What would you say makes your house a home? Or any house a home?
Hopefully its an object and not *huge*… I’m wanting to take photos similar to Irving Penn’s Cigarette series:
Please leave a comment.
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What makes a house a home?
January 6, 2009 by cat
Category University | Tags: | 11 Comments
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Bolton Big Switch On
November 23, 2008 by cat
This afternoon I had a press pass for the Bolton Big Switch On.
Photographed the event for APNA News. Met a fair few of the local freelance press photographers in the Manchester area (sadly didn’t get any contact details for anyone) and some of the staff photographers from various news papers. Have to say they all seem a rather friendly bunch!
There may be more photos at a later date – got so much to share!
Category APNA, Event, Portraits, Press | Tags: | No Comments
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Panorama fun
October 10, 2008 by cat
This morning I thought I’d have a play with my new lens – Sigma 10-20mm f4-5.6. Someone on my flickr feed had some time playing with them in Photoshop’s tool yesterday and inspired me to play with my toy.
The original images were taken from our front gate in a circle to include the *whole* view from there. Maybe next time I’ll do a section of the view and more of it in detail.
Category Fine Art | Tags: | No Comments
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Shinies – 10-20mm Sigma, Canon 85mm and Canon EOS 50E
September 26, 2008 by cat
Canon EOS 50E
“Canon EOS 50E (film body) with BP-50 battery pack. Bought for £50 from Cash Converters on September 19th 2008. Lens 50mm f/1.8 (auto-focus, plastic fantastic) bought last year sometime.” Caption from gallery
Sigma 10-20mm f4-5.6 and Canon 85mm f1.8
Both beautiful lenses – really fallen for the Sigma, lets pray it doesn’t do what the last one did!You can see the test/sample images I’ve take with the Sigma and Canon. The EOS 50E test images will happen next week when I have chance to develop the rolls!
Category New Cameras | Tags: | No Comments
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Back to the daily grind!
September 26, 2008 by cat
This week I started back at Manchester Metropolitan University. I am officially a second year! With that means that my student loan has come through.
Do you know what that means boys and girls?? Shopping time! I’ve bought myself two new lenses – Canon 85mm f1.8 USM and the Sigma 10-20mm f4-5.6. I also bought a new camera body, Canon EOS 50E, one beautiful film body! Yes, a automagic film body, but it works nicely along side the digital body. Sadly, I haven’t been able to get the lithium batteries that the 50E requires, but I do have the battery pack to go with it which takes AA batteries instead! Not to forget about the ordered things that have still to come though the mail – sensor cleaner, filters for the lenses (don’t forget to get your UV filters to protect the front element!) and a few other odds and sods for the camera bag.
This does, however, mean that my dear Epson R340 printer is being dicky. The yellow printing head is clogged and has been quite rapidly not printing things right for a couple of weeks. Kian is working his technical genius on it to help me out (I really don’t want to buy another printer for another 6months or so – when this one hits 3years old I was planning on replacing it…). Annoyingly, Epson feel that it is time to replace my printer and offer no way of repairing it – only replacing with an all-in-one unit (further down the scale then the R340, but *slightly* cheaper!).
Things that are happening at uni – part of our education this term is that we must enter 2 photographic awards/competitions/contests, one of them being the Nikon Discovery Awards. There are a few people that don’t like the idea, but I’m not too sure that their reasons are that logical – the work, if chosen by our tutors, *might* have a chance of winning a place at an exhibition and having their work printed and publicised by Nikon and the British Journal of Photography. As it is, the brief for it is so broad that I don’t feel restricted by it in anyway! Its getting us ready for next term where we *must* put on a public exhibition. So, on top of the Nikon Discovery Awards I need to choose another photographic competition to enter before Christmas. Got a couple in mind.
Still debating going to the fencing competition this weekend – its the Manchester Cadet. I’ve not been around the fencing scene since last December – got the next lenses and camera I want to try out. We Shall See.
Category New Cameras, Projects, University | Tags: | No Comments
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Today’s fun
September 26, 2008 by cat
Today I decided to re-organise my gallery – have a look.
I’ve also put on-line my photographs of the Anti-War/Labour Party Conference Protests (flickr and my gallery).
Tony BlairCategory Blog Maintenance, Event, Portraits | Tags: | No Comments
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Lighting Playtime: Stofen, Vivitar 285HV, Canon 10D and Blown Back Drops
September 19, 2008 by cat
I wasn’t much in the mood for arranging my face today so I thought I’d try an idea that’s been bouncing around my head for a few days – a blurred, backlit portrait.
Take:
Canon 10D
Vivitar 285HV
Stofen
Cable release
PC Sync cable
tripod
lighting stand
and a blank piece of wallMix together in an appropriate way. Camera pointing at subject, flash (on 1/2 power) with stofen behind subject at shoulder height. Subject, in this case, holding the cable release. Auto-focus off and focused at the very minimum.
The only post-processing done – added a vignette, image size and saved as jpg!
Category Fine Art, Lighting Experiments, Portraits, Self-Portraits | Tags: | No Comments
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Lighting Playtime – On Board Flash Defuser
September 16, 2008 by cat
As the caption from the images says:-
“Captured with Canon 10D, on camera flash with a home-made “stofen”-like defuser about a foot away from the subject. The defuser is made out of a film reel canister with a cut about a cm wide to accommodate the flash unit.”For a while I’ve been having to use sheets of paper with any photograph that needed flash (and not using the Vivitar 285HV) with under 5ft between camera and subject (many of my portraits, macro-ish shots, etc) to defuse the on board flash. Well, no more! I now have a defuser and it came free with film!
On top of all that – I’ve not had to edit the file, just convert it to jpg.
Category Animals, DIY Lighting, Lighting Experiments, Portraits | Tags: | No Comments
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Lighting Playtime: Stofen, Vivitar 285HV, Canon 10D and new hair colour
August 30, 2008 by cat
The last few days I’ve been playing around with the flashgun and how to use the light on camera. Trying to get my head around how to use this strobe in portraits on the go and with little prep.
The strobe is in the hot-shoe so, about 4inches above lens, pointed straight forwards at the subject(ie, me) on 1/16th power. 75mm, 1/125th sec, f.4. Used a hand trigger – wired clone – and tripod slightly higher than the default height.
This photo is manually focused and for once looks to be spot on..
So what do you think of the colour?? It was meant to be a redy-brown, but it is over my old purple hair. 🙂
Category Lighting Experiments, Portraits, Self-Portraits | Tags: | No Comments
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love bird at the armouries
August 6, 2008 by cat
A couple of weeks ago I was chaperoning Kian’s younger brother with his Dutch girlfriend while she was visiting.
128/365 (BTW)
This was taken after a day out at the Royal Armouries in Leeds. It just so happens to be Kian’s youngest brother’s favourite place to spend an afternoon/whole summer holiday and there’s a Weta exhibition on atm.
This photo started life as a shot out of my Canon 10D. It had a large dirty white door in the centre that has at somepoint been kicked and looked rather unsightly. So I chopped it together.
Now the question is reader – can you see the chop?
Category Portraits | Tags: | 1 Comment