52 Week 4: The Old and the New

I spent yesterday in London with Mike and his girlfriend, Taylor. We ended up heading out to Greenwich Park, where we were treated to a short burst of excellent light in an otherwise grey and fairly gloomy day.

My 52 shot for the week is this view of the Old Royal Naval College, with Canary Wharf in the background. I particularly like the contrast in ages of the buildings, and also the bright evening sunlight set against a threatening sky.



More photos of the day to follow soon.

52 Week 3: Flame

Week 3 already, and I've been having a go at shooting a candle flame:

Getting the exposure right was hard work, and I'm not sure I've quite nailed it. The candle was the only light in the room, and I shot at 1/80th of a second at f/8. I took focus from the wick before lighting the candle, and then switched to manual.

I'd like to try this again with a stem candle so that the flame can be isolated from the background - this one was the best I had to work with!

Comments on this and the other photos are greatly appreciated.

For those of you just joining us...

Given that I'm resurrecting this blog after more than a year, I think it's time I brought things up to speed.

I graduated from Flight Training Europe (or FTE Jerez, following the rebrand) in early April 2010, having completed the Commercial Pilot's Licence with Instrument Rating and Multi-Crew Cooperation Course (or CPL/IR + MCC, otherwise known as fATPL - aviation is a world of abbreviations). I was invited to stay on in Jerez to work on the development of the computer-based training (CBT) packages, and to be general IT dogsbody and resident photographer. It was this latter role which gave me the opportunity to do things like Air-to-Air photography, which was, in a word, awesome. Examples can be found on my Flickr photostream.

I finished working in Jerez at Christmas, deciding it was high time someone else had a go and I got to know the UK again, and I'm now back in High Wycombe hunting for flying jobs. In the meantime, I'm trying to keep this blog going, and also the aforementioned 52 photo project.

Incidentally, I've been asked to advertise the blog of my dear sister, who rejoices in the screen-name of muffin-nuffin. She's studying Archaeology (although all she ever seems to talk about is cricket at the moment) and she reacts violently to any mention of Time Team.

52 Week 2: Water

Week two, and I've had a go at photographing water droplets:



As a first attempt I'm quite proud of it, although I intend to revisit the idea sometime and make improvements

The setup for this was a Speedlite (Canon 580 EX II) off to the left of the camera, firing at a white piece of paper positioned behind the tray. Camera was in Manual, set to 1/250 at f/9.0 on my 17-85mm IS lens. Flash was in manual mode as well, set to 1/32 of full output. The colour cast was obtained by setting the white-balance to tungsten (on a daylight-balanced flash) in post-processing.

I'd like to thank Gavin Hoey for his excellent video tutorial on the subject.

52 Week 1

Yes folks, I'm finally resurrecting the blog after a year and a half. Update to follow in due course, but first...

I'm starting a 52. For those of you unfamiliar with the concept, the idea is to take a photograph a week. I'm not setting myself any particular rules other than trying to make them something a little different from my usual stuff (aircraft, event portraiture, etc.) where I can. This is not to say I won't resort to the odd aircraft shot now and again, though!

Just this once I'm stretching the definition of the week (being the week of 1st-7th January) to include a photo taken late on New Year's Eve (I did try and take some of the same subject after midnight, in fairness, but the model had wandered off...).

Anyway, meet Gaskell:

Gaskell belongs to (or should that be 'hassles for food and attention') my girlfriend, fireflyphoenix, and is here indicating her displeasure at being woken up by a strange man pointing a camera at her without so much as a by-your-leave, and without offering any food by way of compensation.

Happy New Year everyone!