An Early Start

Was lucky enough to be invited to join two friend for an early morning shoot on plymouth Hoe this morning.  The light was lovely - and I had a couple of hours of happy snapping!

Marmite images!!  You will either like them - or not!!

Have to wait now for the next high tide and nice weather!!  Fingers crossed.

Stumbling About in the Dark - Again!!

A couple of nights ago, a friend and I spent an afternoon and evening out on Dartmoor.  Weather was still lovely - and fearing rain may start any day soon - we decided to take our big, 18 million candle power torches for a walk!

We left home at 4.00pm.  Stopped for a quick bite to eat in Tavistock - then headed out to a location to try for a sunset before the serious business started.

Despite careful research, the location we decided on didn't really prove that successful.  The sun was too far over to the left!  Still - we made the best of it!

                             

                             Just before the sun set.  Some lovely clouds in the sky.

                   

And this is what should have appeared behind Brentor Church!

At about 8.00pm, we packed up and headed for our next location - Post Bridge in the middle of Dartmoor, where there is a lovely old clapper bridge.  Trouble was - now it was dark - and despite having our big, powerful torches, we still had to stumble about in the dark trying to find the best place to put up tripods, frame up the shot and focus! It all took time!  Eventually, we did it - and managed to take about half a dozen shots before it was 11.00pm, and we were cold and exhausted!

Was it worth it?  I'll let you decide.

In Colour . . . 

. . . . and converted to monochrome.

Porlock

Three of us from Ivybridge CC took a trip to Porlock in search of barn surrounded by dead trees!  Sounds easy, doesn't it?

Took two and a half hours to get there - then a further hour tramping across mud flats searching, searching, searching!

Eventually, by dint of asking walkers coming in the other direction where the mythical barn and dead trees were - we found it!

Could have had a better sky - and the light was very flat.  Therefore, it had to be a monochrome effort!
Was it worth the effort?

I'll leave it up to you to decide!

Found at last - the barn surrounded by dead trees!

Just caught my eye!

Why all the dead trees?  Well - the sea broached the shingle sea defences a few years ago, and a decision was made to leave well alone - and so all the trees died from sea water poisoning!

Movement

The Special Interest group at my camera club has set us some "homework"!  A good idea, as it makes us get up and get out and try something new!

The theme is "movement" and we will have two months to come up with some images interpreting this. We meet once a month - and next month, we will be expected to bring along some of our efforts - explain what we're trying to do - and seek help and advice if needed!

Two of us went to a local beach on Friday night hopeful of making a little progress.  The tide was out - but slowly coming in.  The clouds were barely moving! Not the best start, perhaps!!

Here's a couple of my first attempts!

This shows implied movement (I hope).  The rock strata on the left shows some kind of movement towards the island on the skyline.  No water or sky movement.  That had to wait for over an hour!

An hour later - the tide was coming in - but it was getting really dark!  This was a ten minute exposure at f16 with an
8 stop neutral density filter and polariser!  Too blue for me!

Mono suits this same scene better, I think.  Converted with Nik Silver Effex Pro.

Conclusions?  This use of "big stoppers" needs a lot of practice.  Weather conditions need to be just right.  Ideally, if at the seaside, the tide should be RECEDING.  Shooting into the sun would result in some more interesting sky.  Clouds moving in the sky would help with the sense of movement.

We are not disheartened!  Although this trip WAS planned - we will have to be far more targeted next time.  And there WILL be a next time!!

Watch this space!

An Experiment

Sunday was windy and very sunny here in Devon.  Clouds were blowing across the sky - and all looked promising to have a go at a technique I want to explore and perfect!
Kit needed was a camera (of course!) a sturdy tripod with 6" spikes on the ends of the legs.  This enables the tripod to be rammed into the ground, greatly improving stability.  Last of all, a collection of high density neutral density filters.  I had to end up stacking a 10-stop and an 8-stop together in order to get a 4 minute exposure.
Settings on the camera were f22 on a medium zoom lens (24mm on a full frame camera.)
The idea was to capture cloud movement!
Several attempts were needed before I got the picture posted below.  Not perfect - so I will have to keep trying - but hopefully, you will see what I'm trying to get at?

Zooming clouds over Brentor Church!

Tuscany

Not been a very good blogger recently.  Sorreee!!  

I've just got back from five days in Tuscany.  Somewhere I've long wanted to visit, so when the opportunity to do a photographic workshop there came up, I grabbed it with both hands!  Mind you, the emphasis was very much on the word WORK!  

Every day had the alarm ringing at 5.30am.  A hurried wash and a quick gulp of some tea, and we were off to catch the sun rising.  Got some lovely mist on two mornings - but the rest of the time it was - wait for it! - TOO SUNNY!  I know!  How can I complain?

The routine was to snap away like a mad thing until about 9.00am when we returned to base for a Continental breakfast.  On three days, we did as the locals do - which is, took a siesta!  On the remaining two days, we kept going all day, until midnight - as we needed to travel for a couple of hours to far-off locations!  Natch - on those days, we were poleaxed with tiredness!  But I wouldn't have missed it for the world!  Just a small selection of photos taken shown below.  

See more on my Flickr site - http://www.flickr.com/photos/snaphappyann/

Cheltenham

Spent 24th and 25th October at a studio in Cheltenham partaking in an RPS organised studio fashion/portrait/nude workshop.  We worked with four professional models, all very experienced and such a help to us novices, adopting a different pose each time we clicked the camera and the flash worked.

This was not a venture into collecting competition winning images (although none of us would say "no" to high praise from judges - or Salon acceptances in the future!)

John Burton.  Contact - potonpots@hotmail.com

John Burton

John Burton

John Burton

No: this was more of a learning experience.  We worked with two to three studio flashes, and various light modifiers, starting off gently with one male model, two lights and a reflector when needed.  The lighting was "low key" - ie.: moody!  The intention was to create an end result in monochrome, with strong side light which would create drama.  More suitable for a male with strong features - which John certainly had!  He was a joy to work with and I am very pleased with the images we created.

Aretmis.  Contact - purpleport.com/portfolio/artemis

Artemis

Next, we progressed to high key lighting and a lovely little model called Artemis.  This session was all about shapes and delicacy.  The lighting gave a bright, white end result - which worked really nicely with some back lighting against a pseudo window with net "curtain"  Artemis created some lovely shapes with her youthful body!

Artemis

Artemis

The first day finished with Artemis, doing some nude modelling.  This again was all about shapes being created by the body - and the honeycomb-gridded light, above her head, threw a soft pool of light down onto her.  The end result was intended to be monochromatic and "sculptural".  Thank you very much, Artemis for some wonderful shots.

Day Two was devoted more to Fashion photography and some portraiture.

Brodie Lock. Contact  at Model Mayhem and Purple Port.

Brodie Lock

Brodie Lock

Brodie Lock

Two different female models were provided for us to work with, and they hardly needed any direction.  However, as the day progressed into the afternoon, we were expected more and more to dictate how the shoot went - moving the light to best position, and directing the models.

Leah Axl. Contact www.leahaxlmodel.co.uk

Leah Axl

Leah Axl

Leah Axl

Once more, Brodie and Leah proved to be very co-operative and understood how nervous and unsure some of us were at times!  A big 'thank you' girls!

Just a small selection of images shown.  Hope to post more on Flickr soon. www.flickr.com/photos/snaphappyann/.

Grateful thanks to Simon and his team for a variety filled two days.  If you fancy a similar training session, I can't recommend www.FilmPhotoAcademy.com at Cheltenham highly enough.