Obsessed with Black & White Photographs

Lately black and White photography has been the majority of all my pics I have been emersig myself in "tones" rather than colours. I have learnt that you can achieve far greater effects by using different techniques ie, infra red filters and amending the clour ratio.


Now to try and re-train your brain is no small feet in itself, the trick is to look at the subject in tone rather than colour.


Helpful tips:
Try setting your LCD on your camera to mono ( this will help when shoot RAW + Jpeg)

when converting try not using simple grayscale and experiment with monochrome filters and the channel mixer within Photoshop or whatever software you use.

Rainy Days.......

yet more experimentation with Macro photography, I would really love a macro lens but sadly it's a saver upper. But I am starting to get rather Heath Robinson when it comes to using by large tripod and tele lens, the lens itself is a 70-300mm and although I have to setup at the other side of the room you can actually get some rather good results (look back at the chess guardian comp entry ).

ISO100 - F8.0 - 1/10 Sec

Murder and Motorways.........

Saturday was a manic day filled with work and then a brilliant Murder mystery party ! On the way back we stopped off so I could take the below shot, obviously my aim is to complete this at night etc but I thought I'd have a go during the day. Due to the amount of light I was getting it was hard to get the required motion blur without over exposing the shot.

ISO100 - F29 - 1/2 SEC

The Bells the Bells ...

After purchasing my first filter, a Hoya 52mm Polarising filter (from Amazon £24) this was the first shot I took of the town hall on my walk to work.

Lovely sky and fluffy clouds the filter seems to enhance the blue and the "fluff" of the clouds.

ISO200 - F4.5 - Shutter 1/60 

Hitting the wall ... metaphorically speaking

Architectural photography really interest's me but I suppose it will be yet another element that will no doubt elude me, apparently its mostly about balance and lines. This tends to satisfy my OCD so anyway I found this abandoned building and nearly got it right it's a little bit unbalanced but I didn't have my Tripod to hand.

ISO400 - F4.5 - Shutter 1\100 sec

I see a little silhouette-a of a man.......

Today was a challenge day where by I have been reading up on silhouette photography.

Firstly you'll need to use two functions on your camera:

Spot Metering (This uses 3% of the centre of the frame to measure the exposure)

AE Lock - Once the shutter button is half pressed, Press this button and it will lock the exposure measuring systems this means you can re frame the shot without the exposure settings changing due to changing light levels, its worth noting you might need to select AE lock from your setting if you have a duel use button like on my Pentax.

The only other thing to remember is when setting the metering point make sure you aim towards a bright part of the scene.

This was my first attempt from the war memorial in Leeds.



ISO 100 - F4 - Shutter 1/1250 300mm@ 97.3mm

Baby Jupiter ...

Now although I don't often hang about round toilets talking photos (as this can lead to various fines and or imprisonment) I couldn't help grabbing this quick pic of a poster wall montage at a club called baby Jupiter.

One of those moments wishing I had my DSLR but then thinking it was probably better that I didn't :-)

The Guardian Photography comp... In for a penny

I have decided to enter the Guardian weekly photo comp...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/series/in-pictures

The theme this week is Play and seen as the entry closing date is tomorrow at noon (cowboy time) I had to improvise sharpish!!



As if one night on it wasn't enough..............

Another brilliant night out has left me even worse.....

please see photo below..."enter funny and witty text"

Same settings as yesterday high ISO and low aperture, I had very little energy to do anything but Brodie was feeling quite sympathetic for me ..

Very Hung Over............

Not much to say as I have lost most of my  motor functions due to the amount of birthday alcohol that was consumed last night.

ISO 1600 - F5.6 - Shutter 0.2 sec (1/5)

It's not often Brodie sits on me but it was a healing moment  between man and cat



Here I have used a high ISO and low aperture to add grain and a soft background blur.

Birthday na na na na na....

After finishing work I was quickly driving home as I had a drinking date setup... I pulled over at the side of the road and setup my NEW gorillapod zoom and  camera.

ISO 200 - F8-11 - Shutter 1\2000

Leeds Urban Shoot... one time one time

This seems to be a reoccurring factor of my life now most mornings and nights leave me thinking about photography... not an entirely bad thing just an involved one.

This morning I woke up with an image in my head of a place i thought i had seen before this time it was in black and white so I ventured out and captured about 99% of what i saw in my dream...

ISO1600 - F8 - Shutter 1/125

After reading Digital Photographer I read a article about shooting black and white using a high ISO it adds a natural grain and ... well I likes it!

I found this one ... More Photoshop

Im starting to get a very unhealthy obsession with Black and white photographs.....



Charlie the Dog...

Another picture of Charlie smiling becasue he has been on a very very long walk...

Playing about with more waterfalls

Little Shot of a waterfall...again, Im starting to enjoy this...

ISO 100 - F22 - Shutter 0.8 sec

A-mazed by Sticks

Here's a quick short of some reeds or twigs... I added a B&W filter in PS and increased the intensity of the shadows and light...

ISO 800 - F5.6 - Shutter 1\100 sec

Yum Yum ...

Quick close up snap of my wife's lovely chocolate and rasberry cake mmmm.......

NB; Food above made by (http://www.stickypinny.co.uk/), added under marital duress.

Where for out thou Macro Lens..

Yet again I'm trying to take photos  of close up objects but It seems to hard without a proper macro Len's the thing i have tried is playing around with the aperture & focal length and if you need a great Depth of field calculator see the link below the picture.

ISO 800 - F5.6 - Shutter 1/10 sec

I'm only just starting to try to understand the fundamentals of what I can achieve with this but seen as I take a lot of outdoor shots why not!

http://www.dofmaster.com/dofjs.html

Possible one of my favourite Pictures...

Below is my further attempt to master the art of blurry water in motion

ISO 100 - Aperture F32 - Shutter 2.50 sec

Once I got this back and removed any spots I added a a Infrared filter and also an orange filter which highlighted the lightness of the shurbery!!

Bang and the spots are gone..

Right after a long long evening photoshoping my spotted pictures i have learned the value of checking and setting your camera up properly before starting a shoot.

Here was a un-spotted picture of the Dam near stanbury..

Jesus I'm seeing spots...

Following a brilliant walk round the Bronte waterfalls with my Dad I managed to bore him sufficiently... whilst trying yet again to improve my motion capture photography.

Sadly though in my naive state of mind i managed to miss the great big sodding spots on my photos yes you guess it dirt on the mirror / sensor..

So seen as i have never cleaned either before I searched the Internet for help.... the below website was devoted to it!

http://www.cleaningdigitalcameras.com/index.html

There are lots of videos and websites but after going through a few this was the best I found...

Sensor & Mirror cleaning

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d908uZZ2EnA

The funny thing was that I only saw the spot with an open aperture around F11 see if you can see the spot as below ;)

Evil Dead Landscapes......

After finding a setting on my camera that said Cross filter processing I decided to mess about, and its worth noting that when using this option my camera has to be set to Jpeg format.. I'm not sure why?  In tut olden days Cross processing was the procedure of deliberately processing film in a chemical solution intended for a different type of Image finish.

However there is no film involved and everything is

done within the camera...

The weather was very overcast and I may have over exposed the

picture

This was a complete fluke but I liked it so it made the cut instead of the above with a blue filter

Over all These are effects that could be obtained by Photoshop / GIMP etc.. without changing the base photograph,  but all in all quite a fun filled afternoon.

Inside with very little time and alot to do...

A quick snap trying yet again to pull off the macro bright closeup shot. Instead I decided to take a photograph of a shiny object. There is allot to be said about Polarizing / UV filters maybe ill add it to the ever expanding list of new toys (Not toys) that i want.

Just Below Orion's Belt

Following the final show of BBC2's Stargazing, I thought I would try another last ditch attempt sadly the clouds were not as good as the other night wubbish! as our wossy would say!!

If your trying out some star photography have a try using the below settings:
ISO: 100 (if your camera only goes down to 200 try checking in the settings to expand your ISO)
Aperture (Fstop): F/11
Shutter: 4 sec

You may need to play around with the setting to obtain your desired effect....

Another winters day caught with my IPhone

Today at work the winter showers showed a brief sign of coming back and although I didn't have my DSLR on me but I did have my IPhone so I just managed to take this pic from our office in the town centre.

The blog that was like war and peace

Although I have taken a few shots of the moon in the past this is the first time i have actively tried shooting stars (not the TV show or like Mark Chapman). I set up my tripod and took both my 18-55 mm lens and my 55-300 mm Tele lens. Usually when shooting the moon i would use a medium fstop and a fast shutter speed and my tele lens and as the moon kicks out quite allot of light I would say its easier but with the stars due to the fact they are far far away and don't emit as much light its not as easy.

The higher the ISO the more image noise gets captured so its a case of finding a part of the sky that's not covered in clouds and playing about either until you get it right or you get cold. Also the longer you leave the shutter open the more distortion you get due to the rotation of the earth.

I used a IPhone app called Star Walk (about £1.79) to find Orion and captured the below -- please note you may need to click and enlarge it!

F3.5 - 2 .50 Sec Shutter - ISO800 18-55mm @ 18mm

Also a handy couple of tricks I learned was using a tungsten white balance to bring out background stars and also editing the RAW image in PS and zooming in and cropping cant wait for the next clear night

New Year.. New Job and a New Hope (Oh Yes a Star Wars Reference)

Today was my first day within my new role based in Leeds town centre, as I was sat eating a lovely chorizo and chickpea soup (made by my wife / forced to add this @ Stickypinny.co.uk) I sat looking out and what most would consider to be a fairly bleak comercial landscape.

I however love this random picture as I wasn't trying to setup a forced shot quite the opposite in fact, seen as I took this through a high rise window Its come out rather well. I have edited this within PS adding a Black and white / Infra Red Filter.

Never underestimate always carrying your camera and taking a random pic, I did however think twice when walking through town as i got asked for spare change by a random crack head... think on :) 

Water Fall Shoot..

Today I had a day off and decided to walking to a waterfall, the walk was lovely apart from being in a valley and all i heard was the dueling banjos theme from deliverance.

following couple of shots were taken at a waterfall walk near where I live, the weather was perfect slightly overcast around early morning. My aim is to have a crack at taking moving water shots, firstly trying to freeze the shot using a high ISO and very quick shutter speed. The second is to create a blurry water effect by using a tripod and experimenting with longer exposures.

1/100 - F4 - ISO800

1/100 - F5 - ISO200

 1.00Sec - F39 - ISO200

 

1.00 Sec - F29 - ISO200

Although I learned many new things from my little walkabout one of the most important was that when slowing images down and increasing the duration of the shutter time the aperture or Fstop needs to be as high as possible (depending on time of day) to reduce how much light comes through.

I spent alot of time using manual and pratting with all the settings but if your short on time try changing your camera to TV or shutter priority mode.

WARNING .... Staring at the night sky can lead to cold and stiff necks!

Stumbled on a live show on BBC2 called stargazers which actually gave some good tips on photographing the night sky / stars. Sadly there was too much low level cloud coverage about so the show looks ok but nothing to do with stars!

30" / F5.6/ISO 800

I usually use a two second timer when taking long shutter shots but apparently you can hold a sheet of cardboard infront of the lens briefly too counter any vibrations your setup makes.

Also dont forget the eclipse tomorrow monring around 4/5AM

Whilst driving home one day!

I took this on my way home pulled up by the side of the moor and used the car head lights as a light source, then following a few added filters in PS

No Hangover but christ im tired...

Following New Years Eve everyone seems to be  feeling somewhat tired from the all night long party!

PJ day for all is on the cards!