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Saturday, 26 March 2011

Mupe Bay: Part 2

So, in response to last weeks slight failure of a trip to Mupe Bay i decided to set out once again to make good on my previous intentions.

I got up, ridiculously early on saturday morning, packed my bags with the appropriate kit, some snacks, a bottle of pepsi max and then set off in the car. This time I brought my old Nikon D50 as well as my D90, as backup, with a kit lens attached so if my D90 is busy doing long exposures I can do other shots. I did accidentaly leave my polarizer filter behind sadly which would have been invaluable for some shots but won't make that mistake again.
The journey there was a little concerning, the sky looked a overcast but it soon cleared up when I got to the coast and I was met by glorious blue skies with minimal incidental cloud presence.
(This is going to be a long article so click the link below the map to see the full thing.)

(This map shows my route)

Tuesday, 22 March 2011

Photograph of the Week #0025

"When not scribbling away in a sketch book or dabbling on a Wacom tablet i'm invariably fiddling around with exposure settings on my Nikon D90 trying to capture moments in aesthetically pleasing ways.
So here we have "Photograph of the week" a (mostly) weekly feature showcasing my favourite photo of the week."

Sunday, 20 March 2011

Shooting night into day

A couple of months ago I was linked to an article about a certain kind of photography where the objective is to make a night time shot look like day.
It's a simple premise, a long exposure on a moonlit night that brings out the blue in the sky and still illuminates all the scenery down below. Some of the images created from such a technique are truely impressive.

I've been having a stab at it for a few weeks now but with little success, often just getting my settings all wrong or completely failing to manage to focus on anything. The thoery is you focus on infinity but this is very easy to get wrong as just turning the focusing ring all the way to one side won't do the job.

Anyway, last night, whilst the moon is nearer, fuller and brighter than it has been for last twenty years I finally got some results I'm happy with. Admittedly I think my ISO settings were a bit too high so there's more grain in the images than i'd like but now i'm more comfident with my technique I will happily bring that setting down a bit.(resulting in longer shutter speed times)

Saturday, 19 March 2011

Mupe Bay: One step forward and two steps back

I went on a little adventure this weekend with a friend of mine who is also like to do photography. I've been to a fair number of the places in and around Dorset that have good views to offer but I recently heard of somewhere new. A place named Mupe Bay.
To search for it on the internet tends to bring up some nice photographs of the area but not much else so I wanted to see it for myself.

The bay is only really accessable via a coastal walk from the far more well known Lulworth Cove unless you have a boat so I expected a hike over cliff tops. To ensure we got good shots I assumed a time when the tide was out would potentially best so I planned to arrive at Lulworth with the tide in, assuming the time taken to walk to the Bay would be enough for the tide to go back out again.


Sadly on arrival it became clear that when the tide is in the best path for us to take would be blocked, forcing us to make a detour that we thought would be suitable but turned out to be half in the wrong direction and instead of being the quickest route to the clifftop turned out to be the slowest possible route to the otherside of the cove. Dejected by our failure to get that much right we ended up focusing our efforts on Lulworth Cove for the rest of the morning.

Mupe Bay will have to wait for another day but this is the closest we got to photographing anything there.

Some early morning mist still hanging around and a mere glimpse of Mupe Bay can be spotted over the cliff side.

Saturday, 12 March 2011

Photograph of the Week #0024

"When not scribbling away in a sketch book or dabbling on a Wacom tablet i'm invariably fiddling around with exposure settings on my Nikon D90 trying to capture moments in aesthetically pleasing ways.
So here we have "Photograph of the week" a (mostly) weekly feature showcasing my favourite photo of the week."

This is a bit of a cheat i'm afraid as I took this shot at the same time that I took the last one but I rather like the textures and the shades in the photograph so had to revisit it.

Scribble of the Week #007

My sketch books are forever filled with random mind-scrawlings and scribbles that will otherwise never be used for anything or be seen by anyone, because of this I bring you "Scribble of the week".

Scribble of the week is a weekly feature(on and off probably) where i'll be posting a random sketch, scribble, design or element from one of my various sketch books. These will always be unfinished pieces of work and will often, most likely, be very eclectic.


Well it's been an awful long time since the last SotW and plans are in place that I should be keepign ti as up to date in the near future as I have been with the photograph of the week. Regardless however I have a scribble for this week, far earlier in it's development than previous scribbles but probably far more befitting the name.



 On getting this far I've changed my mind  quite dramatically on how I want to do this image so not sure if i'll actually finish him up.

Thursday, 3 March 2011

Photograph of the Week #0023

"When not scribbling away in a sketch book or dabbling on a Wacom tablet i'm invariably fiddling around with exposure settings on my Nikon D90 trying to capture moments in aesthetically pleasing ways.
So here we have "Photograph of the week" a (mostly) weekly feature showcasing my favourite photo of the week."

More children's toy photography... Except I'm getting a temptation to do a series of these as it's quite fun to do this sort of shot. This is a toy Apatosauros though, apparently looking out of my garden window.