OK, so the pictures for the Peoples Photography exhibition are picked and sent to the lab, the mounts are ordered and apart from a night of framing I’m all sorted. Sort of…

Time to actually “take photographs” again.

I’ve been quiet for the past few weeks. It’s been a combination of things really. MY camera time has been more about family and getting ready for Peoples Photography and in general I’ve been in that “you’ve been at this 2 years and you’ve only got this far?” slump I kind of half expected.

I say I expected it because I had the same feeling last year around this time. I kind of expect it again next year.

This year it only took one website to pull me out of the doldrums. Looking at the work of Chase Jarvis today just kicked me onto my arse and made me want to take photos again. I was struck dumb by the simple beauty of his site, the shots, the videos.

Take a look at his site and be inspired.

I’ll be away to break out the camera now.

So, what do you do when you go all in with two pair and get called and beat early in the poker game?

You take photos of the game for the rest of the night.

I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again – I need a book on flora and fauna.

My daughter got the shock of her young life today when she tried to eat one of the apples I’d been shooting.

Those lovely apples? They’re nectarines…

OK, before I get into this, does the background in this shot look ok on your monitor? On mine it looks black, but I know it’s not. I masked and painted out a fair portion of it, but I have no idea how to tell if enough is enough.

If not, let me know?

The HDR version of the red apples from yesterday wasn’t the only version of the picture I ended up with.

Whilst the original unedited picture had some merit (to my mind anyway), I quite liked this slightly overblown red version too…

I know a lot of people curse HDR and I’ve had a bit of a love hate relationship with it over the last two years myself. But sometimes the photo cries out for it and sometimes, like this, you kind of half expect it when you’re shooting.

The apples are sitting on a piece of black Perspex (which I finally got round to picking up, thanks for the tip Paulo) and lighting is just natural window light.

Camera was on F/16 and shutter speeds were 0.3sec, 0.5sec and 0.8sec. HDR was performed in Photomatix Pro and then a bit of curves and shadow adjustments in Photoshop (yeah, I now at some point its not a photograph anymore…)

At some point in the process it’s lost the sharpness of the original images which is a little annoying. It was all shot on a tripod, but I’m not sure if that was enough, my three year old was bouncing about at the time!

OH, one question. Does anyone have good tips for getting dust particles of Perspex? It was a nightmare to get this shot without little flecks of dust!

I really need to pick up a flora and fauna book.

I' think this is a chicken. Though why I spent yesterday at the zoo taking photos of chickens is anyone's guess…

It does seem to have a certain attitude though.

Life moves pretty fast. You don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it. – Ferris Bueller

Things have been hectic of late. So much so that I could feel the world getting me down, my temper getting shorter and my attitude starting to suck.

I decided a day off was in order. A day off taking pictures I thought.

Well, I’ve spent my day off playing with my camera and watching TV and reading books and all those things. It’s been good.

Sometimes you really do need to take some time.

(And if that isn’t the cheesiest way to introduce a shot of a watch, I don’t know what is!)