Photograph of the Week #0028

"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."

Following the last photograph of a spider here is a photograph of a wasp in my gardens apple tree. There were dozens of them buzzing about and distracting my little boy who spent ages staring at them and pointing, laughing his head off so I had to try photographing them.

From the photographs I have been taking lately I can safely say I'm happy with the Tamron 90mm lens, it certainly seems to do everything I was hoping it would do.

Photograph of the Week #0027

"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 week I got a new Tamron 90mm prime lens.
To put it through it's paces I ran it around my garden a few dozen times to try and pick out macro details and take various other interesting shots.

This is another spider shot, I just happened to spot him as he came scuttling down the wall next to me, he really was very tiny but thankfully this lens is far better built for the job of capturing him than any of my other lenses. It was pretty difficult distinguishing him from his very-similarly-coloured background but I think it makes for an interesting shot despite the clearly blown-highlights.

I could have done with a reflector, in hindsight, to soften the otherwise hard shadow that obscures half of the spider.
I always find it interesting to see the amount of detail there is in such small creatures that are so easily overlooked, It's nice that I'm finally able to capture that to some degree.

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)

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."

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)

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.

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.