Photographer
Title-Invisible
A common sight in parts of southern France, these women seem almost to be on every street. Much like the young girl that I posted a while back, it is a sad reality that most of us give these people a wide birth with not so much as a second glance. Yet we all notice them, certainly enough to distance ourselves as we pass by, looking forward as if there was no-one there at all.
Thanks for stopping by.
Title-Through the ages
A straight forward shot today but sometime simplicity works best. As you can probably tell this is a close-up of a sawn through piece of tree trunk, but what caught my eye the most was the definition the light was having on the rings and ripples due to months of weathering. I thought that this would be a perfect candidate for black and white as even though the trunk was monotone in nature to begin with, converting it to tones of grey simplified it even further.
It almost looks like it could be a study of the skin of an elephant or rhino too.
Thanks for stopping by and please take a look at my latest ‘Scenic Outlook’ post over at Current Photographer, this week aimed at the beginner Landscape photographer.
The star of the show.
Of all the Morgans that I saw during my visit to Bodiam Castle, it has to be this gorgeous fiery red beast that won the day. Red is just a fantastic colour, especially when applied to sports cars as they just pop out at you exclaiming, ‘here I am, come look at me’.
There’s so much detail on older cars that it sometimes can be difficult to know where to start. You could spend ages concentrating on the headlights or a spoked wheel, let alone getting the car as a whole.
I suppose when you own such a vehicle it would be very hard, if not impossible, not to be a member of some kind of club. This person certainly seems to be a loyal member, and gives folks like us even more great details to hone in on. The shot above is in fact a different car, sporting a slightly darker, metallic finish.
I was rather pleased how this shot of the rear came out, with so much vibrancy and detail it almost leaps off the screen.
The only thing that was slightly disappointing yet unavoidable, was the run of the mill family cars that were park all around them, meaning that there was virtually no angle that could be taken where you eliminate them from the frame. Still, I was pretty happy with what I got all the same.
So I thought I’d continue with another shot taken a couple of Sundays ago at Bodiam castle for this weeks mono Monday. For this shot I got in close with a fairly wide angle (26mm on cropped sensor) to try and achieve a more dynamic view of this classic Morgan, keeping the aperture to a modest f8 to throw the background just out of focus to create a sense of depth. I still bracketed my shots due to the harsh sunlight but when it came to putting them all together in Photomatix, the top half being of soft focus did not work out at all well, with lots of nasty edges to be seen. I decided the best way around this would be to bring both the HDR version and one of the single brackets into Photoshop combining them using layers, then I gently erased the top half of the HDR image to reveal the single exposure underneath . So what you see above is a mix of both HDR and a single exposure.
The next step was to bring this back into Lightroom, where I used a combination of two or three of onOne software’s free plugins to convert to black and white, then I continued to tweak things until I was happy. HDR mono is not something I’ve really done before, I hope you like the result.
Thanks for looking.
OK, so I found a little extra time to do a post on a little something that I stumbled across yesterday afternoon during a family day out.
So on Sunday afternoon my wife and I decided to take the kids to a medieval event going on at Bodiam castle. The camera of course was coming along but I was only expecting to be taking family snaps as I wasn’t really sure what to expect. However, upon arrival the parking attendant directed me to a spot right beside a group of classic old cars, namely the Morgan. I parked right beside four of them, fantastic look vehicles, and one of them I had never seen before; a modern incarnation that was in keeping with the old design but with a new slant. If I’m to believe the year 04 on the plate then it’s still a good 7 years old, but still fairly new in the scheme of things.
Due to the harsh light of the mid afternoon sun, shooting brackets for HDR was really the only option if I wanted to keep all the detail on the car and in the sky. I didn’t take my tripod though, so I did as best I could to keep as still as possible to get my 3 brackets of +/-2ev. I also had the shutter set to continuous shooting.
I found myself sitting on the grass, legs spread out and leaning back in order to frame the pictures in a way that I found pleasing. You can see a glimps of one of the older versions parked next to this one, and of course I took a few pics of those too. I shall show those in a future post though.
A modern classic.
A very cool surprise indeed, just goes to show that you should always be prepared.
Thanks for stopping by.
Taken at an old derelict manor house.
Just a quick post from me today as the family and I are getting ready for a short break away. Nowhere exotic but will be great fun for the kids.
See you on the other side. Thanks for stopping by.
Dave Wares 