While I’ve never really considered this blog as a “photography blog” in the true sense, it is mostly about my photos, so sometimes, the photos just have to speak for themselves; so here’s a thousand words:
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Tag: sand
2014 Deck – Week 34
A Saturday midday upon the wall.
The breeze was nice, there were very few people around, and I paused in my walking to see what these rocks would look like from a lower perspective… 🙂
1/320s @ f/13.0, 24mm, ISO 200
Click on the image to see it in the Gallery along with other photos from this year’s Deck Project
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2014 Deck – Week 33
Christ Church was doing some fund-raising, a friend of mine asked me to take a few photos of the church to use in the press release. The only time I had to make a pass by the church was an early morning on the way to work.
I was thinking that it’s only for a press release, so it doesn’t have to be that good, right?
I was in a bit of a hurry, but I snapped a few, then jumped back in the car and headed to work. There was some nice clouds behind the church from one angle, and kept remembering this as I downloaded the images to process, I knew that my attitude toward the shot was less than optimal and I had deliberately exposed for the building and not the skies (since it was just for the press), as the sun was rising behind the church, all that detail would be blown out.
I thought that this would be a good time to experiment with what I had read about prior to acquiring a full-frame camera, that it can capture a very wide dynamic range in one exposure.
True enough, the entire sky was blown out in the exposure when I downloaded it.
But remembering what I had just seen in the sky, I worked the sliders to see what sky detail I could retrieve from the RAW file:
And I was amazed, so I decided to process it better than I had originally intended. I made slight adjustments in Lightroom to bring some detail back in the sky while retaining the detail and brightness of the building. Then I took the image into Nik HDR Efex with the express intent to use a single exposure black-and-white tone mapping technique on it, and the results were great. After a few minor adjustments once I took it back to Lightroom, this was the result:
Christ Church, Waterloo St., Georgetown, Guyana
Someone asked me it I “photoshopped” it, well, I didn’t use photoshop, I used no masks, no layers, nothing like that, just what I described above. Everything I needed was in the RAW file, if I weren’t in such a hurry and treating the action of taking the photo so lacklustrely, then I may have actually taken multiple exposures for a proper HDR 🙂
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2014 Deck – Week 32
As I was titling this photo I was somewhat reminded of the TV Series “Bones”, maybe it was a recent discussion on the show that prompted the title “The Wood in the Frame”.
I saw this discarded wooden frame amidst the rocks on the seawall. and by contorting myself and peering through it I could see that I might be able to frame some of the Jhandi flags within it… I could not get both my head and the camera into the space available (and I didn’t really want to move the frame), so I know my focus might be spotty, so I was fully prepared for some crazy images to come out.
I had angled slightly down to ensure I got the base of the frame, so it was expected that I’d most likely get the wood lying across the frame in focus. 🙂
I think it came out nicely. (Yes, I know, most of you would have moved the frame so you can get the angle right, the focus right, everything right… I like the experimental method over absolute perfection sometimes)
1/250s @ f/10, 24mm, ISO200
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2014 Deck – Week 26
For those of you who were there at the presentation at Moray House (9th October 2014) or have subsequently seen the video that Fidal did and posted to his YouTube Channel, or even saw the images from that presentation which I posted to my site in the Oniabo Gallery, you’ll have gathered that I spend some time at the seawalls.
I was about to say that I think it’s “a magical place”, but that just reminded me of Coleson’s line in the “Marvel Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D” series where he keeps saying that Tahiti is a magical place….
But… maybe the seawall is magical, I don’t spend a lot of time there, but when I do I enjoy it, every moment of it… and I do get some lovely images…
In a way, I go there to unplug from the daily work, the constant access to and intrusion of technology… If anyone saw me while I was taking this photo I am about to share, they would have seen a huge grin on my face… because I was thinking just these thoughts when I saw this:
Click on the image to see it in the Gallery along with other images from this year’s Deck Project.
2014 Deck – Week 24
What can I say…?
It’s a photo… of some items left after a Hindu religious ritual on the seawall…
The colours caught my eye, the dropped and discarded incense sticks caught my eye… and I thought it would make a good photo.
It’s a photo. 🙂
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Sea-breeze Sleeper
After posting Week 22’s photo, I did go back and look at the other photo from the week that had caught my eye…
Asleep under what little shade is offered by the tree so wanting of leaves, a man is kept cool by the sea-breeze in the hot midday sun.
I did some dodging/burning in the area where the sleeper was 🙂
50mm, 1/2000s, f/4.0, ISO100
Click on the image to see it in the Black & White Gallery along with many other black and white images.
2014 Deck – Week 22
I don’t always get a week that’s full of photographs, so on some weeks, like Week 22, there are slim pickings, and I have to choose either the more appealing photo, or one that no one would get…
I have the flu, so processing one that’s appealing is easier 😀
Maybe some time later, I’ll do the other one that I was considering 😉
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2014 Deck – Week 20
This week I got access to my third DSLR Camera, I now have access to a full frame Canon EOS 6D, and as with both my previous Cameras, I wanted the first exposure to be a good one, not necessarily great or extra-special, but a good one.
I decided this time that instead of just finding a nice scene to capture that I know would come out well, I wanted to do an experiment… I know that I would get a vignette if I used a lens made for a crop sensor camera on a full-frame camera, so I thought I’d try to use it creatively… not sure what others would think, but I think it came out rather well…
So, now I’ve tried it, and probably won’t be doing it again 😀
Canon EOS 6D, Sigma 10-20mm Lens
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2014 Deck – Week 14
I am scheduled to do a presentation of some of my select works on October 9th at Moray House (part of the Moray House Trust’s foray into encouraging local photographer to express their vision of their art), and I am very nervous about the whole thing, I am not sure what to say.
I often don’t mind sharing my work, but to talk about it makes me feel queasy; I’m usually afraid I’ll either come off as not knowing what it is I’m talking about, or as being pretentious, trying to pass off what I do as “art”…
But, I’ve committed to it and I’ll either make a complete mess of the whole thing or come out the other end, not much worse for wear 🙂
The title I chose for my Seascape collection is “Oniabo”, an Arawak word meaning water, I’ve decided to use an extended version of this title for this presentation at Moray House, which will include most or all of the 6 photos in the Oniabo series as well as other images at the seawall.
That being said, the photo I offer for this week was one under consideration to be part of that presentation, but was subsequently side-lined. Although it in no way resembles Hiroshi Sugimoto’s work, it reminded me that Sugimoto’s Seascapes collection is the reason I had decided to begin a Seascape project in the first place,
Sugimoto begins his description of his series like this:
Water and air. So very commonplace are these substances, they hardly attract attention―and yet they vouchsafe our very existence.
My seascapes invariably often include some “land” or earth (a third element?), but this one I titled “Born of Air and Water” as a reminder to myself of Sugimoto’s words.
Canon EOS 60D | Sigma 10-20mm | 10mm, f/4.0, ISO100
Click on the image to see it in the Gallery along with other images from this year’s Deck Project
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