Tag: photos

Blog, Events

Hastings Jack in the Green

Dave Wares

Mad Jacks Morris-Who revived the custom back in 1983

May 1st is the start of summer in this part of the world and since the revival of an old custom in 1983 by the Mad Jacks Morris dancers, the first May bank holiday has always been a day of celebration in Hastings. What is Jack in the Green I hear you ask: Well, it’s probably better if I just link to this page here rather than just copy a chunk out of it.

There has been much talk in recent times of moving the May Day bank holiday in order to spread our bank holidays out a bit more as there are a few of them in close proximity. As you can imagine this has upset many people, especially with those involved in the Jack in the Green as it would essentially mean that the event would not be able to happen. With this in mind we made an extra special effort to make sure we got to see the event this year.

So here are a few of my efforts from the day. I hope you enjoy them.

 

Blog, Mono, Urbex

Mono Monday-Time to reflect

Dave Wares

Title-‘Time to reflect’

This is a shot that I’ve been sitting on for quite a while not really knowing what to do with. I originally took two shots, one with me as you see by the window, and another with me leaning against the wall in the corridor. The intention was to combine the two as a multiplicity picture, however, after a few attempts I found that it wasn’t quite working the way I had envisioned so I gave up and put the idea to one side. Approaching it a few months later with a fresh head I decided that using just one of the shots in black and white would suit the scene better. Perhaps having all this technology at our fingertips can sometimes cloud our judgement. Taking a more straight forward approach every now and then could possibly result at a better solution.

Blog, Holga

The Past inside the present

Dave Wares

Just a quick post today. This is something of a grab shot that I did with the Holga HL-N attached last weekend. For a fleeting moment there was a slice of Hastings seafront that looked as if it were showing some sort of past echo, with no real sign of present technology.

Always be ready to capture the moment.

Have a great weekend.

Blog, Events, Mono

Hounds live @ the Coalition

Dave Wares

One of the support acts for ‘Does it Offend You, Yeah‘ at the Coalition in Brighton this past weekend was the Hounds, a modern punk style group with an electronic edge. And can they knock out a banging tune or what! Thoroughly enjoyed their set, albeit short.

Anyhow, I took all the shots using the same settings as described in the previous post so I’ll just let the pictures do the talking. Was really pleased with how they came out, I hope both you and they like them too.

The pics look better if clicked on. And bigger!

Thanks for stopping by.

Blog, Events, Mono, Tips

Does it Offend You Yeah @ Coalition Brighton

Dave Wares

Due to a stroke of luck my wife and I were invited along to see Does it Offend You Yeah at the Brighton Coalition venue this past Sunday. Bass player Chloe (pictured below), used our son for some of their own pictures that are being used on their upcoming CD and asked if we would like to come along and see them in action. We of course jumped at the chance and a chance to use my camera immediately sprung to mind.

Shooting using only the stage lighting was going to be a challenge as essentially I would have to be constantly rearranging my composition and pressing the shutter when the lights were up. As you can imagine this was very hit and miss as a fair number of times I would trip the shutter just as the lighting dropped. There was a fair amount of strobe lighting in their set too which sent my autofocus up the wall.

After doing a bunch of shots of the two support bands (I’ll show in another post) I decided the best srtategy was to set the camera to Manual at ISO800 1/60thsec at f2.8, I found that this seemed to give a good balance between exposure and keeping motion blur to a minimum. Pretty much all the shots I did that evening were on this setting, allowing me to concentrate on capturing the moment.

Shooting with a higher ISO meant I would get a fair amount of noise and with this in mind I knew black and white was a good way to go to use the noise to my advantage; I’ve always had a soft spot for grainy back and white photos. 🙂

Just a hint of colour in the shot of frontman James (above) using the Coldtone preset in Lightroom to accentuate the mood of the moment captured.

These are just a few of my favourites from the evening, hope you enjoyed them. Just a couple more below with one being colour for good measure.

Thanks for viewing. 🙂

Blog, HDR, Tips

Why HDR?

Dave Wares

So I’m not the first to show the benefits of using HDR but I thought I’d do a short post on it anyway. 🙂

While going through some photos of our holiday to the south of France last summer, I stumbled upon a set of brackets that I hadn’t done anything with, that of an empty street in Provence (above). Now I’ll admit there’s nothing that special about the shot, but there was enough I liked for me to press the shutter. I think it was the beautiful weather and peacefulness that I found pleasing. Whatever my motivation, it shows the usefulness of bracketing your photographs to make an HDR image that  represents a scene more accurately than a single shot can.

These three shots show the different exposures needed to capture all of the elements within the scene. The one on the left is the cameras recommended exposure, the middle is -2EV and is needed to retain detail in the white door which had blown out in the left example, finally the right shot was +2EV and was needed to  capture the areas in shadow. Now to my eye, the areas in shadow on the overexposed image are pretty much as I saw them on the day, so as you can see, due to the huge contrast that my eye compensated for but the camera couldn’t, combining the three shots was the best way to achieve a photo with the tonal range more accurately reproduced.  (Whether you use an HDR program to combine your shots or merge them by hand in a program like Photoshop is up to you). Once I have the tonal range sorted I can then continue to work on an image, giving it the look and feel I have in mind, if I so wish.

The main image was produced using Photomatix Pro with final adjustments done in Lightroom. There are plenty of other HDR software programs out there but it’s up to you to give them a try to see which you prefer, I always seem to come back to Photomatix.

I hope this has been of some use. Like I said, it’s a post to show the benefits of HDR rather than being a tutorial.

Thanks for looking.