OK, since Stuart asked about it and it turned out to be a widget option thing, you should now find an RSS widget doofer thingmabob on the little pane to one side.

Sorry to get all technical there.

Yup, I had spent last night taking some photos of another odd object from around the house and I had spent hours trying to decide which I preferred. In the end I decided to montage them all and let people decide for themselves.

Course, that would all be great if I'd actually put the right images online wouldn't it?

You can be sure of a big surprise.

Yup, that's right. I might be hiding in the trees with a camera....

erm....

anyway....

Not so much the woods, but the local park for this shot. I remember these trees as a kid. They were young and vigorous and the path between them was neatly mowed and just pretty. I decided a few weeks back I'd go and get a snap to see how they were doing now.

Boy, what a change. I kinda like the slightly more sinister look they're going for these days.



(1/60, f/4.5, aperture priority, focal length - 18mm, ISO - 400, 05/10/07 17:49)

The only change from the original image was a slight bit of cloning to remove a set of goalposts and some bloke playing football. You'd probably need to see the original (full size) image to make him out, in the smaller (webbed up) versions it was just noise, so I deleted him. Yes, I am a cruel master.

...would be called something else.

A good weekends snapping this weekend. I took maybe 80 - 100 pictures. I have maybe 3 I'll post. Dear lord I'm glad I'm not paying for developing!

I spent Friday afternoon in the park with the nipper and got some nice shots of her and my missus on the swings (the child was on the swing, not the missus. She made me tell you that bit). These need a little post processing so expect them later in the week.

Yeah, post processing. How about that huh? Whats to say. I think it's growing on me as much as the actual photo bit. Even slight changes to an image make amazing differences to the finished product. I'm still undecided if it's cheating.

Anyway...

This rose bloomed in my back garden over the weekend, now anyone that's seen my back garden will know that it's probably as conductive to flowers as the central reactor in Chernobyl. Which just goes to prove that (to quote the guy from Jurassic Park) "Life will find a way"

The image has been cropped in to show just the flower and then I used a similar process of the dice to reduce the brightness of the background while keeping the rose bright.



(1/200, f/3.5, aperture priority, focal length - 24mm, ISO - 400, 07/10/07 13:10)

The only other change to the natural state of the rose (apart from some leaf pruning which doesn't count, does it?) was some gratuitous effect modeling. Yup, that's right, next stop Digital Light and Magic for me.

I used my latest toy (supplied by the repository of junk known as the cupboard under the sink) to add water to the flower. It was high tech as you'd expect...



Starting out in photography? I recommend a camera, a lens, a water spray.

What?! Oh come on, you mean to tell me that you didn't see me sneaking that line in somewhere the first chance I got?

You people give me way too much credit.

At the end of my dice snapping frenzy I got to playing with the pictures in Gimp, particularly this one:



I'd intended to make the picture black and white to see if it looked pretty, but ended up playing with the 'Colour Levels' widget.  Now I'm sure there is a technical explanation for what the widget does, but to my eyes it makes dark areas darker, bright areas brighter and the bit in the middle brighter or darker as required. Hold on, a random website says this:

 'The Level tool provides features similar to the Histogram tool but can also change the intensity range of the active layer or selection'

I ended up with this:



Now I like this. I think the background feels richer the colours a little more intense.

It's still not black and white though.

So, out of desperation (where is the magic make my button black and white), I used Google and I ended up finding a tutorial to help me do this:



Now I really like this.

OK, the edging around the dice (OK die you pedant. No, not as in cease to live more as in singular of dice)  isn't as neat as it could b, but I was up against it time wise and this was less than 10 minutes work all in.

I could pretend like I spent hours working all this out in Gimp, or reproduce the tutorial and claim kudos for something I didn't do, but I'm not into that (and I might get caught), so here it is....

Selective Colorization

So, whatcha think?

OK, this was a bit quicker than I'd planned but last night saw me with some time on my hands and a sudden need to not be near my computer. So, inspired by the table lamp that I tripped over I decided to try the first of the projects I mentioned the other day.

First things first, I don't have a studio or any sort of fancy environment so I needed to do a lot of improvisation here. The background on the following shots is a black t-shirt draped over an old shower box. It kind of gave me the effect I wanted so yea me.

I think it was Stuart who wanted to see more pictures, and since last night was about learning I'm going to try and walk through the stages I went through while taking the snaps.

Oh, before we get into this. Given my history, I feel it's important to point out that none of these shots have been post processed in any way. No cropping, no contrast/brightness, no picasa. The only difference between these shots and the ones I have are to reduce the overall image size to make them more viewable on the web.

The Setup...

In one of my other lives I'm a role-player. Yes, the sort of person even nerds point at and snigger. Enough already. Get over it. Stop sniggering. No, I don't dress up as an elf or a gnome and no, I don't own a copy of the Necronomicon (anymore). What I do own is a bag of dice. Dice of many colours and shade, dice of doom some would say having seen my luck with them.

there were a bundle sitting below my monitor for a few weeks and I thought the colours looked quite nice. It was these that drove me to try this out.

So, using my improvised setup described above (this is going to be all over the place today isn't it?) I put the camera on the tripod and took this shot.



(1/60, f/4.5, aperture priority, focal length - 34mm, ISO - 400, 02/10/07 20:23)

Here the room lights were on, the camera was left on the settings I'd last used and I just pushed the button. The results are very bright, very boring and just mweh.

So, I moved on a little

The next shot I zoomed in a little on the dice and increased the aperture(probably cause the camera made me).



(1/60, f/5.6, aperture priority, focal length - 55mm, ISO - 400, 02/10/07 20:24)

Still crud. No really. No need to be nice. The background is a little better, the dice a little brighter maybe. But still crud.

I decided to try playing with the little desk light I'd found. I pointed it onto the dice from an angle of about 40 degrees to see what effect it had. I also turned off the house lights and dropped the ISO level (because I remembered it was set high) at this point



(2s, f/5.6, aperture priority, focal length - 55mm, ISO - 100, 02/10/07 20:25)

Getting better. the gem dice were beginning to take on a life of their own and the shadows looked cool.

I adjusted the light to see if I could pull the shadows further. In the next shot the desk light is at about 10 degrees, giving light across the dice.

(Oh, this ones a little blurred for some reason)



(5s, f/5.6, aperture priority, focal length - 55mm, ISO - 100, 02/10/07 20:27)

I played around with this position for a while, but was really uninspired by the output. the solid dice and the colours were just nothing great. I also didn't like that I was at full zoom(?) with my 18-55 lens and was still sitting quite far out. I didn't want to start moving the tripod, so...

I changed the lens.

Using my Tamron 55-200 I took the following shot.



(1.6s, f/5.0, aperture priority, focal length - 171mm, ISO - 100, 02/10/07 20:36)

I liked this a lot. The low depth of field on the dice and the reflections and shadows were impressive (or so I think).

So, pushing my luck...



(6s, f/10, aperture priority, focal length - 200mm, ISO - 100, 02/10/07 20:36)

Increasing the depth of field (big number = little hole (see I remembered!)) and suddenly it gets real pretty (at least to my eyes).

So, pushing my luck further....



(20s, f/18, aperture priority, focal length - 200mm, ISO - 100, 02/10/07 20:37)

I think this has gone off the boil. The background has started to get quite washed out again and the warmth of the previous image (which I pray I didn't touch up in Picasa - I'm sure of it. But I will double check tonight).

So, tell me what you think. And be gentle, I really like the penultimate image. I think it's one of the best I've taken to date.

One of the biggest challenges I seem to encounter when playing with my camera is finding a subject to snap. With the exception of Donegal where the picture is set up for you (and I mess it up), it's hard to find something to snap.

So, I've decided to try and identify some projects or challenges for the coming weeks. Ideally each project will allow me to try something different with the camera or look into a trick or technique a little more. Most importantly, it will allow me to keep practising and playing.

So, here's a couple of projects I'm considering.

Dice - I have a selection of many sided dice from my role-playing, some gems, some solid, most pretty. I'm going to try and get a few nice photos of them. The idea is to let me play with light using an inanimate object, solid backgrounds. That sort of thing.

Traffic - For a while now I've wanted to go and take some photos of traffic on my local motorway. I really like evening and night shots of car headlights and tail lights. The aim will be to play a little with shutter speed and low light exposures

Self Portrait - I have a tripod and remote and since nobody else ever wants published I may as well try this. I think I'll try something obscure here, but it's on my list.

Anyone any other ideas?

Oh, and I know a few people who read this are also photographers, so how about a bit of fun? We can pick a project and all try it for a week or two, then post up the results and see what we think. Kind of a fujimugs type game. Anyone interested?

So this weekend I discovered the joys of Auto Focus and Manual Focus.

I'd noticed a spiders web outside on my trailer* and thought it looked quite pretty with the rain droplets thing.

So out I go with the camera and start trying to get a snap...



(No idea Pinky. I seem to have lost the settings. I'll get them later)

OK, just so we're all on the same page here. No you can't see a spiders web. Seems the AF on the camera decides the spiders web isn't worth focusing on and instead picks something behind it. In my case it's the junk mound that is my back garden.

So, in an attempt to correct this I discovered MF** or "manual focus".



(yes, there should be technobabble here too. My world has deserted me...)

OK, I know there are flies on it, and so technically the title of this blog entry isn't correct. I also know the manual focus isn't "technically" in focus, but I actually think that's more to do with the Aperture I was using than my inability to see.

The AF photo hasn't been toughed in any way save getting made a little smaller in file size. The MF photo has had the usual plethora of Picasa "I'm Feeling Lucky" done to it. I really need to work out what that crap is myself.

* Yes, I own a trailer. I bought it in a moment of madness in reaction to finding out I was going to be a Daddy. I needed to invest in a "man thing". There's something manly about reversing a trailer. Something that lets you look into the eyes of those big rig drivers and share the nuances, the skill, of backing up with a load on (so to speak). Course, I've only been told this - I have problems going forwards with the trailer on...

** Last night while uploading the photos and discovering they were out of focus or the focal range was too short, I discovered MF also stands for "Mother F***er"...