too hard core for me at the moment.

Still, you sometimes have to try these things.

(f/10, 1/200sec, 128mm, ISO-200, 01/06/2008)

I've said before about my reluctance to put pictures of people on this site. As I gain experience, my attitude to this is changing. I'm not sure where this will take me (maybe I'll end up stalking the cityscapes like Andrew), but in the meantime the odd portrait or crowd shot may appear.

If you do stumble on this and you don't want the picture displayed, please just say.