Friday, 29 July 2011

Leeds in Bloom - Harewood House - Adam

Blooming Canvas

Thought I would try so effects and filters in Photoshop. I wanted to take a bright colourful image and turn it into a canvas painting. Personally I like the effect and enjoy having some of my work printed on canvas. Even though a picture only has 2 dimensions I like the way canvas prints adds an extra dimension to an image be it painted or a printed.

Saturday, 23 July 2011

Underwater Portraits

I thought I would publish some examples of underwater portraits I have done. Most underwater photography counts as wildlife or landscape photography but you still get to take interesting portraits shots which require the subject to be relaxed and skilled to take a good portrait.

Light and White balance are extremely important when taking underwater shots. The water needs to be very clear of any particles otherwise the image is grainy and you couldn't use a flash or strobe to add light, and in the case of deep water, colour back into the shot.






Self Portrait
1/320s, f7.4, ISO80, 40mm

When the light is this bright, doing self portraits without a tripod or timer is 'easy' but it helps have a long arm :o) 

Wednesday, 20 July 2011

A sea of graduands

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Poster idea for Focus exhibition


Hi All,

Would be interested to know your thoughts. If anybody feels another image within the lens would be 'better', feel free to let me know.

Thanks
David

Sunday, 17 July 2011

Brief 7 - Portraits - Adam

After unfortunately missing last weeks session I hope to see some of the top pictures from Roundhay posted on the Blog soon.

For this weeks Brief I chose a portrait shot I took in Manhattan last weekend.

This Photo is of a street performer next to Battery Park near South Ferry if you are familiar with the NYC Geography.

I spoke to the gentleman and he kindly posed for a number of shots. This one is my favourite shot.

Music Man
1/640s, f7.1, ISO400, 24mm

The photo below is a the same as the one above prior to the crop.


This shot provides more information about the individual as you can see his money case and that he is sitting on the concrete floor playing in the street.

I believe the crop above is a more emotional shot than this one but it depends on the person which they prefer.
















As I was in New York I also added a few landscape shots to this week's brief

Soggy Times
1/85s, f2.8, ISO400, 24mm

I very warm and wet evening in Times Square.
I really enjoy looking at this photo over and over. The contrast between the grey wet streets with the colour in the square makes this almost a poster shot. The rushing tourists and locals with their umbrellas up going about their day adds to the energy with no one person's face recognisable to distract from the overall image.

Empire of the Sun
1/550s, f5.0, ISO100, 24mm

A chance happening on the Empire State Building whilst I was lazily wandering down 5th Ave.
This Photo gave me a sense of grandeur of this relatively old and famous sky scraper. Most images are taken with an arial view or from a neighbouring building but this was taken from ground view up! 

Having a wide angle lens is a must in New York City.

 Follow the Yellow Stripped Road
1/320s, f5.6, ISO100, 140mm

View from the top of the Empire States Building, looking down. 

As you can see I zoomed in quite far to add some detail of the street below. I chose this shot because of the long straight lines and the contrasting dark shadows of the buildings each side of this bright yellow avenue. A shot not to everyones tastes but a nice perspective photo.

Liberty at Large
1/320s, f6.4, ISO100, 69mm

A trip to NYC wouldn't be complete without including it's most famous french lady.

I chose this photo out of all the other shots because it gave the statue a sense of grandeur by including a ring of tourist around the base.
I know that when I first saw the Statue of Liberty in person many years ago I was underwhelmed by the size as it always was portrayed as much larger in the media and I know many other people have felt the same. This picture for me gave me back a bit more sense of enormity of the structure. Also using a polarised filter made a very nice Blue Sky backdrop.






Friday, 15 July 2011

magnificent men in flying machines

I applied for tickets but have been unsuccessful - who has some and have we enough or are we changing plans?? Also was this week's portrait supposed to have Jewish content ?? I DID have a lewd offer from 4 teenage boys when I mentioned my task, but declined - and they weren't anticipating wearing kippot!! I should have lined them up anyway but.............

Granny P

Monday, 11 July 2011

Red Bull Flugtag

Hi all,

After today's session I mentioned to both David C and Darren S that I'm planning on going to the Red Bull Flugtag next Sunday (where people fall into the Roundhay Park lake in a crazy contraption in the hopes that it will actually fly) both Darren and David seemed interested in going for both fun and the photographic opportunity it presents so David suggested the possibility (if we can all get hold of tickets) to go as a group and then have our usual meeting later on on the day.

If that's of any interest I have 3 spare tickets at the mo' and am trying to get some more, if we are all interested i urge you to all to apply for tickets asap they are free but there is a ballot to get them so no guarantees you will get any but if we all apply for 4 each im sure we will be able to easily get enough between us for everyone.

Here's the link:

http://www.redbull.co.uk/cs/Satellite/en_UK/Red-Bull-Flugtag-2011/001242980500328?roundhaypark.org.uk

Once on the red bull page there should be a link to the right of the screen which takes you through to ticket master where you need to follow the instructions remembering to apply for 4 tickets though.

Thanks,

Paul.

Sunday, 10 July 2011

This is my favourite- f5, 1/60s, ISO 400, with flash

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Portraits of my grandson Rafi aged 2 years 6 months

Most of the photos were taken at about 2.00 pm on an overcast day but with the subject facing the incoming light from a large window. Flash was used to supplement the natural light.

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Tuesday, 5 July 2011

Mezuzah's Galore - Adam

Hi David,

Not managed to get my brief done yet and won't be able to until the weekend after this but I snapped these photos in Golders Green today

Holy Choice!
1/60, f2.8, ISO 400

Mezuzahopoly
1/100, f2.8, ISO 800

The second image won't suit everyones tastes and can be described as busy but other individuals like an image with detail to pick out and see new areas of the image each time they look at it. How do you take yours? Prize for anyone that can find Wally ;o)

Saturday, 2 July 2011

Woman with cup of tea (non-Brazilian)


I took this portrait of my wife Gina. I asked her to pose in feathers and sequins but she point blank refused, so here she is perhaps more typically drinking tea in the garden from her favourite cup - the chocolate digestive is out of shot.

f5.6, 1/250s, ISO 100 no flash, no tripod


Friday, 1 July 2011

My Focus photos so far

Well I thought it was about time I put my pictures up on here for all to see, sorry its a bit epic but here goes...


Brief 1

We were asked to bring in two photographs, the first to represent our aspirations so I chose this image that I found whilst searching for images online, I really like this image because not only its technical and compositional merit but I also admire the great character and humour the photographer has captured.




















My second photo was one that I shot when i did my national diploma in Photomedia at Leeds college of Art and Design. It was taken using Black and white film which I processed my self and made this print from, its definitely one of my favourite photographs that I had took during my time at college and its representative of the kind of photograph subject matter I like taking pictures of grimey industrial things.



Brief 2


The brief asked us to take a photograph that represented "My Leeds" so I decided to attempt a self portrait of me at work at home in my workshop, taking a self portrait was rather challenging to say the least not only for practical reasons but also compositionally and comments were made for how i could improve on the overall composition by removing some of the items in the background.



Week 2 Practical - Still Life (cabbage)

During our weekly class David brought in a cabbage for us to photograph here's what I got.



The difference a moment makes, Note the softer shadows and more evenly exposed cabbage in the first photo and the sharper shadows and brighter highlights in the second photo.



The cabbage in close up the light was shining through the window from the left which back lit the cabbage leaf creating an interesting translucent effect.

Brief 3

The third brief for me was a to re-attempt the previous self portrait with the recommended improvements.



I also decided to take some photographs of my dad blowing out the candles on his birthday cake.



This picture is cropped to loose some distracting things in the background and I think it it helps to emphasize the subject matter too.

Brief 4

For this brief we were supposed to choose an object that meant something to us and photograph it at three different times of the day, I think I stretched this brief a little bit.

Ok for some crazy reason I decided to go up on the roof towards sunset one evening (13/06/2011) and take pictures of the chimney and roof as the sun went down.



This picture was taken at 19:34 ISO set at 200 aperture F8 1/250 sec. I had to over expose this by +0.3 to get the chimney properley exposeed so it didn't under expose it (making it silhouette).



This one was taken at 19:44 ISO 200 aperture F10 at 1/400 sec. I had to under expose by -0.3 to avoid over exposing.



And finally this one was taken at 20:17 aperture F10 1/1600 sec. I had to compensate the exposure by -1.3 stops to avoid over exposing the sky.

Brief 5

And now for something a bit "jewishy" (yes I did make that word up).

I was fortunate enough to be able to go along with David to Both the Etz Chaim and the BHH Synagogues to take some photos and here's some of the pictures I took.




Possibly the only nice architectural feature in the entirety of the Etz chaim Shul.

A bit of photo stitching.



Genesis

1:3 And G-d said, Let there be light: and there was light.

1:4 And G-d saw the light, that it was good: so he got out his old box brownie (because he hadn't invented digital yet) and started taking photo's Then G-d divided the light from the darkness which meant he then had to invent the flash so he could take photographs at night.








This shot ha some photoshop work done on it but I will leave you guessing what I did for now, I might put a before and after shot up on another post.

Brief 5.1

As well as taking photos at the shuls I decided that I wanted to do something a bit more personal to me so I set up a still life with some of my own personal items that happened to be gifts given to me for my barmitzvah.

I took quite a few shots trying out various compositions but here is my favourite.



I set the items up out side to make use of the lovely sunny weather (between the rain showers). Photographing reflective objects can be a complete nightmare as I pretty much found out with this so some photo-shopping was done to remove an unpleasant reflection from the kiddish cup.

Tip of the day: When photographing reflective objects get a sheet of white paper and hold it up near to the object but out of frame this helps eliminate reflections, you may need a willing assistant to help you do this and moving the paper and the camera around until you find the best angle will help,

Ok so that's it for now but there are my Roundhay park pictures to come very soon ....

Brazilian Dancer - Corporate Event in Bath - Adam


Brazilian Dancer
1/100s, f5.1, ISO 400, 109mm
Photo of a Brazilian Dancer I took yesterday evening during a coporate party in Bath. Lots of colour!

Brazilian Dancer 2
1/100s, f5.1, ISO 400, 109mm

This shot is a little clearer than the first one but it wasn't my first choice as the background is a little too busy for my tastes but still a vibrant photo. If you prefer this one please let me know as I find your incite very useful (@David(s)) Oh and Darren you can't see the hole in her tights in this one ;o)

One for the ladies...

Capoeira Dancer
1/180, f4.1, ISO 400, 74mm

Couldn't resist a landscape shot from the garden at Hamswell Hall -Bath. This hall was built here for the spectacular views across the valley

1/420. f5.1, ISO 200, 109mm

All these shots are taken with my Fuji F50fd Compact camera

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Tuesday, 28 June 2011

Is it a church with a mezuzah??



Bizarre place to have a mezuzah..........


Drinking Bear



Drinking Bear - will deffo re-shoot this as had camera shake but wanted to see concept of shot. It took a bit to set up - he now has his own glass!! It WAS rather late at the time.


f4 iso800 1/3sec

Barbecue Bear



Barbecue Bear - Maybe the lack of light has something to do with the time of day!!! Must get myself and Ted up and about in middle of day ! My priorities were to get Ted doing non-normal Ted things! I am thinking greetings cards!!


f 4.5 1/40 iso800