week 23: Cat in washing bin

I made it almost half way through before I have a picture of my cat. It's quite a bit further than I originally thought I'd get, but I'm quite happy to have this one here. She is now (if the home we adopted her from was correct), about 7.5 years old, but still very active and playful like a kitten at times. Here she was "exploring" the inside of our pop-up wash bin after I removed all the clothes for washing.

I really haven't done any editing on this photo apart from convert it to jpeg and the very slightest bit of sharpening and curves - my fastest edit for this project yet in under a minute :-) Maybe I'll get around to my designed photo next week, maybe not, we'll see how it goes.

Week 22: staircase

I'm trying a couple of different things here. This is my first real black&white, ie the first one I've desaturated completely. Its also the first on I've not cared too much about the grain, in fact I specifically didn't remove any noise at all. I would never do that in a colour photo, but it suites the mood I'm trying to create with this photo.

I took it last Saturday at the Sommerset House in London. I was a little disappointed with the visit, I guess I expected more judging from their website, but one or two of the spiral staircase photos came out nicely and I did get to see Ai Weiwei's Zodiac Heads so it wasn't a complete waste.

I've also come to realise that I am currently a reactive photographer, I take the photos that are there, but I can't say at the point where I press the button I actually "make" the photo as that would imply (to me at least) that I preplanned what it should look like. I imagine that is much easier to do when you work with models and you can direct the photo, but also with a still life and I haven't done any of those for ages, so I think for next week I'll see if I can come up with an interesting idea for a still life of some kind.

week 21: forray into street photography

Well technically this photo was also taken at the Chelsea flower show, but I've been spending so much time in post process on it that I think it counts. I'm finding that I'm quite interested in digital art, not just straight photography, but I must admit trying to clone out 4 people, an umbrella and a wineglass that could be seen through the arches took more time than I'd like. But even so I like the dreamy effect - I just wish Flickr would stop trying to sharpen my photos (the bit that looks like noise through the arches) It is also one of the very few photos I've ever taken of a person, in fact I think its the only photo I've ever taken with the express purpose of capturing a person (not including private snapshots of family and friends)

week 19&20: Chelsea flower show

This week past was the Chelsea Flower Show here in London and I finally managed to remember early enough this year to get a ticket. Quite a spectacle, but with the amount of people attending I suspect I saw more of the gardens properly on the BBC TV shows. Still I'm glad I went. I got some more ideas for my garden and even a couple of nice photos. Strange though that when I was narrowing down the photos I liked the top 5 did not contain any gardens/plants except some scenery backdrops. But then again the ornamental stalls held much more interest for me than most of the plant stalls and with the amount of people there I have no good shots of any special gardens.

Not that much to say photo-wise. The top one with the wire horses I cloned out the pathway on the right and in the bottom one I had to merge two exposures to get the sky the right colour. I thought afterwards I probably should have used a fill-flash - I need to work on that aspect a little.

Week 18: Abstract

Right, its about time for a guess-what-this-is photo. I found this amazing metal sculpture not even 5 minutes walk from Liverpool Street station. Now taking a nice side on photo (see below) of the sculpture in my mind shows nothing of my creativity, but just reflects that of the original sculptor, so I was looking of an interesting way of showing the beauty of this. I love the curves and shapes used, the semi-spiral design makes it into everything and the blue gems are just wonderful. I also liked how the little bits of rust is starting to colour the legs and contrasting with the blue glass.So this photo is of the knight's knee and lower leg with the horse's harness in the back and a bit of the spear. Bet you didn't think of that when you first saw the photo :-) 

This sculpture was commissioned to commemorate the Cnihtengild, which was apparently a group of 13 Knights from the 10th century. They were granted the piece of land on which the sculpture now stands. I'm not going to give exact directions of the piece of land since it doesn't fully make sense to me, and I know the London landmarks, except to say that  piece of land extended  "south to the Thames as far as a Horseman riding into the river at low tide can throw a lance". That just brings home how different things were.  Oh and the knights had to each fight 3 duels to be given this land, one duel above ground, one under ground and one on sea.

Below is a small photo of what the statue in full looks like

week 17: Chapel at Lincoln's Inn

I've learnt a new word, or more accurately I suppose, I've learned a new meaning for a word I knew. Here in London, the word Inn don't just refer to a place which rents accommodation and sells food to travellers, but also used to refer to large houses of important persons whose business brings them to town. These Inns could  house the magnates and their retinue. These buildings were not always occupied and due to their proximity to the (legal) courts, they were often used as shared accommodation for legal students while not in use by its owner. As time went by some of these Inns became places of legal education and 4 of them became known as the Inns of Court. 

This photo is of the vaulted open crypt under the chapel at Lincoln's Inn. So much of London's beauty lies in the incredible architecture and attention to detail on the older buildings. This chapel for example is almost 600 years old.

This photo has been perspective adjusted to correct the skewed right angle - happening because it was take from a side angle to get the vaulted roof to show through. But the stairs still shows it side on and the faces look to the left. I'm going to have to spend some more time working out how to fix all of that next time. Otherwise not much done, oh and I've dodged the darker areas on the inside to show more of the details.

week 16: Early morning sun rays

I've been wanting to take a picture of sun rays for quite some time, but apart from the occasional rays showing through the clouds which would invariably only appear when I'm on a train with dirty windows, I haven't had the opportunity to do so.

Arriving in South Africa it was grey and rainy, not quite what I hoped for and the weather prediction wasn't too promising either, but I did want to go out walking in a nature reserve with my dad as I always do and we picked the day it seemed most likely to get some sunshine. Got up early that morning to find a beautiful day with no rain cloud in sight. And as we were about to get in the car to go, I saw the sun streaking through the trees. I knew I wanted to get the wooden well my dad built in the picture too and not knowing how much time I had I didn't bother with my tripod. It turns out I only had about a 10 minute window, so it was a good thing too. 

I tried again the following day and though the sun shone, the air conditions must have been different because the sun rays just didn't quite show up like the first day. That was a pity because this time my tripod was all set up and I would have been able to bring down my ISO significantly. I also think this may have worked better if I had bracketed the exposure (on a tripod) to avoid the white blown out areas. As it was I did have to play with getting some more detail in the darker areas (thankfully I do shoot RAW).  But I do like how the trees frame it making it look a lot more secluded than the actual large garden lawn which is really there and for once I actually remembered to put some foreground interest in too.