50mm

I recently purchased a lovely little 50mm lens for my cannon and thought I'd show you a couple of snaps that I've taken lately. 

A Little Something

This is more of a personal movie, but really happy how it came out, Check it out!


Filmed on my Cannon 550D, this is the first film I've filmed in a long time, but i got some fairly decent footage and had a go at Final Cut Pro X, which was an interesting experience to say the least; aided by Zelah in the editing process we managed to put together a lovely little memory!

Playing With Low Shutter Speed.

Now, we've all seen the photos of lights flying by in a blur and it always looks amazing and magical, so I thought I would join in and post some of the photos I took in Holland using a low shutter speed.

Photoshop Textures

Today I've been playing around with textures of pictures and using layer blends to make them work with some photos.

For this particular edit I used a Tutorial which can be found HERE, it also gave me some nice high quality textures, which is always great!

I used a photo from an old set and I did actually encounter some problems. The one problem you get from following tutorials is that they are editing their photo, not yours, the photo on the tutorial was a lot brighter than the one I used, but in some ways I found that to be a good thing because it meant I could put all my own personal touches to it.

The main issue was with the first texture (the rainbow texture) which at 100% opacity was over powering the actual photo, so it was a matter of turning the opacity down low. The first part of the tutorial where the publisher tells you how to edit the photo was something I followed loosely due to our photos being totally different.

All in all though it was a great tutorial and I did learn some very useful things as well as gathering a few nice textures.

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Fujifilm Instax Picture Review

About a year ago I bought a Fuji Instax polaroid camera, and I thought I would just write a little review about some of the photos I've taken over the year.

 This first shot was taken only yesterday on a crisp winters day and as you can see, the camera managed to capture that perfectly, the actual photo is a bit brighter but my scanner made it loose a little quality.  in my opinion if you're looking for that vintage effect there is nothing better that actually using a vintage means of photography such as polaroid.

 This second picture was taken during a photo shoot for my college project in the start of summer, and again it has captured the weather perfectly, another thing that surprised me is how well the vibrant colours come out on the film, it has nice grainy look.

The next two photos were taken the same day on a lovely spring day, and as you can see the vibrancy and colour of a spring day was captured well, yet the best thing about these two photos were how well they were focused, and its something I would never be able to re-create with a digital camera, another thing that makes them look so good is the fact I have had some photos turn out very unfocused or so much exposer that you cant see the subjects face. 

Yet, all in all I think the Fuji Instax is a great novelty camera which is great for capturing a moment with your friends that you don't want to forget!

Design Work

One other thing I also try to do is a bit of publishing work every now and again.

I made this minimal logo for my DJ alias VoidVoidVoid. I wanted it to be fairly minimal because I wanted the focus on the words and didn't want a flashy background. the original idea was to have all three of the "Void"s to be the same colour but it became illegible so I simply made them my favourite colours. A simple yet effective logo in my opinion, I made this on Photoshop CS5.

Shooting in Macro

I was trying to think what would be the most interesting subject to to take a photo of, I didnt want to do something cliche like taking a photo of a tree or rust, so I got something living, my sisters gecko.

My two favourites are the second and the forth because the focus on the head gives the body way more depth, it's great how much a little sharpening on a macro photo can make it look that much better. Editing wise that is all I really did to the photo as well as some noise reduction, I felt like it didn't need a lot because Macro is more focused on the detail of the subject and the scales of a gecko were a perfect thing to choose!

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SharkATCK

Something else I forgot to mention, my friends and me have started up an online magazine of the arts, in which we will review music, photography, film, poetry and lots more as well as posting our own stuff! so please go check it out! 

http://sharkatck.wordpress.com/

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Scenic Shots

Recently I've been shooting a lot of scenic stuff, I've never really shot in snow or taken any scenic shots apart from the tilt shift photos, So here's a few of the shots I like that I've taken recently.

As you can see I got a little carried away with the sunset pictures, but it was a pretty beautiful sunset and I was in the perfect location. I edited the 3 in different ways just to see what they would come out like and it's always good to do a bit of comparison. Now, speaking from my point of view I like the top one the most the colour of the sky is mind blowing and the vignette really makes you focus on the sun, the only problem with it is that there is probably a bit too much black space at the bottom, speaking from a professional side I think the Bottom one is most likely the best,the colours aren't as vibrant as the top sunset photo but it looks a lot more natural and it has a really nice composition being portrait. The middle of the sunset photos is the worst in my opinion and my professional opinion, the colours are lacking in this photo which I think is the best thing about this sunset.

As for the very top photo with the grass in the snow, this was me testing out the macro on my camera which is another style of photography in which I haven't really tried yet and would like to try out!

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Stop Motion

As I said in an earlier post I've been doing some filming which is sort of new ground to me, I know the basics when it comes to editing videos, but in the past I've done a couple of stop motions that are on youtube and I've noticed one of the videos becoming more and more popular. I edited this on Final Cut Pro, which I would love to get better at.

I made this stop motion about 2 years ago now but it's had over 21,000 views! I'm pretty sure the pop culture hero Mario had something to do with it getting this many views, but in my opinion I think I decent job with this and it flows fairly well, I may have to shoot another stop motion in the near future!

Live Band Photos

The other night I went to a local bands e.p launch to film some stuff for the guys. in between filming the madness I managed to capture a couple of photos with one of the supporting acts.

Tilt Shift.

Posting those photos of the abbey reminded me of some work I did a year ago about Tilt Shift Photography. The long and short of Tilt Shift is the illusion of making big scenic photographs look more like a model play set.

There was a lot of experimenting involved and I thought I'd post some of the photos and talk

about them.

Obviously there are two ways of making a tilt shift photo, one is having the actually lens second

is post processing which is the route I took.

So these were the first two I decided to edit from my first set of photos and to be honest I think they came out really well, especially the second, I think they all look like toy cars. another thing to make your tilt shift photos really come alive is a large amount of contrast and saturation. The way you post process the photos is switching to quick mask mode then using the gradient tool to get your selection of what you want to be the main point of focus, exit and the put a lens blur on selected area, obviously be sure to tweak until you see what looks right.

These two photos are from my second set of tilt shift shots, after looking around for some high vantage points in bath, i managed to get into a great place for Great Pulteney Street. and in my opinion Tilt Shift photos come out a million times better when taken from above. the second photo is my favourite because the little lady and cars just ended up looking just like toy models.

Now this last one was just an experiment, while researching tilt shift I'd noticed that there was not one Tilt Shift photo taking with a fisheye lens, so considering I had one to use I thought I thought I would go around and test. This is Great Pulteney Street from ground level, and in my opinion the post precessing did work. it just doesnt capture the right feel because a fisheye distorts the photo already then adding more distortion like Tilt Shift makes it just too much.

Casual Tourist Shots

So i was with my dad and he has his own art project going on at the moment in which he takes photos on certain things every season and will put them together, either way I tagged along and thought I'd grab some photos of the Bath Abbey because I never have.

The moment we turned up at the abbey the sun came out of the clouds and made the church a perfect golden, so these photos have little post process because they already look exactly what how I imagined. The only thing i really decided to post process was sharpening the image slightly to put a bit more definition.

Away From Black & White...

Right, now I don't like to quit on things, but editing those photos in black and white was a bore. It just felt like I was taking so much character out of the photos. I didn't want to just leave the set to another day so I started playing around in Adobe Lightroom and came out with this sort of aged photo look with a Sepia tone, I wanted to stay away from the vintage effect due to the fact I always try and make the photos look vintage. So with a little more playing around I reduced the noise made the photos sharper and came out with this horror esque coloured scene. I only editing 3 like this because I may come up with some completely different ideas for the others.

Black & White

So after playing around for a while I've actually gone out and arranged to do a photo shoot with one of my friends, I usually take photos of people modelling/playing in a band and have been taking snap shots lately and experimenting, so I am now going to get on with some themed work.

So I wanted to start basic, yet something I haven't really done, and that turned out to be post editing in black and white. The only reason I have never really done it is due to it always seemed to be too easy and not much you could do with it, yet I persevered.

I chose to take the photos in a natural environment because the leaves and trees would cause a lot more shadows to play around with in post processing, and unfortunately the weather was not what I was hoping, overcast clouds instead of the sunny winters day I wanted.

So this my first edit from the collection, and don't get me wrong it come out nicely but I still feel the same way, there's really not a lot you can do when post processing in black and white. i chose to make the reds darker so that it would contrast with the with the white face, I also chose to make the greens darker so that the background would seem way deeper. I also found that there's a watermark button on Lightroom, so expect all my stuff now to be tagged!

I will now get on with editing the rest of these pictures and upload them to a different post.

More Instagram/Hipstamatic

so i'm just trying to practice the technique and heres some more of the photos i came up with, personal favourites top and bottom.

Light Leaks.

Light leaks have become the sort of craze which everyone wants to know how to do, the two ways of achieving this is actually using a film camera that is a little broken or post processing a photo.

now, I don't have a broken film camera at my disposal so I went with the alternate way and post processed it.

Original:

Edited:

All in all it was fairly easy to pull off on photoshop, just a matter of having the main picture as the background layer and then having 3 more layers with gradients on them, one white to transparent, one orange to transparent and one red to transparent. you've got to remember to keep the white layer at the top and have the red layer last otherwise you get a bit of an adverse effect. i put the rounded edges on just make it look that bit more vintage which i did in lightroom. i also made the highlights a lightish blue and the shadows a bright pink with not much opacity just to give it that edge.

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Lightroom Presets

Found some lovely Lightroom Templates!

Original:

Toy Camera:

Tilt Shift:

You get a few more presets with the Tilt shift pack, but they're all free :)

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Ripping off Instagram

So, still playing around with the raw image editor, and decided to rip off the instagram style of photos!

Here's the original photo of the council estate near mine, i was thinking of trying to make it look like a photo from the 80's/90's, so a high amount of contrast, film grain, and bluey/greeny highlights to capture that feel.

This is the final product [i need to start getting into the habit of taking screen shots]. I'm quite happy how it turned out, it really captured the essence of the wintery day that it is. one of the issues is that the whites are a little bright, but that was about as dim as i could mange without changing the feel that i wanted. i managed to pick up that Fuji Velvia 100 boarder from PShero. there's some decent Instagram like filters in that collection.

Feedback? cheers :)

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Raw Edit & Original Compare's

Shooting Raw

So, i have recently picked up a Cannon 550d and am now starting to shoot in .RAW.

At first I thought I'd take Jpeg & Raw photos just to compare here is the original Jpeg.

One of the main reasons i decided to start shooting in .RAW was to use the Raw editing software on the new Photoshop CS5, just so I can make additional tweaks to the editing and make them look a little more professional.

So, for a first time at using the raw editor I found it fairly easy, and a great programme.

As you can see there is a massive difference between the photos and the second is a lot more compelling. i found that compaired to photoshop where you'd just put a gradient map over a picture to put a coloured tone over the highlights and shadows, it's way more of a slight minimal adjustment that ends up looking way nicer on the photo.

All in all, I think i will be shooting and editing in raw format now to get the most from my photos!

i'll post a few more of the photos in another post.

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