Archive for May, 2007
Lighting the Mermaid — getting there!
Thu May 31st - 1:09am
I'm still not quite hitting the spot with my attempts at lighting the Mermaid of the North but I'm getting closer so I thought I'd show you what I came up with this evening. These aren't processed at all, just straight out of the camera. You can see that the potential is there, especially if I can get the moon in view again, but the pics are still lacking a certain something. I'll figure it out…
Increase your sync speed
Mon May 28th - 6:08pm
Baltimore Sun photographer David Hobby (Strobist) has posted the first part of his guide to "hacking" your camera's sync speed, although in reality the technique uses built-in features in specific cameras and the end result is exactly what the manufacturers intended. So not much of a hack but perhaps a useful summary of high-speed sync for those who don't know about it. Click here!
Note that the refurbished Nikon D70s mentioned in the article can also be obtained in the UK. For example there are loads of them listed on the Jessops web site for a very reasonable £380 with a 17-80mm lens or £320 for just the body.
Newspaper feature on football skycam pic
Mon May 28th - 5:31pm
This was a pleasant surprise!
Our local papers don't usually run photos from mid-week football matches because they're on Wednesday evenings, so they're too late for deadline. But last week's match had been moved from Wednesday to Monday so the skycam goal pic made it into the paper, large and in colour on the back page.
However that left the paper with a problem: No match report except the brief details I sent myself. So instead they wrote about the photo itself! Here's the shot again with the paper's write-up…
This is how one of Balintore's five goals scored against Ross-shire Club in the Welfare League might have looked to a passing seagull.
It was captured by photographer Andrew Smith who, in pursuit of something a little different, set up a remote-controlled camera atop a 12-ft monopod. His arresting image shows how Ross-shire Club goalkeeper David Mitchell, unprepared as his sight was blocked by one of his own defenders, could then only watch as a thunderbolt from Balintore's Graeme Davis hit the net during the Welfare League game on Monday this week.
(No I don't really have a "12-ft monopod". it was a 6-ft monopod that I held up in the air, putting the camera about 12-ft off the ground.)
Hand-held portrait lighting
Sun May 27th - 11:47pm
There's a place in this world that all photographers should be afraid of, and that place is my local village hall. My nemesis…
For a start it's yellow. Very yellow. Yellow walls and yellow floor. Oh and yellow lighting too. But not your regular, easy-to-balance tungsten bulbs, oh no. I still have no idea what they are but they're much more yellow than tungsten. And it's a big cave of a building with a high ceiling, so you won't be using a lot of bounce flash. It's pretty much direct flash or nothing.
If you ever have to work in a place like that then you might find my solution useful, especially as it solves other problems and improves the quality of your light!
Click to read the tutorial:
Hand-held portrait lighting
Samantha & Robert’s wedding
Sun May 27th - 8:00pm
Congratulations to Sam and Robert who were married on Saturday in Logie Easter Church in Kildary, after which they held their reception in the Seaboard Memorial Hall in Balintore. A very relaxed and informal day, with many of the guests having young children so there was a fun party atmosphere. How many wedding receptions have you been to where there was a bouncy castle?!
Barry Grove’s Auchinstarry canal basin project
Thu May 24th - 4:49pm
No pictures (yet!) but I wanted to post a link to a page about Barry Grove's new project, creating a sculpture for the Auchinstarry canal basin at Croy near Kilsyth.
If you've been following this site for a while then you'll be familiar with the reproduction of the Pictish Stone at Hilton, which Barry created.
For the canal project there are three designs to choose from and Barry will create the one with the most votes. You've got until next Thursday to cast your vote.
Football skycam
Tue May 22nd - 12:30am
Skycam? Polecam? Feeling like a wally holding a camera up in the air on a monopod? Call it whatever you want but Monday evening was my first attempt at using an elevated camera to shoot football.
The easy bit is that you can reliably shoot in AV mode so you don't need to worry about metering. The difficult bit is that you need to pre-focus the lens which will always be a best-guess because you don't know where the action will be.
I used a Canon 1D fired by Pocket Wizards with 17-40 lens at 17mm f/4.
What do you think? Worth pursuing the idea?
21 May 2007: After having his line of sight blocked by his own defenders, Ross-shire Club goalkeeper David Mitchell is unprepared for a strike by Balintore's Graeme Davis. Balintore won 5-1 in Monday night's welfare league game, which was brought forward due to the UEFA Champions League final on Wednesday.
Mermaid of the North (#2)
Mon May 21st - 3:55pm
Here's a more dramatic picture of the mermaid. There was better sunlight for this shot. I also used a wider aperture to throw the water out of focus, while using a faster shutter speed to capture the texture of the waves.
Mermaid of the North
Sun May 20th - 5:06am
Here's another picture of the Balintore mermaid, or the Mermaid of the North to use her correct title. I got some nice pictures today with the tide really high so she's sat out there on her rock, totally surrounded by water but with just the tip of her tail getting wet. The sun even came out for a few minutes at just the right time.
One of today's pictures was a tight vertical shot with the sea looking rough and dramatic, and I'll process that one to show you during the week when I get time. But the person I was doing the pictures for chose this one with the water blurred so this is the one I processed today.
Here's a link to a local newspaper article about the mermaid for anyone outside the area who wants to know the background info:
ps. If you've ever used a Canon 1Ds then you'll feel the pain when I tell you that this picture was shot at f/32 and the camera's sensor hadn't been cleaned in months. Dust?! It was like a snowstorm. Took an hour to clone it all out. If you haven't used a 1Ds then you won't know its dirty secret, which is that it's a dust magnet, extremely difficult to clean, and the sensor alone costs £2k to replace if you scratch it. Beautiful camera but a bitch to maintain.
