With Easter coming closer day by day I was fiddling around this morning trying to create a photo to go on an Easter card for a friend. Easter bunnies are OK but I couldn’t find one suitable example in my box of tricks. Fortunately I’d already eaten all of the chocolate ones.
Then, that magic moment arrived for there, hidden away in a corner of the box lay two yellow chickens. What to do now. Hard boil an egg. Scoop out the contents and get the card going.
Next, another magic moment, Cheri’s email arrived with todays project and bingo, I was in business. The Easter card has been abandoned till the morrow. What do you think of this:
WAS THIS EGG A DOUBLE YOLKER?
Unfortunately it wasn’t a double yolkier but that didn’t spoil my fun.
Now how about a bit of rotation, here’s No. 1
HOPE THEY DON’T FALL OUT OF THEIR NEST.
And here is No.2
HANG ON TIGHT, WHAT WILL HAPPEN NOW?
This is what happened, No.3
ENOUGH, ENOUGH, I’VE HAD ENOUGH!
And finally, before I get too dizzy, Hoo roo for now.
In Photo 101, many of my outback images from South Australia show the State to be an arid landscape devoid of colour. To remove that impressions I thought I’d show you a few images of a green and wonderful South Australian playground. I promise, no technical details and minimal comment. So, here goes, not in any particular order:
A GREENISH START TO A GREAT STATE. BUTE, A PRETTY AND FRIENDLY SOUTH AUSSIE TOWN.
GREAT BEER AND HOSPITALITY IN BUTE,ANOTHER GREAT SOUTH AUSSIE TOWN WITH THE MANDATORY CORNER PUB. LOOKING TOWARDS WILPENA POUND, SOUTH AUSTRALIA. A MAGIC DESTINATION.STILL LOOKING TOWARDS ‘THE POUND’ THROUGH ROLLING GREEN HILLS’ANOTHER VIEW, THIS TIME LOOKING BACK TOWARDS THE POUND.RUNNING FROM THE APPROACHING RAIN, DON’T WANT TO GET THE HARLEY TOO DIRTY.HOUSE BOATS ON THE MIGHTY MURRAY RIVER, SOUTH AUSTRALIA.CRUISING ON THE MIGHTY MURRAY IN SOUTH AUSTRALIA’S RIVERLAND.
So there we have it, just a small part of an amazing Australian state where Adelaide, the State’s capital is known as the City of Churches.
Before I say,’that’s all folks’ to quote the cartoon character, here’s a teaser for some other time.
Note my new ride.
ALMOST INTO WESTERN AUSTRALIA FOR ‘THE PUDDING RUN’. THIS TIME ON HARLEY A ROAD KING.
I’m finding it difficult to get the time to chase fresh images for some of these exercises so today, again, I searched my files and found some samples of Edge and Alignment that may suit the challenge. Just for fun, I’ve added one that is aligned within the image frame, has the edge alright, but is a little different. Hope you enjoy them:
ONE VERTICAL, ONE ANGLED AND ONE WITH LOTS OF CURVES IN BETWEEN
My mate saw me coming with the camera at the ready and tried to close the sliding door. Too late, as another mate grabbed him, just as I pushed the go button.
This next image was made at the historic Cockatoo Island in Sydney Harbour. This derelict building was constructed by convicts in the early days of the settlement. It is now an historic site.
A MODERN CRANE FRAMED THROUGH A WINDOW APERTURE.
I made this following image on Cockatoo Island too. There are many tunnels on the island but this one in particular is well lit and an interesting example of the use of timber shoring in tunnels. I find the repitition interesting and the individual walking towards the camera gives a clue as to the tunnel’s dimensions. The focus is sharp and entering the tunnel makes you feel a little edgy.
VERTICALS AND HORIZONTALS – ALL IN A ROW
The next image was made through the upstairs window of a derelict double decker bus, abandoned at a deserted spot in one of South Australia’s great arid areas. In spite of the crop requirement for this assignment, I decided to be a naughty boy and ignore the instruction as cropping on the left would have chopped off the front of my mate’s Landrover. That’s mine with the spare on the roof bars. Secondly I wanted to preserve the integrity of the image in order that it conformed with the one that follows on.
LANDROVERS THROUGH THE WINDOW FRAME,
This next image is the almost complete window frame from which the above image was made. I’ve included it to show that from time to time, to preserve a photographic essay’s accuracy, cropping and post processing should be kept to an absolute minimum. The next two images should illustrate that fact. Unfortunately my lens was not wide enough to cover the whole window area.
BARE GROUND, THE HORIZON, CLEAR BLUE SKY AND NOT MUCH ELSE.
Now, here is last of the three bus window images:
NOT ON A REGULAR BUS ROUTE.
On the positive side though, the two rear windows are sharp and aligned. Spot on with requirements.
My final image is certainly sharp, in the focus area at least and the items visible in the background are aligned with the main aperture. Does it pass muster, I’m not sure but I like it never the less.
SHARP AND ALIGNED IN ITS OWN SPECIAL WAY
This final image is an example of the industrial detritus on display at Cockatoo Island in Sydney harbour. It is an industrial archaeologist’s paradise.
So, that’s it from me. Tonight I’ve spared you from technical detail. However suffice to say the data is available should you be interested.
This evening, at their usual time, just as our evening meal was being readied, a pair of magpies landed on the kitchen window sill, asking for their evening snack.
By chanced the camera was nearby and through the almost clean window( I obviously missed some grime when I cleaned up last night) I grabbed the following shot:
MAGPIES VISITING THE SCENE OF A DIRTY WINDOW
They peck at the window pane and make their signature warble to attract our attention. Just out of focus in the upper right corner one of their many mates can be seen, just waiting its turn.
I thought that this image would add interest to my post of yesterday.
Today’s tips, “Place a glass object against a totally white background’ and ‘ Shine an artificial light source on it’, stimulated my poor old brain into action and the following image of a cut glass bowl is the result:
RED, RED AND MORE RED.
How was my image created you may ask? Firstly, I placed the bowl on a photographic grey card and put the red rear light from my push bike behind it with its lens flush with the bowl. Then, believe it or not, I hung a white sheet back about 3 feet from the bowl. With the camera on the tripod I turned the red light on and the room lights off. With my lens set at 50mm and the aperture at f2.8, the exposure was 1/30th second, ISO 100.
Then, thinking about ‘interacting with glass’, ‘looking through’, ‘unconventional surfaces’ and ‘a window’ I decided how tomato my second image.
Every late afternoon, a group of magpies (they are black and white native birds) arrive in our yard for a snack. The cheekiest sit on the kitchen’s window sill and rap on the glass until the window is opened and they each receive a little bit of bread. Great opportunity to work with the hints, so, armed with the necessary permission from ‘she who must be obeyed’, I smeared the bottom of one of the window panes with vaseline to make it almost opaque. Having done so, I waited, camera in hand for the magpies to arrive. Today of all days, only one of the mob ventured onto the sill. I quickly grabbed the shot, slid open the window and presented the bird with its modelling fee, a piece of crust.
My next task was to remove the smeared vaseline from the window pane and immediately thereafter, our usual state of domestic bliss returned to normal . I was not injured during this episode and here is the image:
MAGPIE THROUGH A SMEARY GLASS WINDOW PANE.
On this occasion I wasn’t concerned about camera shake as I knew the image would be blurred by the vaseline . So , with the lens set at 70mm, aperture at f2.8 I wasn’t concerned as I readied for the shot that the shutter speed would be only 1/20 second at ISO 100.
Overall, I’m pleased with the outcome of both images and the hints given were of great assistance.
One of my favourite treasures is my father’s cigarette case. Dad was born in 1905. In his early 20’s, as a young school teacher, he was transferred to a one man public school at a little village in western New South Wales called, Moombooldool, thats right, not a typo. All that remains of the place now is an unattended railway station and nothing else.
Dad’s nick name was ‘Lone Wolf’ and when he was transferred back to Sydney in 1933, the Moombooldool towns folk presented him with a cigarette case with a wolf and the date, 1933 encircled by a wreath of wheat, attached to the front and his initials, FC, engraved on the reverse. The case never left his side, it was if it was fused to him. As he was a chain smoker, the case was always full.
Dad’s been dead for nearly 50 years now and I’ve always treasured his cigarette case. For a while I carried it around, it was as if he was close by. Now it sits in pride of place with other momentos of my parent’s lives.
So, here is an image of my treasure showing the face of the case in it’s entirety.
On the technical side, the image was made using a Nikkor 24-70mm lens set at 70mm, aperture f2.8 at 1/25th sec, ISO 100. The camera was tripod mounted as I like to adhere to the rule that the shutter speed should never be lower that the maximum focal length of the lens in use, i.e., for this lense, minimum shutter speed should be 1/70th second at 70mm.
MY FATHER’S PRIZED CIGARETTE CASE.
For the close up image of the front and back of the case I changed to a Nikkor 105mm f2.8 Micro lens. This allows me to get the front of the lens extremely close to the subject and in some settings enables the image to be life size, very handy when photographing insects and the like.
On the technical side, for the front, the exposure was 1/5th second at f4.5, ISO 100, tripod mounted.
Here is my image of the wolf and wreath of wheat on the front of the case:
THE LONE WOLF, 1933.
Now for the reverse, This image was made at 1/4th second, aperture f4.2, ISO 100:
DAD’S ENGRAVED INITIALS, FC.
Making these images brought back many happy memories and tonight I’ll give the case a loving polish and place it back in its safe haven.
By the way, my apologies for the moire in the last two images. Unavoidable sometimes with my camera body.
Time prevented me from visiting our local agriculture show this weekend passed which would have provided plenty of opportunities for images suitable for this exercise.
Instead, I visited my archives and played around with a number of images which took my fancy. Taking advantage of Photoshop’s tools for copying, cropping and resizing my images, the following just popped onto my desktop.
Hope you enjoy them as much as I did fiddling with the originals. Here we go, full size No 1:
Next, it was my intention to insert the first pair of horses and their riders but for some reason the image was not allowed even though It did meet the size requirements. Instead, I extracted and enlarged( no pun intended) the two young women standing on the median strip, let’s call them extraction No 1A and here they are:
TWO HAPPY TOURISTS.
For full size image No. 2, I chose an image I made in our local art gallery at the opening of an exhibition. A good crowd had gathered to see the artworks on show and one individual’s shoes caught my eye. Here is the full size image, No.2:
CROWD AT GOULBURN REGIONAL ART GALLERY
Note the footwear worn by the woman in the yellow dress in the front row. Here they are, Extraction 2A.
I’M WATCHING YOU.
Goulburn has been fortunate to have many colourful floats in recent parades, I thought the following one was a ripper so here it is a full size No 3;
IN THE STOCKS FOR A FLOGGING
The Red Coat looked like a good subject for extraction so here he is, extraction No 3A:
WATCH OUT, THIS WILL HURT.
In celebrating our town’s 152nd birthday, a short ceremony was held in our central park and a birthday cake was presented to the assembled gathering by town dignitaries and local school students. Here we have a group of proud students and the birthday cake, full size image No 4:
HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU
The cake, a representation of our local War Memorial, obviously presented itself for extraction and here it is, Extraction No 4A ;
COME AND GET IT!
Our art gallery has many attractions, including regular talks by local artists, sculptors and playwrights. Recently one of our playwrights presented a floor talk about a coming production based on an Aboriginal man who served with distinction with Australian Forces in World War I. Full size image No5 shows some of the audience for her floor talk and here it is:
IN INTERESTED AND ATTENTIVE AUDIENCE.
The playwright in the striped blouse caught my eye and so here is Extraction No 5A:
YOUR GUEST TODAY IS ON MY RIGHT.
The Salvation Army always supports our parades and the 152nd birthday celebration was no exception. Here in full size image No 6 is their contingent:
PROUD, INSTEP AND IN TUNE.
The marcher in the from line wearing the sun glasses is perfectly positioned for extraction and here she is, No 6A.
Finally, our local art gallery is always full of interesting people and on a recent visit I made the following image, full size No.7:
‘AS I WAS SAYING’.
The young lady facing the camera seemed a perfect extraction for this exercise and here she is, Extraction No7A:
WELL NOW, WHY ME?
A few technical details to round off this blog, all of the images were taken hand held using a 24-70mm f2.8 Nikkor lens. The majority of the images were taken at f2.8.
Photoshop CC2014 was used in the post production, cropping and resizing of the images.
I selected the images from my archives based on their resolution and original size.
Landscapes offer such a wide variety (no pun intended) of photographic opportunities. Quite often too they invite you to sharpen your cropping skills to get rid of unwanted blemishes or if they are ‘wilderness’ shots, to get rid of the signs of any human presence. Often, those signs are on the edges of images so the crop instead of savage post processing is the way to go.
I took the following image on the edge of one of Australia’s vast arid plains. As you can see, on the left hand edge towards the horizon there is evidence of a road.
SPLENDID ISOLATION EXCEPT FOR THE GLIMPSE OF THE ROAD.
What to do? Attack with Photoshop’s clone stamp tool and replace the road with shifted pixels. No, in this case the smart and rapid way is to crop. Not much of the image will be lost and the sense of isolation will still be there. Here’s the outcome of the crop:
AFTER A GENTLE CROP
The sense of space and isolation remains, time has been saved and the integrity of the work has not been compromised.
I can’t resist the temptation to pop in a couple of other Australian outback images. We live on a particularly arid continent, with vast areas of flat, sparsely populated country. Never the less we do have some outstanding landscapes. Here is another example:
MORE FLAT COUNTRY AFTER GOOD RAINS.
As you can see, it’s pretty flat, so when it does rain, the run off is minimal. I bet you can see why we call it the ‘Red Centre’.
Of course we do have occasional hilly country in the outback, and not too far away, as the crow flies, there are some pretty colourful hills we call ‘The Painted Desert’.
THESE COLOURFUL MOUNDS JUST POP UP OUT OF NOWHERE.
We also have what we call ‘The High Country’, it’s thousands of miles from where these last four images were made. It snows in ‘The High Country’ and there are ski resorts nestled amongst our mountains there. They can be reached by sealed highways or the adventurous can take the bush tracks through some great scenery and landscape photography opportunities. Here is one such opportunity, taken from a spot along the ‘Davies Plains’ track:
LANDSCAPE OFF THE DAVIES PLAINS TRACK, SNOWY MOUNTAINS.
I know it’s in the mountains, but please, don’t ask me why it’s called ‘Davies Plains’ track. Just let me say it’s the Aussie way.
With the exception of image No2, all of these photographs are straight off the camera.
Thanks for being so patient. I love the place and have to show it off whenever I get the chance.
Hoo roo for now.
PS: How could I forget about my hero, Ansel Adams. This is how he may have photographed the last two of my images:
PAINTED DESERT WITH APOLOGIES TO ANSEL ADAMS.OFF THE DAVIES PLAINS TRACK WITH APOLOGIES TO ANSEL ADAMS
Motorcycles and Teddy Bears of most descriptions seldom mix and are rarely thought of nor seen other than in their actual physical size. It follows therefore that to see the two together, almost joined at the hip, as the saying goes, would give the observer an idea of their representative scale.
So, seeing the two together in my backyard, I thought, here is a combination fitting for day 14 of Photo 101. I’m no engineer or mathematician so I’m unable to calculate the scale of the bear in relation to the scale of the bike. For the second requirement of Day 14, close observation will reveal to the viewer my selected viewpoint. No prize is on offer for the correct observation and no bear was injured in the making of this image.
By the way, this bear has never been down to the woods unaccompanied.
However, I will reveal all in a later post if necessary.
HARLEY BEAR AND HARLEY DAVIDSON ENJOYING A BREAK FROM THE OPEN ROAD.
I was sitting in an open cafe on the first floor of the Queen Victoria Building in George Street, Sydney, camera at the ready to do some candid street type photography of the passers by.
Looking around I saw, in the stainless steel underside of an adjacent escalator, reflections of the people passing by on the floor beneath me. A golden opportunity for some movement photos.
To avoid problems with the light I selected ISO 640. That setting suits my camera well when the light is only adequate. I wanted to freeze the motion of the people crossing the tiled floor so I selected 1/8th second at aperture f5.6. I should mention that from where I was sitting I couldn’t see the floor beneath me, only the reflection in the stainless steel sloping away above me and it was inappropriate for me to change my viewpoint.
Because the lighting was a mixture of fluorescent and incandescent I set my camera’s white balance at Auto to allow the camera to sort out the lighting issues. Then manually I selected the best focus point on the escalator and set the lens at 120mm . At this focal length, the only thing to be seen in the viewfinder was the reflected area on the lower floor. The following image shows, totally by a fluke and not my intention, a stationary foot as the body to which it was attached blurred with motion. The image was made hand held, elbows braced against the cafe table.
TWO MOVING FIGURES WITH A STATIONARY SHOE.
As the notes for today include a reference to panning, I stood in my back yard adjacent to a main road to photograph the speedsters as they shot past. I didn’t have to wait long. Just as I’d set my camera at 1/10 second at f18, ISO 200, 70mm lens, I heard a car approaching from my left. I began to pan from right to left and as the car hit the centre of the viewfinder I pressed the go button. Why did I pan from right to left? I wanted to capture the wheels of the car turning and their action would have been less interesting had I panned from left to right along the car’s direction of travel. Here is the result:
PANNING A MOVING VEHICLE.
I was unable to resist putting this next ‘movement’ image here. As you can guess, the event is a cycle race in town centre. I think it’s a fun shot with the casual observer and his dog stationary waiting to cross the road while the peloton rockets past. I took the shot laying down on the medium strip in the centre of the road to the amusement of other spectators. My camera settings were 1/40 second at f11, ISO 200, 24mm lens. My point of focus was the dalmatian.
THE PELOTON AND THE DALMATION
Hope you had as much fun looking as I did shooting.
CREAKINGBONES 