The Colour Red!!!

So Gizmodo.co.uk like to run the occasional Shooting Challenge.
Generally speaking I miss it or fail to get a shot done in time. This time is not much different except I was determined to get an entry in so... despite not having anything on the final day of entries i decided to give it a stab.

Now today I was in the office so I had the following amounts of time available.
13:00-14:00 lunch hour
17:00-18:00 Time between when I get home and the time submissions must be entered by.

So... 2 hours.

Here's the brief of what needed to be achieved:

For this week’s Shooting Challenge, I want you to make a photograph or series of photographs that focuses on the colour red. I’m looking for creative photographs that instantly draw the viewers to that colour. I don’t want to see any ‘selective colour’ photography as this usually requires some post­processing work and only minimal global post­processing is permitted.

I had a few basic ideas. I wasn't going to have too much time to experiment THAT much but I'd been thinking of grabbing some large black tiles to use as photographic backgrounds for a long while and this seemed like a good excuse.
I grabbed myself two black tiles, one very reflective one and one non-reflective one and a shiney red tile.
I looked for other materials whilst I was there but I had to head back to work.

So that was it. I got home at 17:00, dug out my cheapo studio lighting kit and shot away.
Here are those results.

 The above shot shows one of the problems I had along the way. Dust, lint and just... bits of stuff showed up very easily on the tiles. I spent a fair while wiping them down as even after I got them clear some dust would settle a bit later on.

 My son had left out his felt tip pens, in fact, namely just his red one which I took to be a sign.

After I'd finished with the tiles I had about ten minutes left before I had to get the photos off the camera and sent to Gizmodo.
Before I did  that though I really wanted to try an experiment using red food colouring dropped into water in a clear container.

I didn't submit any of these because they required far too much post-processing to get to how they are but they were an interesting 10-15 minute experiment.

The food colouring will just sink to the bottom of the water on it's own, you need to mix it with something thicker. On this occasion I used milk.

Finally just for fun I played with the Hue/Saturation and made it not red any more.

So there you go. With less than an hours worth of prep and a bit of determination this is the sort of thing you can spin out of your camera folks.

Baltic Holidays - Day 9 - Estonia

Day 9 is in Talinn, Estonia.

I didn't know what to expect from Estonia, I've never heard much about it in the past but I came away from Talinn with fond memories.

We only dropped into old town really but it was such a beautiful place. The architecture was great and the atmosphere was so calm and peaceful. Even after the square had totally filled with tourists and the heavens opened up on us the atmosphere just became lively and more vibrant.

The above photo is amongst my favourites. It looks period, like a scene from a hundred years back or so.
If I applied some sepia tone and faked some aging it would be quite convincingly old I'd think.

Behind that woman was an amazing... cafe? it sold fresh pastries filled with meats and/or vegetables and various warmed alcoholic beverages, all served in awesome stoneware. I've got to say I really enjoyed drinking from the stoneware cup they served.
There's no photos inside the atmospheric eatery as it had no lighting aside from the occasional candle and the large stone ovens they were cooking with.

One of the earlier things we did was go inside this church.

This church had a ludicrously tall tower of which we paid so we could go up to the top.
At the top was a precarious wooden ledge propped up on the tiles of the sloped roof from the spire which was penned in with some chicken-wire'ish type fencing.

It was pretty sturdy, my boy loved it up there but it was a bit cramped for the number of people, the view however was brilliant.

We then headed on.
I believe the next church we visited was the oldest one in Talinn. This one we didn't climb to the top of but we did have a look around inside. Where it all looked... very old.

The following shots are from around the town.

The last two shots were taken from the tower in the middle of the town centre. You can see the weather in the background which, whilst we were stood at the top of a tower, on what appeared to be a large copper plate when, naturally, a few crashes of thunder and lightning filled the sky.
Of course we shortly thereafter made our way back to ground level.

The following shots were taken from the ship as and before we left.

The last shot was just where some light happened to get caught in the right way to shine a little rainbow across the rusty floor of the balcony I was on.

Well it caught my attention anyway.

I again set the camera up for a timelapse and this was what I got. Not quite as exciting as the last one.

Photograph of the week #058

"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."
Whoops! I'm four months behind on these.
Though I've not been unproductive in that time with quite a lot of night time photography.
This week though I managed to grab some macro shots of a spider in my garden. He was extemely well lit by a bright sun on clear summers day.

Here's a couple more angles for fun.

A trip to Exbury Gardens

This weekend I brought my camera along on another family trip, this time to Exbury Gardens.

I've noticed a few trees round my neighbourhood that are blossoming so I thought that a proper garden would likely have some good blossoms on display, additionally Exbury gardens has a steam railway which will entertain my son significantly.

On arrival there really wasn't much blossoms sadly, it's a dodgy time of year for gardening I imagine and i get the impression that it's tree are probably more interesting in the summer/autumn. There were a few flowers here and there though, some bumble bees sneaking out and the Daffodil meadow put on a good display.

Here's what I managed to shoot.

Photograph of the week #48

"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."


Just a quick Macro shot I took this morning of a ladder in my garden.

Photograph of the week #47

"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."


A quick macro shot from my garden og some morning dew formed on a weed(I think) that has now been removed.

Photograph of the Week #042

"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."

Because i'm currently moving house my camera equipment is more than a little buried under packed boxes and other miscellaneous mess. As such this weeks photo is an old photo, from my archive that happened to jump out at me, probably in thumbnail form.

Photograph of the Week #0039

"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 quick, colourful shot from a previous trip through the new forest.

Photograph of the Week #0038

"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"

Yet another quick macro shot, this time taken of a fly in my garden that landed on a large, green, plastic, riding-dog toy that my son got last christmas. It was only there long enough for the one shot which is my excuse for not adjusting my aperture to give a better depth of field.