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Pixel-lated water
Like most people these days, the camera I carry about with me all the time is the camera that’s part of my mobile phone. I’ve got a Google Pixel mobile, and it’s got an excellent camera and camera software. One feature I like is the Long Exposure mode. It’s not as good for long exposure as my Huawei Mate phone was, with its fabulous “Silky Water” mode, but within its limits it gives great results. The trick is to keep the dot inside the circle! That tells you you’ve kept the camera still enough. These three images of moving water were taken using Long Exposure mode. I rested my hand…
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A midweek miscellany
Today’s post does not have a single theme. It’s a mixture of images, each of which has its own story to tell, each of which shows an area of my photographic interest. Here’s a shot from a town’s bonfire night celebrations last year. They had fire-eaters as a diversion before the main fireworks event. It was hard to get into a good place to have a clear view of the fire-eater, and also hard to choose the right moment to press the shutter. I was pleased with the flame on this one. A nice tight crop to the corner and editing out some background distractions made the composition work better.…
- Abstract, Architecture, Black & White, Bokeh, Composition, Creative Photography, Fine Art, ICM, Landscape, Macro, Mobile, Movement, Snapseed
Worcestershire Open Studios is nearly here!
The final preparation for this weekend’s opening of my exhibition as part of Worcestershire Open Studios (WoS) is pretty well done! Images are up, lights are installed and tested, mounted prints are in their display boxes, greetings cards are sorted, and signage is all done. Even the sun is getting in on the act and saying, “Here’s where you need to come to”! If you follow the directions that are found here, you should see a house like this one – only the right way up! There will be signs and green bunting to help you find it. This one of the key images in my exhibition. If you want…
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The Eye of Sauron!
A couple of days ago I made a trip to Upton Warren nature reserve near Droitwich. It’s a haven for birds, including Avocets. There were some very obliging Reed Warblers that posed for my OM Systems 100-400m lens, but they won’t be featured here. I was looking for non-typical nature reserve images. The first is the Eye of Sauron in grass! Whilst this looks like a small-scale Andy Goldsworthy work, it was completely natural. Somehow the cobwebs have joined it into a cool eye shape. Using my 100-400 enabled me to throw the background out of focus, and the bit of debris on the background leaf rendered nicely as the…
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Hay unstacked
Yesterday afternoon I had a wander round Hay-on-Wye prior to giving my “Close-up and Macro Photography” talk to the local camera club. Hay is a very attractive town, and has the world-famous Hay Festival every year. Hay is well worth a visit. Being me, I was on the lookout for the curious corners and quirky bits, rather than the tourist views. Here’s a bunch of those fairly useless stirring sticks you get at some coffee places. They were just lying on the pavement. I thought the found arrangement had a sort of Zen look to it. A quick edit in Snapseed to boost the contrast and edit out a couple…
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Pick up a penguin.
There is a sculpture trail in Worcester at present. It’s called the “Worcester Waddle” and consists of lots of penguins that have been painted in imaginative ways. It’s to raise money for St. Richard’s Hospice, and there will be an auction of the penguins later in the year. The auction of the previous sculptures, of elephants, raised a lot of money. One went for £36,000! One of the penguins represents a tourist, and it has a camera painted on it. Being a photographer I had to record the camera. I know that’s a bit meta, but there we go. It’s interesting seeing the juxtaposition of the penguins and the people…
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Worcester Balloon Festival in three styles
Last weekend was the Worcester Balloon Festival. I took a wander down to the site to see what was happening. I had my Huawei Mate phone camera and my Olympus E-M10 Mk3 with me. I decided to try and show different treatments of subjects at the Festival. There was a very large inflatable slide there. I went in the early evening and the sun was getting quite low on the horizon. It was picking out the structure of the slide with a golden colour, and that gave a lovely contrast against the blue sky. It has to look of a modern office building about it to my mind. Later on…
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It’s all about the light direction.
When you see a potential photographic subject it’s worth looking all round it to see how it’s affected by the changed in light direction. It can make a huge difference. Take this large dandelion sculpture in a fabulous Gloucestershire garden. I chose a viewpoint where it was lit by the sun from directly behind. It gave a lovely silhouetted contrast to the seed head “parachutes”. I had only just found it, and would have preferred to have been there an hour or so before, so that I could have got the edge of the seed heads away from the background trees on the right-hand side. I was just leaving another…
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Reflections on a trip to Birmingham
Living in Worcester means I am not too far from Birmingham. It’s just half an hour on the train from Worcestershire Parkway to Birmingham New Street. That station has a lot of glass panels all over it, and they make for a useful source of reflection images. I was lucky enough to be there on a cloudless day with lots of sunshine. The colours of the surrounding buildings against the blue of the sky were fabulous. Isolating just a small section of the reflection made the image into an almost painterly abstract. Above one of the entrances there’s another lot of glass panels, and the sunshine gave strong shadows. The…
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Autumn Acer Abstracts
Recently I went to the fabulous Autumn Garden at Queenswood Country Park near Hereford. One feature of that part of the wood is the Japanese Maples. They were in full colour and looked fantastic. It was a sunshine and showers day, so there were lots of water droplets around. I had my Olympus macro lens on, so set my camera to manual focus and defocussed the image. I concentrated on a small part of a maple that had dissected leaves. The shapes and colours of the leaves, and the water droplet highlights, made for a very pleasing abstract composition. I had my trusty Huawei mobile with me and couldn’t resist…