Visit to the Lake District - Grassmere (non theme)

Popped over to Grassmere in the Lake District this weekend, most of it was spent keeping warm in lovely little pubs, drinking wine and eating crisp however I did manage to get some pictures.

The images below were all taken using a large F stop of approx F/22 to F/29 to capture a wider depth of field.  A tripod was used on all of them to avoid camera shake and the images have been edited in CS5 to enhance the colours.

Some would say landscapes are easy subjects as the landscape is simply sitting there waiting to be photographed.  I personallyy think that this then presents the bigger challenge of capturing the landscape from an angle that hasn't been captured a thousand times already.

AND In no way am I saying that I have done this here, or that I am an expert photographer who can simply brush off landscape photography as easy as I don't think that at all.  I'm just sharing my thoughts after a friend of mine said "landscapes are easy, anybody can take those kind of pictures".

Made me laugh, bearing in mind this friend knows nothing about Apertures, ISO, Shutter, and doesn't even own a camera!

I think Dave is spiking my drinks!!! CS5 Madness

I decided to have a little play with my new CS5 knowledge as Im one of those that if I dont keep doing something I simply forget.


So using the Magnetic Lasso tool and some old pictures from my travels I came up with this.

           Backdrop

     Duck etc        

= Farm Heaven!!!

Dave's CS5 tip and tuturials

This week in class we looked at a few bits that you can do in photoshop, spot lighting, colour range and using brushes.

The lesson on colour range was really handy for replacing the background, or foreground where you have a bold distinct colour.

I have used the polygonal lasso tool in the past which can get very tricky and be quite time consuming.  Being a CS5 ameteur nor was I aware of the Magnetic Lasso tool which is also a great tool for selections.

So, I have put my new found knowledge to the test using a couple of old pictures from my travels and here you go.

Santorini, Greece

Sunset, Koh Samui

a little practice needed but you get the idea!!

Another useful tool was to use a grey layer with an image in order to lighten/darken specific parts of the images.  Although there are many ways to lighten images in CS and lightroom this method is ideal for specific areas of the image and not the whole image.

Before adding the layer the bottom part of the image is very dark.

On this image you can see how the bottom part of the image is lighter without having to increase the light in the sky (again a little practice is needed but a great tool to use).

During class we have also been looking at selections in CS5 and the different ways of doing this and discussed how we could use these to edit images.  The tuturial Dave gave us (Mr Fruitman) was really helpfull and very good practice as there are so many tools that can be used for selections but each has a different advantage over the other.

Any way here is my Mr Fruitman!

Images from today.

Got some great shots today and hopefully they will work well with my theme.  My two friends are really good fun and everywhere they go, the dogs go with them.  They were really easy to photograph and the only challenge really was getting the dogs to do what I wanted them to.

Here are a couple of the images that I liked the most from today and will possible make up some of the final images for this theme.

notes for me... add settings

Great day for Theme 2

Great day for working on theme 2 so have pursuaded two of my girlfriends and there dogs to go walking around there usual spots and let me follow them with my camera.

Goint to take my tripod, 18-55mm and my zoom lens (75-300mm lens) and hopefully get some good images to use for my second theme.  I will be using Shutter priority and RAW images for todays session and checking the weather for today its going to stay dry and crisp with plenty of sun.  In regards to Health & Safety today I will simply be making sure I dont trip over a dog or trip my subjects over with my tripod. 

On a serious note though we will need to ensure the dogs are kept safe as we will be letting all three of them off their leads near a busy road and a park which is used by other dog walkers as I want to capture them playing, running etc.

As well as wearing some walking boots I will be wrapping up in a winter coat.

Woof Woof

As well as visiting Old Moor I'd also arranged to go Dog walking with my partners Mum and their Dog to get some images on the way for theme 2.  The weather was better than expected in the Morning with some really bright natural light which meant in some of the images I had to much light at times.

The images were shot in RAW files and prior to the session starting I checked the following:

Battery charged
Memory card cleared
ISO
Camera Settings - Shooting with a low ISO in Shutter Priority, no need for exposure compensation.

During this excersise I wanted to follow the Shirley (the Mum) and Bailey (the dog) around on their usual walk and simply capture images of them doing what they do. 

I decided to shoot using my 300mm zoom lens as I wanted to keep my distance to try and capture them without them being to aware that I was there and wanted to avoid silly faces etc.

Had a great time and hopefully from the images I will be able to choose 3 or 4 that will be suitable for this theme.

ISO 100S 1/160, F/6.3

ISO 100S 1/160, F/4.0

ISO 100S 1/160, F/4.5

Great Day at Old Moor

So I had a really good day at Old Moor yesterday, not a cloud in the sky and some really good lighting for in the bird garden where I have been struggling to get the kind of shots I wanted.

I still had to use an ISO of 400 or 200 and at times had to use the Exposure Compensation but all in all a good visit with some final images for the theme.

Here are a couple of the images that I really like and turned out just as I had hoped.

ISO 200S, 1/250, F/5.6

ISO 400S 1/160, F/8.0

ISO 400S 1/160, F5.6

ISO 200S 1/160, F/5.6

ISO 400S 1/160, F/5.6