365 Photo Blog – Barbie can
22/04/2013
14/04/2013
What happens when you fire your strobe straight into your lens?
This.
The little dots are rain and my speed-light was covered in cling film which may have made a difference, I didn’t try without.
13/04/2013
In 2009 me and Kate spent just over a month in South America for our honeymoon. I’m thinking of going through the photo’s to make a book and this is a bit of a test. I was a little naive behind the camera back then and shot mainly poorly exposed jpegs. This one has passed through both Lightroom and Photoshop.
11/04/2013
Starting Kurtis young with the Olympus Trip. He’s not quite got how to look through the viewfinder yet, but we persist. An iPhone, he’s the master of. A 1970’s mechanical camera baffles him.
07/04/2013
The trip to Africa, Kent was for my mum’s 60th Birthday. This is a lovely family portrait. Can you spot the real Irene? Clue: Its not Kurtis.
05/04/2013
My nephew playing around with a little bulb from a baloon.
04/04/2013
You may have noticed a new tack on the blog. I’m just trying something new. The format however is all to do with SEO. Wiki it if you don’t know.
01/04/2013
Goodbye March – hello April.
‘Who was drawing on the door’ I asked. ‘Mummy’ came the reply. So not only have you been naughty – you lied about it! From what I hear, standard behaviour.
31/03/2013
K was only 14 months at Easter last year so this was his first Easter where he understands ‘chocolate’. This is the result:
30/03/2013
Party at the Wilson’s for Brody’s 3rd birthday ended in a hot-tub with the kids and Bomber wearing his T-Rex outfit. Apparently he had nothing else to wear!
29/03/2013
I have found that the 365 project is mainly filler. I find myself blogging the best of what I have, which may not actually be that interesting or aesthetic. I suppose thats the point, its difficult and requires that you try to create something out of the mundane. However, at times an image appears that makes it worth while. This is one of them.
After the gig last night I booked a hotel on my phone – this was the result! This is one of two single beds that me and Kate stayed in. It was cheap but served a purpose.
28/03/2013
Went to see Foals at the Royal Albert Hall. A bit good! Had seats in the front row of the circle so was a bit of a new vantage point for photographing bands. I liked this ‘lonely front man’ shot.
Another bunch of posts as not got round to uploading them. Its also getting a little difficult now as I feel like i’m going over old ground with a lot of the shots. I don’t think the weather helps, I mean seriously, March can do one. Although I did read in the news today that we can expect the cold weather to last until May! Urgh.
That beautiful moment (for geeks) when you introduce your two year old to Star Wars. Kate thought it might be scary for him. He does have a thing about monsters at the moment but we powered through and he loved it (I think). There is definitely something about the film that sucks in kids.
Was playing around here with thought towards my wedding work. I’m thinking some soft bridal portraits like this. This is my 50mm prime at wide open at f1.4. I am going to try the same with a long lens to compress the perspective a bit. I’ll blog it when I do it!
Really like this shot. The bird houses are in a communal gardens in Islington. I walk past them quite a lot but never quite found and interesting angle. Today I walked past on the opposite side to usual and found this view.
Sorry, last 5 posts have all gone up together. I have been taking pictures, just not editing/producing/blogging them!
Anyway, all 5 shots have something in common – difficult lighting. A previous post of a building site near Barbican discussed this a little, but did not try to eliminate any of the casts, in fact the dual lighting is what made the image interesting. These last 5 images have all had difficult lighting which required the removal of a cast in only part of the image.
This shot had some blue left in the sky contrasting with the (very) yellow tungsten street lights. Together with the noise it was almost impossible to deal with so I just went B&W!
The next down had a general yellow cast from the tungsten light in the loft, combined with very cool blue light coming through the window. I balanced the lighting for the tungsten then eliminated the blue in and around the window with some RGB curves.
The alley way had both tungsten and fluorescent lighting. The street scene had a general blue cast from the cloud/fog but some tungsten creeping in from street level. Finally, the street scene at night had some blue daylight still in the sky, fluorescent from the billboard, tungsten from the street lamps and also the car headlights which are a combination of lots of things!
K hiding (badly) beneath the marvellous strawberry curtains we discovered in the loft.
Nothing particularly interesting about this picture. Its here because today I ran up Tower 42 (the one in the middle) for the charity Shelter. I did 42 floors in 9 minutes 25 seconds then spent the next hour sweating and gasping for breath. I had planned to get a picture from the viewing gallery at the top but participants weren’t allowed any personal items in the stairwell.
My time was about average, I came 565th out of 1500. The winner did it in 4 minutes and 50 seconds, which is not humanly possible so I’m assuming he was a robot or freak or something. Thanks everyone that sponsored me x
MARCH!
And I think one of my favourite pictures yet. Maybe because it actually has a person in it (other than my family). I had an evening out with my brother and a client he had introduced me to. I met my brother at St Paul’s Cathedral as he works near there. Being the successful lawyer type he was busy and made me wait. So, camera out I was trying to think of an alternative way of picturing the Cathedral and I started to focus on the tourists. I would have liked to get one of the priests who kept walking in and out, but this works well. Its one of those that I had a bit of a buzz about when I took it.
I dont usually go in for saturated colour, in fact I tend toward de-saturation in post processing. However, this shot is interesting to me because its processed much the same as the other shots in this blog but for some reason the colours are really bright! Might be something to do with perspective contrast or something. Not sure. The colour makes me feel a bit weird?!?
Went skating today, half work – half birthday treat! See the dedicated post for more shots from a long day in the city.
A day at the spa for my birthday meant I took no photos. So here is another shot from last night. Classic gig shot.
My birthday! My wife took me to see Bloc Party at Earls Court. Awesome. I also got a Leatherman.
Neon light. Camera was surprisingly good at capturing the colour.
Additional image I forgot I took! I like this. Mediterranean tree looking totally out of place on a council estate in South London.
I havent posted a city scape for a couple of days and this is a favourite compositional trick. Having mostly sky means you don’t need foreground interest. Also, the sky is interesting. Its one of those indescribable things. How often do you catch yourself staring at the clouds or marvelling at the infinite blue?
More abstract. I took this out of the car window but it was thoroughly over exposed so when I first pulled it into lightroom it was just a white rectangle. I was interested to see if there was any detail in there at all and used some extreme exposure settings to bring out the shapes on the lower left. I added the colour (obv) and some noise to give it a little texture.
Took the day off on Friday and pretty much spent the whole weekend with my son. He got a small mountain of toys for his birthday but has ended up carrying round a small child’s laptop that he got for his first birthday!
It was someones second birthday on the 15th. He got a wigwam. And a balloon. Think he was more interested in the balloon.
Yesterdays post was a bit of a prelude to todays. The letters are sprayed all over shop shutters in and around Petticoat Lane market. My wife used to work in a cocktail bar in Shoreditch. When she left they got her a big alphabet print made up of a collage of graffiti letters from all over London. For valentines day I thought I would try something similar. She hasn’t seen this yet so it will be a good test to see if she is following the blog!
The strange red/orange colour street lights are when they have just turned on? That.
Got to the end of the day and realised I hadn’t taken a picture. Ventured into the kitchen for inspiration and started firing my flash into the glass cupboard! I was going for something abstract. I think I like it…….
Second fail of the campaign. Didn’t get to take a picture today (as i’m posting this on the 14th Feb I cant remember why – just checked my diary, it was last Saturday, I was working all day) so I have been back through everything I’ve taken to date and sorted through some of the pictures that didn’t make the cut. Her is one!
Its a bit fussy but I like the colours. Its a good example of the difference between the colour of fluorescent (green) and tungsten (orange) lighting. Our eyes naturally compensate for these different colour ‘temperatures’, the camera however gets thoroughly confused and throws a strop.
Last shot grabbed in or around London for the week. I’m going to try and get something different in for the weekend posts, but no promises!
A good example of picturing the final image before taking it. I exposed a little to the left then did the rest in post. Its only really exposure adjustments to get what I had imagined before I took the shot.
I had a busy Sunday. I did a booth last night and while unloading the car I dropped my camera (again). It landed, butter side down (on the lens) and jammed the lens. I have done it before and know how to fix it but its time consuming and fiddly and altogether unenjoyable. Anyway, slaving over lots and lots of tiny parts, along with other weekend chores meant it totally slipped my mind to take any pictures. Although, after successfully fixing my lens I took a couple of test shots and this one gets in on interesting colour alone. Enjoy the wallpaper while I purchase a protective lens hood.
Originally this post had no text. After texting me to point out some spelling mistakes in another post, I asked my wife if she liked the picture of Kurtis I posted. ‘Which one’ she asked, to which I replied ‘the one with the shadow’. She hadn’t noticed the shadow. ‘The shadow is the point’ I said. ‘You should write it in the post then’, she said.
February! Phew, I only failed completely on one day in January. Apart from that one time I have taken and processed (but not necessarily posted!) a new image every day. Here a two more to kick off the new month. Pinch, punch etc.
Was a bit ‘urgh’ today, basically feeling uninspired. Then I noticed this. I’ve probably walked past it 100 times but never really given much attention. My camera gets a little confused and over-saturates reds, plus sharpening routines tend to emphasise this. So its not ‘real’ but real enough.
Beach Huts (houses down my road). I think sometimes about the way we live and how its a little unnatural to be all lined up in boxes, ready for work. I then think – happy thoughts!
Soz, post is a little similar to yesterdays. However – this one means something special. It means that spring is here and the mornings are getting lighter. Handheld outside my house so super noisy, but I kind of like it.
Had a little stroll around the neighbourhood today. View of Rayleigh Windmill from my road.
“How can the conservative ideologies of contemporary politics be contested? And how can they be contested visually? We live to a large extent in a political culture where denialism is a powerful force, and it is a force that too much journalism, still beholden to false notions of objectivity that require balance between competing viewpoints even when one of those viewpoints has at best a tenuous relationship to evidence, either furthers or allows to fester.
It would be good if this were the year that visual journalists redoubled efforts to take on the big issues with powerful pictures supported by clear evidence for the larger stories that need to be told.
Today our new house was used as a film location. The director wanted something ’80’s looking’. Usually this might be insulting but we’ve only just moved in and not done any decorating yet. Think its going to be a music video. Hopefully we get credit for location and tea making! The director was the talented Andrew Gooch and this film should end up on his website.
Hard to describe whats interesting about this. The technical side of me wants to see how the camera is going to render the smooth gradients and colours. As a subject I think this is an interesting space. Its a corridor on the 28th floor of 1 Canada Square (Canary Wharf to you and I). Its a shared space and as such is kind of bland, non intrusive and functional. The minimal colours and lack of features creates an unintentional ambience. I’ve done very little other than a little exposure correction and sharpening. The darkening of the wall is a camera fail!
Cold mornings and broken stuff. I like the juxtaposition of these two images.
Sorry. More pictures of the boy. I promise no more for the rest of the week. Just moody London buildings and nooks and crannies and such.
I cant help it though. I am fascinated by the limitless wonder children have for the simplest things and try to capture some of that playfulness and imagination.
Its a Saturday and between decorating and entertaining I only got to take a couple of pictures of my boy playing around in a car seat. Its one of his favourite past times and he will happily play with the buckles for minutes on end. The downside of all this is I have nothing interesting I have taken to post. After some deliberation I decided to post something a bit different.
This image is by Rinko Kawauchi. I saw her work at The Photographers Gallery this year, as part of the Deutsche Borse Photography prize and picked up her book ‘Illuminance’. The colours are beautiful and many of the images have a dream like quality that is surreal and at times unnerving.
Couple of images today. First a depressing reminder that Christmas is over but also, and without getting too heavy, a reference to the throw-away consumerism of the modern festive period.
Second, another picture from the Barbican area. Its a photogenic place and I’m sure there will be more in the future. Also, today someone told me an interesting fact about Charterhouse Square in Barbican. Currently its a grassy square park that is used as a playground for the neighbouring school. CrossRail are excavating the road adjacent but apparently they cant dig in the park because it was originally a ‘plague pit’ with tens of thousands of bodies in it!
Now i’ll stop spreading the happiness .
Technically this was taken on the 15th, about 1am but thats splitting hairs. Its the 3 towers at Barbican taken from Charterhouse Square (through a window). London is totally different in the early hours. There are still signs of life but the urgency is gone. No one is rushing to get anywhere and its altogether more peaceful.