Just Beyond The Window

Forget the lawnmower and pruners, any serious tog should be tooling up with their cameras and macro lenses when venturing into their back gardens.

 It's a time to celebrate the return of vibrant colour to the world.

But keep in mind that flowers may look just as interesting when lit from the side or behind, than by full frontal light (sun or flash).

Maybe you want to concentrate on form, shape and pattern - black and white is perfect for this, as colour is a significant distraction in most images.

The foliage here (above and below) acts as a natural 'gobo'; that is, it partially blocks the light creating a delicate pattern of shadowing across the petals.

Partial desaturation can create a moodier look for your floral photography. Colour is hinted at, but doesn't dominate the image. A simple slide to the left on the saturation slider in Photoshop achieves this.

Getting in real close with a macro lens on your SLR (or lenses on compacts and bridging cameras) can offer a dramatically different perspective on a subject. A tripod (or other support) will be necessary to avoid motion blur caused by camera shake or even the gentlest breeze. Movement is more noticeable the closer you get to your subject.

Open up that aperture for a truly abstract view of the world.

Finally, a confression. None of these images were shot in my garden - or even outside. The subject was a vase of flowers on my kitchen window sill. Crop and angle hides many sins!

Sun Zoom

This update is all about returning to roots: both the roots of this blog (pictorialism), and the roots of many a tog's first experiments with creative photography - the sunset.

Few can resist the vibrant explosion of colour presented by a beautiful sunset, although there are regrettably a few cynics who look down on sunset photography due to its sheer popularity and the relative ease of capture (especially when the foreground is thrown into silhouette).
So I thought I would combine the humble sunset with another simple photographic technique: zooming.

All you need for zooming is a zoom lens that you can control manually. A telephoto or medium focal length zoom is probably best, though a wide angle zoom could also work. Most dSLR owners will have the medium zoom shipped with their camera body. 
Compact owners, if your camera allows you to operate the zoom controls whilst the shutter is released then you can try this too.

The idea is to zoom the lens in or out whilst taking the shot. To achieve this you will require a slow shutter speed - anything from about 1 second to 4 or 5 seconds. Since you are shooting a relatively bright scene, you will need to dial in the lowest ISO possible, and probably the smallest aperture possible. If that still does not give you the shutter speed required, try a neutral density filter, or even your polariser (which general swallows about 2 stops of light).
You do not need a tripod since the result image will be lovely and blurry anyway, but it does help if you stand in a stable position and perform a nice smooth zoom.

You can experiment with zooming in vs zooming out, different shutter speeds, zooming in and out, and even lateral movements while zooming.
The results are unlikely to win any Pulitzer prizes, but if you like simple pictorial art as much as I do, images created with this technique would look great as a large colourful canvas on your wall.

 

Bad Candy

Ok, a bit of a fun update. I bought some sweets with an eye to creating macro imagery to promote my business; the results of that can be seen on my Facebook Page. The not-so-sweeties here didn't make the final cut, but I did like the way these normally enticing confections looked quite mean and moody when strongly backlit by window light.
(Just in case the sweet manufacturer is looking in, they still tasted great!). 

Sweets are usually cute and, well, tasty looking, but these sweeties lit from behind looked anything but
I shifted the white balance, so the images rendered a cool blue, enhancing the sense of the sinister. I also used a piece of white card to bounce some light onto the front of the scene.
Next I cranked up the drama with a touch of the old ultraviolence...

The little golden 'stones' just happened to appear when I was shooting; they normally hide inside an armchair, but our kittens had trashed the underside and they flooded out onto the carpet. I decided they could add something to both set and story...

I went for a warmer look with the image above, picking up the natural colour of the sweet and stones, but returned the blue white balance treatment with this last gang of bad boys - they looked pretty frosty already.

No sweets were harmed during the making of these images - though I cannot honestly claim they survived for very long after the shoot - I have a notoriously sweet tooth.

Household Objects - Art On A Shoestring

Last time out I was looking at holiday photos, so to kick off the New Year (a time when credit cards are traditionally maxed out) I thought I'd feature some ideas that cost nothing.
Everyday household objects can be fun subjects for creativity - especially on days like today (I'm looking out of a rain-spattered window as I type this). Turning ostensibly banal objects into abstract art is a good exercise in creativity; ask yourself, "how can I present this item in a new and interesting way?"
It can also be done on a budget. For these images I put a 60mm macro lens on my tripod-mounted SLR, and used natural light. If you don't have an SLR and macro lens, a compact camera will probably let you get just as close. A couple of the images also involved a laptop screen, and some minimal Photoshop editing was done - but nothing that could not be achieved in open source / free software or even the software packaged with your camera.

In the first two images a set of drinking straws were bundled together and secured with an elastic band. Each bundle was rested on its side in front of a white background, and shot in (frontal) natural light. Photoshop editing was required to remove the surface on which the straws rested; this could be avoided by balancing your straw bundle on top of the white surface and shooting down on it (a technique employed for the final two images in this set).
I spot metered the dark surface of the straws so the white background would over-expose and the black straws would render mid to dark grey. Small changes in camera position and angle dictated which straws allowed (reflected) light through from the background.

 For the next image I simply moved the camera much closer and dialled in an 'incorrect' white balance setting on my camera. Setting the white balance to 'tungsten bulb' rendered the diffuse natural daylight blue. This shift could also be accomplished easily in Photoshop's RAW Processor if you shoot RAW.

The last two images were shot looking down over a horizontal laptop screen (be VERY careful what you put onto your screen - it can be easily damaged!)
A background image was displayed such that it covered most of the laptop screen, and the camera postioned so the image filled the frame. The straws were cut to half their original length to help them stand up and to allow more light through.

Something to look out for with macro images are stray hairs, fluff, dust and so on. What may be barely noticeable to the naked eye can be enfuriatingly apparent in a macro photograph. I left a largish hair in the image above because I decided it looked interesting, but removed it from the image below using Photoshop's clone stamp and patch tool.

Remember, you don't have to copy these ideas - what items are laying around in your kitchen, bathroom, garage etc that might form the basis for interesting abstracts?

Holiday Snaps Part IV - In The Mood

For many photographers, travel photography is not just about recording memories, it is about creating (or even inventing) a mood.

Sometimes that might mean a bit of 'all-in' editing as with the cable cars above. At others it simply means spotting an incongruous element, such as the flatness of a sports pitch amidst the mountains.

Staying in a place called Limone I felt obliged to take a picture of at least one lemon. I framed it in a shadowy patch of background to make it really stand out from the heavy texture of the wall.Keeping an eye on backgrounds helps ensure your main subject stands out.

Love locks are not unique to Venice but they do tell part of the story of the city.

The shot below shows the padlocks in more context (the above image could have been shot anywhere).Both have a shallow depth of field, so the background does not compete to much with the foreground subject matter.

Masks are another important element of the Ventian narative. Spot metering and then under exposing a little helped isolate the masks below from the rest of the shop window, making for a moodier image.

I needed a polariser and a steady hand to capture these images through shop windows in streets that allow little light. The polariser will remove reflections or glare from polarised light on surfaces such as glass and water.

The church scene below was also extremely challenging in terms of light. Lacking a tripod I rested  the camera on the back of a pew.

Colour popping can be over used, but the amusing advertising board below might have been lost without it, and the technique emphasised the mixture of old and new in Limone. If you are going to use a special retouching technique or Photoshop filter it's best to have a solid reason for doing so, rather than just because you can - creativity, like most things, sometimes requires discipline...

...and sometimes less is more.

Shooting long exposures from the hip is hit and miss, but can produce really dynamic results.

Back in the film days you needed a 'bulb' setting on your camera to capture multiple firework bursts in a single frame. These days combining multiple images in Photoshop (using the 'lighten' layer blending mode) makes the process less fiddly. However, you still need a tripod to keep the camera directed at the same spot, and you still need to get your exposure right.

Holiday Snaps Part III - Alternative Views of Venice

Venice is not just about gondoliers, and I wanted to capture other aspects of the city.
The Piazza San Marco and major bridges are usually packed with tourists and freelance handbag sales assistants, but wondering off the beaten track is rewarded by a much more quiet and tranquil experience full of photogenic potential.

Unusual camera angles or compositions can lend themselves to abstraction. Here I was attracted by the blocks of different colour (slightly emphasised in post-production). Can you tell what it is yet?
 

If abstraction isn't your bag, maybe surreal scenes and juxtapositions tickle your fancy. Some views can only be enjoyed from the water.

Your choice of lens can help emphasise the characteristics of a scene; perhaps counter-intuitively I used a wide angle lens to shoot this narrow alley way. Keeping the camera level helps avoid converging verticals ( you can fix them in Photoshop, but will usually have to crop the image to do so).

A long lens can help you zoom in on people without them realising - but a wide angle lens can aid discretion too; if you keep the subject offcentre they will think the lens is aimed elsewhere. Unfortunately the guy in this image clocked me way too quickly, and shifted his attention away from his girlfriend.

Another way to surreptitiously snap candids of local characters is shooting from the hip. Focussing can be a hit or miss affair of course, but this time I got it just right. Practicing around your local town helps give you a feel for such blind shooting.

The blur in this next shot was a result of camera shake, and not intended.You cannot tell how sharp an image is by looking at the preview in the back of the camera - it's too small. A monopod is a good accessory for crowded places or trips where a tripod maybe too cumbersome to lug around all day.
However I liked the blur in this shot as it complimented the generally busy-ness and dynamism of the scene - a happy accident.

Piazza San Parco is the symbolic home of the not-so-humble Italian pigeon. Lots of tourists let themselves be covered by the rapacious birds in some kind of subconscious homage to Hitchcock. I wasn't one of those them but I did try to get down to the pigeons' level.

I wanted to capture their frenzied mania so combined long exposures with a little bit of panning.

Sapping the colour from the final image lends it a degree of abstraction whilst maintaining the chaotic madness.

Holiday Snaps Part II - The Gondoliers

Cities present as many photo opportunities as dramatic mountainscapes - none less so than Venice
.

I managed to grab pole position in our gondola - we were sharing with another couple and it could have got nasty (and wet) very quickly. Our rather grumpy gondolier told us not to move about in the gondola - I pretended not to understand English.
On a moving (albeit slowly) boat, camera settings are critical. I set the ISO as high as I dare on my D300 and switched to shutter priority mode so I could make sure to keep shutter speeds fairly quick in the relatively poor light between the high buildings.Scenes could be fairly contrastly where direct sunlight broke in, so frequent 'chimping' was required with the camera's display in histogram mode. The histogram is a more reliable way of judging under/over exposure than looking at the image itself.

The gondolier in front of us was very obliging when it came to striking some action poses. The fast shutter speed and medium ISO helped keep the action sharp.

Our gondolier was less obliging. I got the feeling his mind was elsewhere.

The next guy's mind was definately elsewhere. Candid shots of people doing uncharacteristic things can be much more interesting than shots of them doing what they're supposed to.

But sometimes the cliches work too. I probably couldn't have made this last shot if I'd been shooting JPG rather than RAW. Either the shadow to the side of the canal would have been too dense, or the area behind the bridge would have been blown out. RAW and the histogram view helped me get detail at both extremes without annoying my wife by taking ages over the shot.