Dancing Shades of Light

I’m very tired now.

Via twitter, I think via smashmag but not sure, comes this link to some fabulous long exposure shots. I know already where my next set of shots will come from, when I get my act together (like tomorrow if the weather cooperates). These are gorgeous, however.

Yes, it’s been a while.

This from a beach clean up the other day. My opinion of that can be read here but for now…This was shot in colour with a 17-85, RAW and the needful done in Photoshop. The objective was to try and take a picture of rubbish that was not too prosaic. I wanted to try and make a pile of rubbish attractive. This is not easy for a pile of empty beer cans, let me tell you.

I’ve decided I like doing it that way if I’ve a RAW file. And then I use - this sounds sacrilegious - the white balance sliders to adjust it.

And I like the results a lot.

These photographs were taken from a training session with the Irish Coast Guard, the Irish Kitesurfing Association, Pure Magic Kitesurfing and your friendly local kite photographer

I was in Skerries last night.

I freely recognise that I am not getting out to take as many photographs as I would like and hopefully tonight I will get to Rush or Loughshinny or somewhere like that.

Last night I discovered the hard way - not that I needed telling - that I was tired. I shot 48 filtered photographs with a lens that I thought was on autofocus but…wasn’t. I guess apertures of 29 and 32 in some cases get me out of jail. Some others were complete fiascos…I really should have suspected when the autofocus appeared to be working even when almost no light was falling on the sensor.

I’m having mixed feelings about the filters. I’ve discovered that you can raise merry hell afterwards too by playing with the white balance in Photoshop AS WELL. So this was shot with a Tobacco grad on top of a blue grad and an ND grad. This is because I - proving how tired I am - mixed up the blue and the lighter ND grad. I really wanted the extra stop with the extra bit of ND. I then went and messed with the white balance and the black slider in Adobe RAW and wound up with this. I like it quite a lot.

What I particularly like about it is not so much related to the lighting, however, but to the perspective. I think that rock is at most 2 metres tall. In fact, I’d say it’s less because I think I’m taller than it which would make it 1.74 at most. Either way, it’s not that big as rocks go. I managed to make it look - provided you don’t check out the sand in too much detail - look altogether bigger and cliffier. You could shoot a sea battle in that space if you were minded enough.

It isn’t very often that I venture into the UK so normally you’d expect that issues surrounding photographer rights there might not impact on me too much. This, unfortunately, is not the case with respect to plans by the National Trust to nail down their own byelaws on the use of cameras in areas which they hold in trust for the common good of the people of the United Kingdom because some of those areas are in Northern Ireland and I believe included amongst them is the Giants’ Causeway, a place I plan to photograph sometime in the not too distant future.

From Amateur Photography:

The National Trust’s rules (pictured on page 2) are set out on the website of the National Trust Photo Library (NTPL), a body that sells images taken by the Trust’s own photographers.

They state: ‘Images taken at National Trust properties may not be submitted to photo libraries, agencies or on-line providers or provided directly to image buyers.’

There is some argument on how this impacts on people who put their photographs up on flickr for example.

The Royal Photographic Society has a debate on the subject here and boards.ie has one here. I’m not totally important here in the grand scheme of things but I can’t see how the National Trust can claim to own copyright on the Giants Causeway. If you believe in a higher being, I guess they are paying licence fees to God. If you don’t, the geological event that caused the Giants Causeway is long gone.

One of the key reasons I bought a 40D last year was to do more chrono shots. Obviously I haven’t been taking so many kite shots this year because I really haven’t got the time, which is a pity. This one is one of my favourites though.

The photographs were taken in Tarifa a couple of weeks ago; I only got around to doing the stitch at the end of last week and I really didn’t know how it would work out. Technically, most of the shots were at the limit of what’s really doable with the 500mm zoom Sigma, and so they can be somewhat soft on occasion. I do like the lighting a lot. There’s a lot more detail of the kitesurfer than there are with the 22 shot epics that I did a couple of times last year. All told, I was very happy with this one when it was done and of course, because there were comparatively few frames, it didn’t take me all day to do.

For me, this one is quite special for a number of reasons. I have three book projects on the back burner at the moment (SoFoBoMo continues to  go nowhere) but this will definitely go into one of them.

The Volvo Ocean Race is due in Galway shortly. I wanted to go but now, here we are, middle of May and I have, coming up, a major kite gig, a house move, and all sorts of stuff that’s taking up my time. If you’re interested in it and photography, toodle over to Marcus and see what a little joy he has lined up for 2 lucky photographers.

I am so totally envious now it is painful.

I was told before I went out that the tide was really, really low. This was not music to my ears.

We also won’t talk about my tripod related grief.

When I got to the High Rock this evening, there were a few guys fishing there. They obviously knew each other well because they were slagging the hell out of each other like the world was going to end. I got a lot of entertainment from them while I tried to paint the sky interesting colours.

This is stacked blue/tobacco and a heavy ND. I had other plans but since there was very little water where I needed it, they didn’t come to fruition. Lot of 30 second exposures and a 10% ROI shots wise. Some of them were truly woeful.

I need a few more filters.

Two missions today. The first, already accomplished, the second will be later tonight provided I feel quite like it. For now…however, flowers.

I took the macro lens out today. I had everything else but to be honest, I didn’t feel like opening the camera bag constantly taking this out changing that, and also, it was the Botanic Garden, your choice of flowers. Forget the squirrels I had to be home at 12 in order to be stood up again. Squirrels next time, right.

I don’t quite know which of the 18 photographs I liked in the end to post so there could be any number of them over the coming days, potentially related or unrelated to the actual text. My mind is wandering a bit more.

Anyway, unlike most of the other shots I actually liked and post processed, this is one of the ones I really was aiming for - low-ish on contrast and colour palette, but still distinctive. I’m not naturally a macro photographer, nor naturally a flower photographer, so it’s always a battle for me to try and do something that looks a little less ordinary. Also, Dear Sweet Holy Lord, the depth of field at 2.8 while gorgeous, is hard to work with and the wind was blowing this morning.

I think - sometimes - I don’t spend enough time looking at what’s available on the web in terms of photography resources and of course I still haven’t fixed up all the bloglinks to the left here. But I would like to get more inspiration from elsewhere. I’ve a nasty feeling that despite some serious lack of respect for HDR and IR in the past that one of those will be my next toy.

Must think about this carefully.