Photographer Spreading the Word. Work is For Sale
16 Apr 2011 1 Comment
in agencies, art, business, image, imagery, musings, photo, photography Tags: flowers, hellebores, images, photo, photographs for sale, photography, photography business, photos, pictures, random, work
It’s been a busy old week. Having spent three glorious sunny days last weekend catching up with the gardening, when the weather turned cool I came indoors and began working on actually being found on the wonderful web. As we no longer have effective agencies to sell our work, us creatives have had to find creative solutions to the question ‘how do I get seen?’ Of course a WordPress blog and a website is a start, but experience has shown me it’s not enough to get you off the ‘starving artist’ income I’d like to avoid.
So I investigated Squidoo. The first day was a nightmare. This none techy person was alsmot driven to the point of baldness and rescued by advice from Zazzle people and my partner. The second day I mastered some of the technique need to build a Squidoo lens. Now I’ve got something to tell you about! I’ve made three lenses so far. (go on, cheer!).
Lenses are very specific. Apparently, the more focussed they are, the more successful they are. So I have one on Digital flower art, one on Photographic Flower Art and one all about hellebores, which I featured in a recent WordPress post. They are quite good fun to do, once you learn the system.
I’ve not stopped taking photos, needless to say! So todays offering is an arum lily. My partner brought them for me (yes, he’s a sweetie, though that might ruin his street cred). It’s not an easy flower to photograph, I’ve found. But I’m fairly satisfied with the result. What do you think?
Like this:
Magic Macro Moments-What’s in a Raindrop?
01 Apr 2011 6 Comments
in art, image, imagery, musings, nature, photo, photography, photography technique, Uncategorized Tags: image, inspiration, light, macro, nature, Nikon D90, photo, photography, photography technique, picture, pictures, prints, random
I’ve been playing again. I’m finding macro both fascintating and frustrating. Here’s what happens. I spot gorgeous raindrops on a plant. Then I rush outside, camera in hand. Set up the tripod, switch off image stabilisation, focus with all my concentration, camera on delay shutter release. The raindrop is in perfect focus. Then…whooosh. One tiny bit of breeze makes the leaf shudder and my shot useless. Try again! And again, and again. Then there’s the light, changing by the second, changing the reflections, the brightness of the shot, the sparkle appearing and disappearing. I think you need almost as much patience to take macro shots as you do to shoot wildlife. But the results are both as rewarding and fascinating as wildlife. A whole world in a raindrop! I’ve had a lot of people asking me about macro, and how to go about it. Here’s what I do.
The biggest problem, you’ll quickly realise with macro, is that you have a long lens, possibly with extension tubes, as I do. The minutest movement will be magnified, cause camera shake and blur the shot.
Use a good tripod making your camera as still and stable as possible.
If you have delayed shutter release on your camera, use it. It locks the mirror up before the shutter is released, thereby reducing any camera shake from the mirror movement.
If not, use a remote or wired cable to press the shutter, as this will also reduce any camera shake.
Spend time getting the focus as you want it. Increasing depth of field will enable more in the shot to be in focus, but increase shutter speed. Only you can decide how much time you can allow the shutter, given your lighting and weather conditions. If it is the slightest bit breezy you’ll need the highest shutter speed you can obtain, therefore the smallest depth of field. Be creative and position your main focus of interest well in the frame, allowing the blur of out of focus items to frame the shot. I sometimes underexposed slightly to allow a faster shutter speed. I can correct this under exposure in Photoshop, as I shoot in RAW.
After shot processing usually means a simple exposure adjustment, a little colour and contrast boosting and cropping to improve the framing if necessary.
Macro can be taken to different levels. In the first two shots I’ve used all my extension tubes on my Nikon D90 with a 70-300mm Tamron lens, but didn’t switch it to macro, just zoomed in as much as I could.
Macro water 1
Macro water 2
The next few are full-on maximum, with my current equipment, macro. All extension tubes, lens on full zoom and maximum macro, focussed as carefully as humanly possible. It’s another world in those raindrops! Oh, of course you can cheat. No rain? Get the watering can out and give that plant a sprinkle. This works really well on alchemilla mollis (ladies mantle), which naturally hold rainrops like jewels, due to the tiny hairs on its surface.
Marco water3
Macro water 4
Macro water 5
Macro water 6
Macro water 7
This last shot is full on macro, but I put the tripod a little further away as I liked the jewel like quality of the smaller water droplets.
Have fun with macro and investigate another world!
Like this:
Photoshop Tutorial Resources for Photographers
22 Jan 2011 3 Comments
in art, business, image, imagery, musings, photo, photography, photography technique Tags: art, business, education, image, Nikon D90, photography, photos, Photoshop, Photoshop tutorials, pictures, random, workflow
Watermead Country Park
Hi everyone. I hope you’re having a good weekend. As promised, I’ve been investigating some resources that could be useful if you wish to learn more about Photoshop and how to manipulate your images once downloaded. I’ve found some very interesting sites. Although it would take me weeks to work through all the information available on these sites, the tutorials I’ve read and watched seem very comprehensive and fairly straightforward to follow. So I’ll pass them onto you and you browse away to your heart’s content. The images I’ve posted today are from our walk yesterday at Watermead Country Park. For those of you who are interested, I’ve used a couple of waterfall shots from yesterdays post to create new products on Zazzle. I’m having fun building my shop there. Once I’ve finished photoshopping I enjoy seeing what products some of my shots would be suitable for then going and creating them. Now I just need more people to see them and like them. If you do pop into zazzle please let me know what you think.
Watermead Country Park
OK, here are the sites for your reference and a little about what each one has to offer.
http://www.russellbrown.com lots of video tutorials including creative masking without masking, green screen removal and clone painting. An interesting site with several sections. I’ve found the most useful stuff in ‘Tips and techniques’ and ‘Dr Brown Scripts’.
http://3rdelement.com/photoshop/a-letter-from-florence/ Very easy to watch video tutorials on all sorts of stuff including extracting an object from its background, masking and applying adjustment layers.
http://www.dpbestflow.org/ Find information on here about workflow, colour space, image editing, copyright registration, metadata and more. This is a very technical site but well laid out and with explanations that are easy to read an follow.
http://photoshopcafe.com/tutorials/pen/pen.htm loads of written tutorials, images are not very clear but info is good and directions easy to follow. CD/dvd tutorials available from author. Topics range from creating water drops on an image to using the pen tool.
http://designshack.co.uk/articles/css/create-seamless-web-background-textures-in-minutes written tutorials on subjects like creating seamless background textures in minutes and making reflections in Photoshop. There are weekly freebies inc free textured papers. A designers website with useful stuff for photographers. You’ll also find information about marketing and CSS. This site is well worth a look, although only some of the information relates to Photoshop and photography.
That’s it for now. If I find any more I’ll mention them in a later post. Of course, for those of you with full versions of Photoshop there is also the Adobe site itself. Happy Photoshopping! If anyone wants to add a cool resource they’ve found, please leave a comment. We’d all be more than grateful.
Like this:
Nature’s Imagination or is that My Imagination?
12 Jan 2011 28 Comments
in art, image, imagery, musings, nature, photo, photography, thoughts, Uncategorized, wildlife Tags: art, image, imagination, inspiration, nature, photo, photograph, photography, picture, random, trees
I’ve been collecting the images in this post for some time now. I’m often amazed at some of the forms nature takes, all by itself. I’m sure it has no idea what happens when humans look at it and see something I’m sure it never intended. But I find them entertaining, interesting and different, as you could not invent these forms. Some are only apparent in certain light. I’ll tell you what I can see. It might just be me. But if you can see it too please let me know, so I know I’m not just a batty old nature lover with an over-active imagination!
The image above is a lump of rotting wood I dragged home to place in my garden. Looking out of the window I saw a wolf. Do you?
This one we call ‘sex on a stick’. Can you see why? It’s a log I took from a pile my friend had bought for her wood burning stove in Scotland. Once the bark was removed it became an ornament that many have asked about. They wanted to buy one!
Here’s another shot from another angle of the same log.
This last one is in woodland close to where I live. The rock it’s growing against is pre-Cambrian, some of the oldest rock here in the UK. but look at the tree. I see a female form, arms above her head, posing beautifully. Do you, or am I crackers?
When I find these things I can’t help but photograph them, although they’re never going to end up on my website as saleable images, in my private collection they do create interest among friends.
Like this:
Preparations For More Choice on Website
13 Dec 2010 20 Comments
in agencies, art, image, imagery, musings, photo, photography, photography technique, thoughts Tags: christmas, image, photo, photographs for sale, photography, picture, sale, website
I’m busy. Very. And not just with Christmas. I’m busy preparing to put out on sale some of my best work on my website. I’ve had a lot of enquiries about pictures I show but don’t yet sell, so once I’ve got my collection sorted, ensured they print well and uploaded them all into the right file (and anyone who runs a website will know what a long, tedious job this can be) I’ll let you know and you can go have a look. I’m aiming to keep prices reasonable, considering the quality of printing I’ve gone for. I order from a professional lab using top quality products that, they assure me, will last fifty to seventy years. That’s a lifetime! I’ve been really pleased with all the work they have done for me so far, and they are definitely better than anyone could produce on a home printer, so I’m sticking with it. Quality matters when you’re looking at it daily on your wall or giving it as a gift.
It’s also my birthday on Thursday, but I can’t really get enthusiastic about getting any older!
So today I’m posting some of my Christmas pic experiments. One day I’ll get around to producing my own cards, but the time isn’t yet right. One job at a time, or I’ll have too many projects on the go all at once. Let me know, please, if you like any of my experiments. I really appreciate anyone taking the time to comment. I know how precious time is!
Playing With Light
11 Dec 2010 20 Comments
in agencies, art, image, imagery, photo, photography, photography technique Tags: camrea, image, inspiration, light, NikonD90, photo, photography, photography tehcnique, Photoshop, picture, random
zoom burst
I’ve been pondering all day what to blog about while sorting through all those files. Then it came to me. The primary necessity for photography or art is light. So that’s what I’m looking at here. I love light. In fact I’m prone to SAD in winter, I need it so much. In photography, the light, as we all know, can make or break a shot.
I also love fire. Fire IS light. So I played have played with it quite a lot. Candles, fires, fireworks. They all attract and delight us but aren’t easy to shoot well. And there’s always the question of what mood do you want the finished shot to have? This can affect the angle of the light and the shot and aperture settings as well as choice of subject matter. In the first photo, Zoom Burst, I simply Focussed on my light ball with the camera on quite a long exposure and zoomed out with the lens as the exposure was running. If you have a point and shoot, I’m afraid you won’t be able to do this one. But for those with DSLRs, this is fun to try.
In this next one, I was simply working towards very ambient, quiet images for an agency who sell photos for book covers. They wanted soft, darkish pictures that could be used for fiction.I liked the shadows cast by the candle and the softness of the overall image. I played around with the colour settings in Photoshop as rendering natural colours was not the focus here.
Candle Sconce
The next shot is totally different. Here we see a friend wielding a length of Kevlar rope, soaked in paraffin and lit. He then whirrs it around to give a brilliant light show. I set my camera up, resting it on the back of a chair and took long exposures. In Photoshop, I used curves to accentuate the light and lose the surrounding grass etc so that you get the vividness of the light show without the distracting background.
Light Show
And below, you see an extract of the flames because I zoomed in as much as I could. I stayed well back physically, of course. My friends playing with fire should be treated with caution. 
Once back at Photoshop I simply boosted the contrast a little so you can see the patterns. This has been used as a background shot.
Zooming In
There are many, many more ways of playing with light, of course. There are no sunrises and sets here (except my parting shot). No clever sparkles or smoke glares. But there are a few ideas to get your juices flowing and, as it is Saturday night, I’m off through the gate into the sunset.
See You Soon!
Is Deleting Work?
10 Dec 2010 23 Comments
in art, image, imagery, nature, photography, photography technique, Uncategorized Tags: business, image, photo, photography, photography business, picture, random, thoughts, work
Ice, Ice Baby
It’s been a funny old day. I’ve spent quite some time deleting photos, filing others and going through my emails. I’ve taken an awful lot of pictures over the last few weeks and not stopped to sort them out, file them or delete the rubbish (oh, yes, there are plenty)!
I’m not afraid to take ten times more photos than I’m ever likely to use, thanks to the modern DSLR. When cameras had to be loaded with a film and developed, that was impossible cost-wise. Now it just makes sense. Why NOT take a shot if it just might work. Try it, get it into the computer and delete it if it’s no good, adjust in RAW if need be and in fact play to your heart’s content. But it does mean considerable amounts of time to go through them all and deleting, editing, processing one by one. The processing I love once I’m in the mood. But spending time pressing delete having decided which ones to keep always makes me feel as if I haven’t done any real work. I don’t know why. It’s all part of the job. I suppose it’s just one I find really boring. So here I am watching a Fred Dibnah tribute (Fred was a TV presenter whose real job was mending and felling industrial chimneys and was a real northern England character) and writing my blog at 8pm feeling like I’ve made little progress. Having already managed to distract myself by buying two new rats (best pets in the world) I’m now trying to make up for lost time.
Braving the snow
My partner reckons I should count everything I have to do with my photography as work, and I suppose it is. But its photography that feels like play and admin that feels like work. I haven’t finished the deleting or sorting. That’ll be a job for another day then. Todays photos are some from that sorting process. Happy snapping!
Crystals
Now tell me, is deleting work? Do you have a photography job you find boring?
Like this:
Creativity In The Face Of Adversity
07 Dec 2010 13 Comments
in art, image, imagery, musings, nature, photo, photography, photography technique, thoughts Tags: camera, creative, idea, image, inspiration, Nikon D90, photo, photo editing, photograph, picture, random
Frozen cage
Here’s a lesson I’ve learned. I thought I’d pass it on. There’s is ALWAYS a way to make a negative into a positive if you look hard enough. Yesterday I woke to my computer throwing a strop. Nope, can’t find server. No, can’t get email. Sigh. What now. Well, to cut a long story short, writing my blog, getting some new photos and working on my website had to be put to one side to fix the bloomin’ PC. It took all day, lots of trial and error, the blue screen of death at one point and finally backing up everything in safe mode before giving up on it for the day. I have my laptop, but only got it last week so all my photos and editing software aren’t installed. So I was stuck.
Spooky Tree
I sat down about 11pm having decided that the PC would have to go and be sorted under its’ guarantee thoroughly fed up. Then I went to the window and saw my squirrel-proofed bird feeder and had an idea. Despite being tired, the idea gave me the kick I needed to get my camera and go out in minus ten for a quick experiment. Using the on board flash and manual focusing via light from the window, I took a few shots. Here are the results. I shot in RAW, reviewed the results on camera and poured myself a nice, warming brandy. Today while I was at an important appointment my partner took my PC to be sorted, bless him. Then, I sat down tonight and did a bit of photo editing.
The bird feeder, as with the other shots, was lightened using exposure control to get the white really white (flash gave me a grey cast as it was so dark). Then I adjusted light and shade using the curves control. For the spooky tree, I also adjusted, in the black and white controls, the colour sliders. (This might seem strange, but colours have shades in black and white that can be adjusted one by one to get the shades as you want them. I wanted to darken some of the branches to make them stand out more).
Frozen Branches
I hope you like the results. Please let me know if you do.
So, out of a rotten day I managed to come up with something that at least made me feel I’d got something positive out of the day. I have a full up to date backup of all my work, a new idea that for me has worked and I also have my blog. Now it’s all yours. Remember, creativity can rule over adversity!
Like this:
Photography for the Bored – What’s lying around your house?
03 Dec 2010 11 Comments
in art, conservation, image, imagery, musings, nature, photo, photography, photography technique, thoughts, Uncategorized, wildlife Tags: blog, books, design, education, image, inspiration, nature, photo, photography, photography technique, picture, play, random, science
Skull project 1
Ok. Here it is. I promised you I’d post today my little project with a skull. My partner brought me a present earlier this year. It’s a raccoon skull found as road kill and sold by a company specialising in such things. I know, it’s not what you’d want for your birthday, but I was thrilled with it. I’ve always been fascinated by biology, and in fact it helps inform me for my photography. I didn’t want to get just plain snapshots of it, so the zoom macro lens came out again, and I played with the lighting. A close up shot above looks quite interesting, and shows off those formidable teeth. But I wasn’t really happy with it. Turned it a little, moved the lighting. Then in photoshop, I used curves to get a bit more definition into the light and shadows for a bit more drama. Lastly, I cropped the shot square to really get you in close to the skull.
Skull project 2
Those teeth are really something, aren’t they? I became fascinated with them. As I’ve done some work for an agency selling to horror books, it occurred to me these might look good on a book cover…would you buy it?
Skull project 3
Then I started playing with the lighting, and decided that backlit, the object would look even more sinister and creepy. (I know, I’m weird!)
Skull project 4
But now, with this lighting, I’m really getting that sinister, and at the same time, abstract look I wanted. Here are a couple more I’m really pleased with.
Skull project 5
Skull project 6
See the different effects? The light levels, exposure time and angle can alter the image quite substantially. So does that bit of photoshopping to either soften effects or define them by deepening the shadows. So as ever, the best way to find something new and creative in your pictures is to PLAY. I do not believe in taking myself too seriously, even when it comes to my passion. If it’s not fun, life is too short to spend agonising over it!
So, what do you have lying around that would make for an unusual macro subject? Pot pourri, like in my last post? Sea shells? Stones from the river or beach? Tools in the shed? Get in close, play with lighting, and you’d be amazed what you can come up with that’s unique and special and very likely really interesting to look at. Have a play. Let me see your results. I’d love to see what others can come up with. The days are short, the nights are long and brrrr it’s sooo cold. So get that camera out and raid the cupboards and shelves for something new. Do say hi if you stop by. I’d love to hear from you.
Like this:
Fabrika Exhibition Starts Today
26 Nov 2010 6 Comments
in art, image, imagery, nature, photo, photography, thoughts, wildlife Tags: art, exhibition, flowers, image, life, media, nature, photo, photograph, pictures, poetry, random, wildlife
Fabrika Independent Arts Organisation, Leicester
Well, having been to Leicester this morning to have some pictures taken of the inside of my head, (they assured me there is a brain in there) we decided to call in at Fabrika. My pictures were sat there, about to be hung. So from today they’ll be on display for everyone to see (and buy if they wish). My partner had his mobile phone with him and decided to take some shots of the building and my photos in the queue.
Three of my photos ready for exhibition
Here’s a lo-res jpeg of the biggest one I’ve put up, and one I have great memories of taking, as I have an affinity with owls. They always seem to appear in my life when things are changing for the better. Plus, when I was little, my mum taught me a poem you may or may not know. So, poem and photo…
Eurasian Eagle Owl
A wise old owl sat in an oak,
The more he saw, the less he spoke.
The less he spoke, the more he heard.
I wish I was more like that wise, old bird.
And even in my fifties, I wish I WAS more like that wise old bird!
Anyway, Since I couldn’t get to the frost this morning with my camera (had to rush off to hospital appointment), that will be a job for tomorrow. For now I’m keeping my fingers crossed that loads of people see my work and some of it sells. More on that soon, as I’m getting ready for sales from my website.
