I like to try things. Even when what I read makes sense. Even when the photographic evidence proves the point. I still like to try things.

Sometimes it can take me a month or two to get round to it. Sometimes it happens sooner. But inevitably, I'll try a thing just to prove it is so.

So, finding myself alone in a house filled with food, beer, hundreds of my favourite movies and the web...

I ignored all those and got out my new light stand and umbrella to see if using a reflector with an off camera strobe really did make a difference to the light...

OK, not owning a reflector was a bit of a bind, but I happened upon a fantastic piece of A2 glossy white card, and necessity being the mother of invention, suddenly I had a compromise.

I set an apple on a chopping board. Then I positioned a flash high to the left pointing at the apple through a translucent white umbrella. For the reflector shot, I then positioned my white card to the right of the apple - the size of the card meant it ran from the surface of the table to above the umbrella in height. (For reference the chopping board was on a black surface). since I was shooting freehand, the position of the apple is slightly different in the two frames, but the setup was the same.

Without a Reflector...

With a Reflector...

OK, neither of these is going to win photograph of the year, but it proved out the theory I'd read about.

Whilst there is still shadow in the reflector shot, it's a lot less sheer and looks more natural in keeping the apple and board detail.  I reckon moving the reflector closer again would have reduced the shadow further.

So, lesson for tonight. Reflectors do work in reducing the harshness of a shadow.

I've a confession to make. When I'm using the tripod I always take three images, bracketing my chosen picture by +1/-1 Ev using the auto exposure bracketing in the camera.

There's a couple of reasons for this.

1. It allows me to play in HDR land with pictures. (I've stopped posting a lot of those as they can feel over processed and 'samey')

2. It allows me to see what a modification to the settings might have got me - I'm still learning here, so this is useful.

If memory is cheap for you, I'd suggest you do the same. It really isn't as much of a waste of card space as you think.

On other matters, with the number of club competitions I've been entering, I've taken to buying mounts pre-cut and in bulk. This has left me in even more of a 3*2mode than before - If all my mounts are already cut to 12*8 apertures (maximum entry is 16*12 including mount), then I tend to only see a 3*2 ratio picture as a potential entry.

So much so, that a digital entry I submitted this week was in that aspect ration as well. Even though in a slightly different ratio it might have been much nicer.

Well, tonight I'm breaking my 3*2 habit.

And posting an HDR picture.

So there.

I guess I'm going to have to cut my own boards.

(f/18, 30secs, 14mm, ISO-100, 02/08/2008)

Sometimes pictures develop long after you've stopped fiddling with them. I hear DJ's talking about a record being a "grower, not a show-er" occasionally. I guess the same can be true for a photograph.

Anyway, this photograph was taken in early August. At the time I thought it was OK, maybe a decent example of slow shutter speeds making water a bit like smoke. But it kind of left me cold.

When it came time to send pictures away to print, this was number 30 of 30, just making it in because 30 seemed like a nice round number for printing and I was kind of curious about what it would look like.

In the Peoples Photography exhibition, it just slipped onto the list because I had space for one more portrait image.

And people liked it. Probably more than me.

Then this week, I found myself having to select an image for a digital presentation competition (images presented via projector rather than as prints or slides) and once again this kind of slipped past me and into the selected pile.

Then it slipped past the judges and into their submissions pile.

I look at it now, and where it originally left me cold, it now leaves me calm. Maybe that's why it's growing on me. Maybe that's what other people feel when they see it. I've certainly no idea.

I was playing with my flashgun tonight and decided to try and recreate a picture I'd seen in this Strobist post.

Because I was away from technology at the time, I had to try it from memory.

When compared to David's toy car, the highlights on mine are still very sharp and there are some burnt out patches on both pictures (I like them on the second car), but it's a fun thing to try.

Now the essence of David's post was related to light sources and what makes soft light or hard light, and to be honest I'm still trying to get my head round some of this so I'm not going to try and stick my understanding of it online just yet.

Still, it's a fun way to photograph toy cars.

If you read about landscape photography, you'll always hear about the golden hours. Those times around sunrise and sunset when the sky is perfect, full of colour, the sun low in the sky.

The annoying thing about this is that those golden hours are also at the most inconvenient times of the day!

Well, I made myself a promise this winter that I'd try to get out once a week during those golden hours and see if I could make anything of them.

This week I tried around the Harland & Wolff, Belfast ship yards and the Titanic Quarter. (Remember, when the people of Belfast finished her she was unsinkable, it took an Englishman to wreck it!)

(f/16, 1.6secs, 20mm, ISO-200, 28/10/2008)

Halloween is coming and the photographer has gotten fat,

and while he was sorting dinner he spotted the wee girls trike (OK, it doesn't rhyme.).

With winter arriving with vengeance I was cooking dinner tonight and looking out into the back garden. My daughters trike was sitting abandoned and I couldn't shake that "Here's Johnny" line. After saying it four or five times my wife cracked up and made me go and take the picture.

I think it's kinda sinister, but you maybe just think it's badly lit.

(f/8.0, 6secs, 100mm, ISO-200, 29/10/2008)

This was deliberately lit down low on the right side of the image to try and give it that partially lit appearance. To do it, I stood just out of shot and remotely fired the camera, then during the 6 second exposure I fired the flash manually from low to the ground and pointing up.

This is kind of a lead in for me to a concept known as 'off camera strobing' and something I'm hoping to do more off over the next while. There are a few good sites that deal with it, but the defacto best blog on the subject is The Strobist.

The club phase of the NIPA round 2 competition was last night, and as anyone who's read anything here over the past few weeks will know, the theme was "Water".

I ended up submitting 7 entries, 3 in the beginners mono section and 4 in the beginners colour. I thought I'd post, showing you the final choices and the comments they received.

But first...

The entries to the competition where quite varied, ranging from some lovely waterfall shots through to droplets similar to pictures I'd been trying. There were a few "loose" interpretations on the theme, but all in all I thought the pictures were pretty impressive. I counted around 20 mono and 30 - 40 colour prints.

Within the club, points are awarded to the top 4 colour and top 4 mono pictures. The best 3 expert photos and best beginner photo in each section go through to the NIPA inter-club phase.

The judge on the night was very thorough, giving a critique of every shot. I felt he was maybe a little critical at times and tended to concentrate on the problems in each picture, but as I said to one of the members - "I wasn't putting photos in to have people blow bubbles up my bum" (No, I'm not sure what I meant either).

During judging he reiterated a few points

• The majority of the picture needed to be water
• Still water was lifeless and bland unless reflections or some such set it off
• Horizons really needed to be straight
• The context needed to be clear
• Division of interest - there being multiple subjects in the same show

I was going to be in for a rough night...

The Mono Pictures

The three mono pictures I ended up submitting were:

 Dripping Tap. (Names are such transient things!)

Droplet

Ice

I know these shots have issues, and after printing the strongest was the "Dripping Tap" photograph. I'm not going to try and quote the judge here, but in essence.

• Dripping Tap - Possibly a little tighter drop to remove the dead area to the right of the tap.
• Droplet - The judge wasn't sure what this was, wondering aloud if it was the ripples of a sinks drain or something similar.
• My Little Iceberg -Recognised as ice, he summed it up along the lings of "it's just a photo of ice on a plate"

The Colour Pictures

Splash on Silk

Droplet on a Leaf

 My Little Iceberg

 Lake in the Mournes

Again, without trying to quote the judge.

• Splash on Silk - He wasn't sure what this was and wasn't keen on the colour, saying he felt water pictures should be water coloured
• Droplet on a leaf - Whilst there was water in the picture, there wasn't enough of it and it wasn't the main subject
• My Little Iceberg - (I'm not even getting into it. I shouldn't have submitted this...)
• Lake in the Mournes - Almost monochrome landscape, quite dull and lifeless

My Thoughts

I've heard it said a few times now that you can't read a judge before the night. There's always an element of luck to it. But having seen the winning pictures in each round, they deserved to win and the  judge did get it right.

I don't necessarily agree with some of his comments in regard to "Splash on Silk" and "Droplet on a Leaf", but given he doesn't read this blog he might have been right. I'd be keen on other peoples thoughts.

All in all I'm happy with the night and the round. I learned a little more and saw some brilliant examples of thematic photography. I also managed to achieve 4th overall in the mono section with the "Dripping Tap" and the "Droplets on Silk" picture was picked as the best beginner colour photograph. Both go through to the inter-club round.

I have problems with backgrounds quite a lot. I tend to see the subject in the viewfinder, like what I'm getting and press "snap" without ever considering the background of an image.

Take a look at this picture to see what I mean.

(f/3.2, 1/200sec, 100mm, ISO-200, 09/10/2008)

The water droplet is nice and sharp. I quite like the colouring effect I put on the image. I even kinda like the fact the tap is quite grubby and out of focus.

But the shadow of the tap forms a dark stripe across the picture and it just annoys me when I look at it now. I've tried cropping the picture to remove the head of the tap, but I felt it lost context when I did that.

So, lesson for today. (and one I'm still trying to learn dammit) is don't just look at the subject, look at the background before you press 'snap'.

Oh, and I have no clue as to what the strange pear shape reflection is in the water either!