edinburgh city

The university trip to Edinburgh was a photographical gold mine! Great day, great city and great (but cold) weather, I took well over 200 photos of all different styles but my favorite images from the day came form the Scottish parliament buildings roof because of the bizarre shapes created and materials used and a large gothic church we passed on our way to visit some other buildings, the ornate detailing, bold contrast and towering arches made it a great subject to photograph.

 The clouds add a lot to these images esspecially, they add texture to the background and ensure that no inch of the frame is left blank.

cheep macro

For a while now I have wanted to try a bit of macro photography but shiny new lenses are much too expensive for my current money situation! I heard magnifying filters work as a very cheep alternative so thought I would give them a try. They work the same as magnifying glasses but when screwed onto the end of a lens they shorten the focal length allowing the camera to focus much closer to the object. These are just a few shots I took the night I bought them, just things I had lying about my room but when zoomed in on create some nice images due to the very shallow depth of field and additional detail not usually visible, I was impressed with the performance of them considering how little they cost in comparison to a macro lens.

I found that focusing can prove to be difficult and a tripod is recommended for these kinds of shots because even the smallest camera shake will be exaggerated due to the magnification, but as I was just testing a few shots out quickly I didn't bother. I am looking forward to summer as there is a lot more opportunities for this kind of photography in nature such as plants and insects.

more photos of cold times

  I managed to just catch the sun going down on another cold, icy night. Camera at hand I tried a few different techniques rather than just taking a nice picture of another sunset.

  

  I split this simple panorama into 4 to create individually interesting views of the view from Broughty Ferry over to Fife.

 

It was a misty night and by lining the hazy moon up with the circular shape of this old fashioned street light it emphasized the detail in the shapes and form you don’t get in modern day design.

These 2 are processed HDR's, in this case it worked effectively bringing out the detail in the icy foreground.

  As much as i like these photos i have had enough ice and snow now and summer photography cant come soon enough!

Granny Ruth

  Ah haaaaa! Bet you thought this would be a photo shoot of some wrinkly skin, werthers originals and knitting, well no, it involves embroidery but that’s as close as it will get to that stereotype! My girlfriend (Ruth) is studying fashion at university and had a project she asked me to take some photos for, the point was to photograph her wearing things passed down from her grandmother but treat it as a fashion shoot. Not an area I am experienced in but she has done some amateur modeling before so I blame her for making these few favorite shots from the day so good!

 
  In these photos I really wanted to concentrate on the items without that distracting the view from the model. Depth of field was the most important feature in these shots, making sure what I wanted to be clear and stood out in the frame whatever it was, such as eyes, pattern or something as minimal as a ring.

dirt

 This is the first winter I have been driving and it has not been enjoyable. my car is terrible in the snow, aside from being too low to use a lot of the time it was killing me how dirty it got when it did, so following a well deserved wash the first time the temperature was high enough not to freeze everything I was off down to Broughty Ferry for some well deserved photos! Unfortunately it got pretty dirty on the 4 minute drive down but oh well couldn’t be helped; here is what I took…

  These last photos are done as HDR; it stands for High Dynamic Range and is basically a process of combining photos of different exposures. It gives you the control to boost the detail in the shadows (creating impressive reflections) while keeping highlights underexposed for a dramatic looking image. If enhanced normally this image would either have the car exposed properly and a dull boring sky or the sky would appear bold while the car would be darkened to a silhouette, I find this technique most effective with cloudy sky’s and love especially how the last one came out.

snow hatered

You may have noticed the recent snowfall, while everyone got excited by this all I could think about was last January when it caused havoc and everyone grew to hate it ... surprise surprise look where things are heading.
  Anyway, it does create some brilliant photography opportunities (in my eyes mainly icicles) so here’s a couple I took from a trip to my garden, I am eagerly awaiting the opportunity to go further for better subjects but haven’t even nearly had the time and I am seriously limited due to my car being to low to move on the roads in their current state. There will no doubt be another snowy blog update, until then here’s what I have so far...

In my opinion the key to photographing ice or icicles is making them appear as pure and clean as possible, shooting them against the sky is good for this and boosting the contrast of them in Photoshop helps a lot in achieving this, making them look like glass. Using a large aperture for a shallow depth of field also goes a long way depending on the specific photo.

boredom is scary

  Well being the idiot that I am I was left with nothing to do the other night because I left my sketchbook and folders in uni, to most people this is a good excuse to take a night off and not think about work but unfortunately I’m the kind of person who isn’t capable of doing nothing. Flicking through a photography magazine inevitably lead to me playing about with my camera and here is my favorite few edited results.

  Comparing the black and white to the colour version makes a big difference, personally the majority of the time I prefer black and white but its still surprising how much the removal of colour can transform a photo.

  I like these mainly because they were taken in a fully lit room with plain old boring lighting but some exposure tweaks (and help from the apparently very bright light on my mobile instead of flash) created a very different style of image. Setting the exposure to -2 helped create the spot light effect by making the unlit areas even darker while the light helped pick out detail around my eye as well as bringing out the highlights and colours.