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.

Not very dainty (and not mine either).

Not happy with this, but I’ve been sitting on it for a week or so and keep tweaking it. Rather than waste another week on it, I thought I’d post and ask for advice.

Maybe it’s just one of those “turd” shots. I still find it hard to be objective about my photographs and so spend hours lovingly crafting a waste of time – I know, if it’s fun it doesn’t really matter.

My wife won’t let me put a bookshelf in the bathroom and this book is one of the reasons why.

"

The Digital Photography Book by Scott Kelby

As photography books go, it’s quite lightweight. Aimed at beginners, it provides tips and techniques ranging from filters through composition and it’s all written in a light hearted approach with a few attempts at comedy.

It’s not a traditional book, in that it doesn’t really evolve from one section to another, instead it acts as something between a quick reference and a fact book. It’s this approach that works well – even though a lot of the tips are things I know (and have even blogged about) I keep stumbling upon useful little titbits or new thoughts about old ideas. As a fact book, it’s easy to pick up, read a page or a section and put it down with no need to remember where you left off last time. It’s also very engaging and you find yourself reading tip after tip or considering those failed photographs in light of the things you now know.

If I was allowed a bookshelf in the bathroom, it would be perfect for those moments when you want to stimulate your mind while nature is stimulating your...

(Edit: Typically, I somehow managed to mess up the book link. Hopefully it's corrected now!)

Reviewing my photos from Canada, I noticed I’d passed a milestone without any fanfare.

So, with much fanning of fares, here is the ten thousandth picture I’ve taken with my Canon 400D

You’d think a milestone shot would be better.

I’m playing around with photoshop again, thanks to a book a friend (yes, the turd commenter) loaned me. I’ll discuss the book in more detail another time, for now I just want to show you the impact of some of its suggested workflow.

Original Image

Final Image

I’m kind of curious what people think. Does the final image work better than the original?

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.

I’m in danger of turning this blog from photography to “My Holiday Snaps”, so I promise there won’t be too may more Canada pictures here.

However, this picture kind of summed up one of the issues that I find most frustrating with photographing landscapes.

You travel 4,000 miles to some of the most majestic scenery i the world. You spend three or four days in the place. You wait and you pray…

And not once does the sky clear and give you the light the scene so richly deserves.

Maybe it’s me. Maybe I’m just not good enough to make a grey sky day seem amazing (and trust me the views were still great). Sometimes though, I think you just have to shoot and be dammed.

So I did.