RAW Collection

I have been some absent for some time. My life has turned into a flat pack hell as I have been refurbishing a newly purchased property. The flat pack kitchen was not to bad but the bathroom is becoming tiresome. I have also been working a fair amount and have been working on another website – http://www.rawtreecare.co.uk – for my own tree surgery business. Below is a screen grab taken today. I feel it looks fresh and clean and I hope it will bring in some extra work. It also has a blog which I am using to bring useful information to the users of the site. Raw Tree Care is also on Twitter & Facebook

Well its been a while since my last post. Unfortunately I have put project 365 on hold. For a while now I have been pursuing a career as an arborist (tree surgeon). This has taken up a considerable amount of my time on a daily basis and there is still plenty more to do and learn. Its an interesting field of work and I am covering topics such as tree anatomy, chainsaw maintenance and

I did manage to take the camera out last week for an afternoon in Baggeridge Country Park where I took a few shots for the banner at http://www.broadacretreeservice.co.uk. The website is my creation (powered by WordPress) for a close friend with whom I am working.

So for now project 365 is on hold and I plan to start it again as soon as my tree surgery business is on its feet, which may be a little while yet!

Today I bring you an image taking inspiration from valentines day. I know it is a belated thought here in the UK but in Brazil valentines day is celebrated on 12 June and in Romania it is celebrated on 24 February.

My wife and I also have an anniversary this weekend on the 28th. Having said that I will probably still forget the big day.

I have just noticed an interesting post over at www.paulburwell.com listing 10 ways to destroy a career as a photographer. It list top tips such as:

• Don’t show your work to anyone other than family or friends.
  • Family and friends are great for moral support and can really help pick you up when you’re down but do they really know what makes a great picture and what sort of stuff is going to sell?

• Design your web site so that it’s impossible for a photo buyer to do business with you.
  • Through fear of protecting their images from being “stolen” from their web site, many folks make it so you can’t right-click to save a picture or use flash web sites that make it almost impossible to easily save images to a local hard drive.
  • While none of these methods truly protect the images from “theft” they are a really great deterrent to the editor or photo buyer looking for images.  They can’t easily save them to run past other people and they’ll just move onto the next web site.

• Don’t treat your photography like a business.
  • If you want to remain an amateur, that’s great.  But if you want to be professional photographer, you have to start thinking like a professional.  Covering a subject as a pro is a big difference from covering it casually.  You need to prepare in advance.  Have your gear and attitude ready to go.  And when you start shooting, you work it until you get what you need.
  • If you’re under the mistaken impression that you need to be a great, or “one of the best” photographers in your area of interest to be a professional, get over it.  At least as important as the photography skills are your business and self-marketing skills.  Make sure you work on those at least as much as your photography.

Any budding photographer determined on running their business into the ground can see the full list of top tips on Paul Burwell’s site

This is my latest photo in my project 365 (where I publish one photo for every day of the year).

I have been running thin on ideas but  have ordered some materials (and a few toys) which should give some inspiration. It is an interesting project to be involved in and if anyone is thinking of starting one i say “go ahead, its not as scary as it may appear”.

I was hoping to get a few more shots in Ironbridge today but after a hard days work (outside in the snow i hasten to add) I decided to stay in the warmth of my car and head home for dinner. Now that is what I call dedication!

Well it has been a while since my last post. I have been tied up with one thing and another but have been cracking on with the project. Last night I uploaded quite a few pictures to flickr. My picture for yesterday featured a dictionary as I attended a language class last night.

As ever you can follow my project on flickr

At this point you may be asking what it a snoot? Well, a snoot is a device you attach to your flash to produce a narrow beam of light rather than flooding the entire frame with light. It can be used to illuminate a single object while the rest of the frame is exposed using natural light. It can be made in various ways, a tube of fabric or a block of corrugated plastic both work well. Anyway I read an article on www.diyphotography.net some time ago about making a snoot. At the time I did not have an off-camera flash but the idea stuck with me.

Several months after reading the article (late Janury 2010) I set about making my own snoot and did so without re-reading the post. I pickup a A4 piece of felt from HobbyCraft along with a length of velcro for around £2.

I stitched two pieces of velcro to the fabric on opposites sides so I could make a tube of material around my flash. It was quite simple to make and it is adjustable so it fits onto other flash guns just as well. The difference compared to the design on www.diyphotography.net is that it doesn’t always produce a circular tube for light, although this may not be a negative point. Quite often the tube is ecliptic and can be moulded to some degree.

As you can see only a fraction of light escapes through the material and most of the light is directed to the subject. A few improvements could be made. I though about lining the inside with white fabric (although this may make the lower power setting more powerful) and adding a length of wire to the open end of the fabric. This would allow me to shape the end of the snoot into more suitable shapes.

I used the snoot to take the first picture of my project 365 (photo a day) which can be seen on flickr.

After much though I have taken the plunge and started project 365. The idea is to take (and more importantly publish) a photo a day for a year. Its a big ask and I have not got many ideas, however ideas and themes are coming slowly

If you are thinking about starting your own project 365 then what are you waiting for? I also found a blog post on DPS helpful and no doubt I will be referring to it time and time again. You can find it here – 11 Tips to Succeed with a Photo365 Project

Water is one of my favourite subjects to photograph. It comes in many forms and can be captured in many way. A slow shutter speed will give water a sense of speed and give it that misty look you often see. On the other had a fast shutter speed will capture the moment, bubbles will freeze and water drops are suspended in the air before their inevitable demise.

I recently had my first attempt to capture water drops as they crash land in a pool of water.

Setup

My camera, mounted on a tripod, was set to manual focus. I used a pencil in the water to set the focus on the ‘drop zone’. I decided to used my telephoto lens as it has a macro mode and this would reduce the depth of field. The water was dropped from different heights on to a baking tray which contained about 5-10 mm of water, this was filled to the brim as I could not find a deeper tray. However, the tray is old and much of the non-stick coating has been scratched away. This created the scratched and rusty colours visible under the water. I used a syringe, found in ink cartridge refill kits, to create the drops of water. I also used an off camera flash placed above and to the left of the baking tray.

Method

I set the camera to a 2 second exposure (in a darkened room) and used a remote shutter release to start the exposure. I tried to coordinate firing the flash with the moment of impact. The result was not to bad  but it did prove a bit tiresome to wait for the camera to finish the exposure before trying again.

I changed the camera to shutter priority mode and turned on the wireless flash setting. I then tried to capture a single drop as it landed. As it happens a syringe is not the most controllable instrument to use, I squirted a stream of drops onto the pan and manage to capture a few impacts. The picture above is the most complex shape formed although it is a little out of focus (dropped the water a little out of the area in focus).

I will try it again in a few days with a deeper bowl to see how that changes the formation of the dropplet and there are a few other tweaks I want to experiment with. I must thank drippy2009 for his brilliant pictures and inspiring me to give it a go.

I was out in town yesterday flicking through one of the many photography magazines in WH Smiths and I noticed a quote from a top pro photographer. Unfortunately I cannot remember his name but the quote was along the lines

When lighting a subject remember that light travels in straight lines.

I thought nothing more of the text, flicked through a few more pages, placed the magazine back on the shelf and left the shop.

Late last night I was browsing the web and came a cross an article (Nicolesy Photography: Blog » Using a Reflector) which brought home the importance of the quote I had almost disregarded earlier. Its a short article but worth reading and felt poignant yesterday