Photograph of the week #053

"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."

So it's now time to re-commence the Photgraph of the Week posts. I took a bit of a break after hitting 52 as it coincided with a house move and there has been little time available to shoot anything.
Now however the camera is back out, some new equipment has been added to the camera bag and the weekly challenge is once again in place!

I took this shot at a familiar location near my place of work. It's shot in infra-red in the same manner that my other previous shots were, using an infra-red filter on my older Nikon D50.

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.

Branksome Beach

Had a family trip out to Branksome Beach recently which was a good excuse to try and photograph some windsurfing action with my drastically inadequate lenses.

I can't help but feel the best place t shoot windsurfers is up close with a wide-angle but... for obvious reasons, this isn't a particularly viable option and my lenses are of a limited range when it comes to reach.

Here are the shots:

Scribble of the week #011

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(well, bi-monthly at best at the moment) 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 random.


This weeks scribbling is yet another character concept.
Her name is Auralie, slightly inspired by an RP character a friend of mine used to play as.
She's meant to be a Unicorn who turns into a Human for company, her only shared characteristic between forms is her hair colour.
When in Human form she leans towards raves and night-clubbing so she can be among people without necessarily having to socialise with them, which she's not great at considering she's basically a glorified horse underneath it all.

I like the idea of using the traditional furry boots/gloves as a sort of nod towards hairy hooves... i'm not great at drawing hooves and I probably got too distracted conceptualising hairstyles more than how the colours would work in the hair but still..

Merry Christmas!!!

Infra-red photography

I've recently had my attention drawn to infra-red photography.
Not the most ideal time of year for it but still.

There's a few ways to do such photography, the most expensive way is to buy a specialist camera or have a camera physically modified to remove in-built filters that purposely filter out light from the appropriate end of the spectrum... The red end I guess.
The cheaper method, the method of choice for folks such as myself, is to use a filter, these come in varying strengths, restricting the spectrum of light that can pass through the lens to the cameras sensor. The result of which, in camera, is a black and red photograph of, whatever you should choose to shoot.
For a better explanation here's a wikipedia link...

Some cameras work significantly better than others and, fortunately for me the D50 is fairly good for it.

Most folks convert IR photographs directly into black and white images but, with some jiggery pokery in software to get the desired white balance and colour temperature compensation, you can squeeze a bit of colour here and there. The shades of colour you get as a result can differ as per taste/technique however the effect of infra-red photography is quite consistent.

The effect can result in an image that looks quite alien but not quite unrealistic. At a glance it might seem like the image is a mere colour negative of reality, however the specific focus of infra-red light that is captured has a notable effect.
The most noticable effect is that blue skies tend to be darker whilst green plantlife glow up brightly infront of it. The more sunlight the better and the greener the plants the more drastic the effect,while other surfaces tend to appear relatively consistent with reality (though in duo-tone.)

Here are some images from my first trip out using some cheap filters I nabbed off of amazon, it's worth noting that you can't use the auto-focus and as infra-red is a slightly different frequency you'll have to offset the focus ring slightly to compensate. I did this via trial and error myself so it's difficult to explain it precisely, also expect shutter speeds to be long due to the volume of light being restricted through the lens, so bring a tripod.

Here is another set, from a familiar location, near my place of work a few weeks after the above set.
I'd had a little more practice by this time so I believe the standard of images is a little better myself.

This last image is a panoramic stitch of several portrait photographs.

Photograph of the week #052

"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."

Huzzah! Photograph of the week has come full circle(-ish) and is on it's 52nd posting. Today on the 26th of Novemeber 2011 I post the 52nd photograph of the week in a row since the first POTW posted all the way back in 2010 on... *cough* the 6th of September! *cough*

Ironically of course I actually don't have a new photo as such to post this week either. (It's been a busy month and any photos I have taken have been family photos really which are not suitable for wip-tricky.)
Instead, however, I have compiled the past fifty-one photographs into one of my tried and tested "pile-of-photographs" compilation wallpapers for 1920x1020 resolutions, roughly in order going from left to right in rows from top to bottom.

It's interesting, to me, to see how the subjects changed over the year, there's quite a few macros in there, a couple of landscapes, some wildlife, no portraits, a few still-lifes and some experimentation in infra-red at the end. It's quite good to look at, reminds me what I'm capable of, what I've achieved so far and helps give ideas of where/how I should improve or what new things I should try to do next.

So what about those missing weeks eh?
By my calculation, with the exception of the past three weeks, I have missed 12 weeks over the past year but that does not necessarily mean I didn't take any photographs during those periods. I've gone back over my photo-database and discovered a photograph from every week I failed to do an update. They shall be posted below and you can decide for yourself whether I didn't post them because they didn't deserve it(sometimes), because I was too busy(other times) or because I forgot(no comment).

I missed one week in December 2010, January, April, May, June and September and two weeks in February, March and August. The only months I managed a full compliment of weekly updates were in the initial months of September 2010, October 2010, November 2010 and then July 2011.

The next photograph of the week post I make after this one will be the new date that I shall try to get a fluent, unbroken years worth of weekly updates. Until then If you have any requests, ideas, or thoughts on photograph of the week feel free to contact me via the contact page or leave a comment below.