Photonic Harmony

Stellar Touch

2008-08-07T13:29:00+00:00

I'm amazed this shot turned out so well as it was quite literally a quick point and shoot shot as I left one area to move on to another. It's had a tweak or two applied to the colour, but aside from that this picture is raw. I didn't think I would ever submit just an open sky shot as my Sky Watch Friday picture, but with the sun fiercely striking through the clouds as it did, it would have been a crime to hold this one back.

I hope you all enjoy this shot. I wish you all a happy Sky Watch Friday!

Blazing Lane

2008-08-06T16:10:00+00:00

I was determined to shoot something tonight, so I went out the moment I'd managed to fill my belly with food. Before I left the house I had a play on Google maps to see if Google's satellite pictures would reveal something that could be of possible interest, it did, I found a bridge! The bridge overlooks a main single carriageway, the road it overlooks is the bypass conduit for our village so it sees quite a healthy amount of traffic. I know this type of shot has been done many many times, but playing with shutter speeds and car lights is a first for me, so I thought I'd head to the bridge and give it a go.

The image you see to the left has been slightly "colour tweaked". The colours blue and orange go quite well together so I raised the blue in the tarmac of the road and reduced the red lights to a bright orange. I think the composition is good and the colours work well together. I initially considered this image to be a practise run, but I think it's turned out quite well.

Tonight was a first for me on an entirely different level too. There I was standing on a bridge, which is almost on a hill, with my tripod - and I - standing tall. It was then I noticed some lightning. I first had a feeling of slight panic. Then the defiant fool in me said "Hey, photographers in Iraq don't turn and run at the first sign of danger.". I then gave it a little more thought and decided I was in fact and idiot for staying, but I was going to have a go at capturing some lightning anyway. Despite all my efforts I didn't manage to capture any lightning as it was sheets and not forks. I did however get to laugh at the passing motorists who obviously slowed down believing my camera to be a speed gun (schoolboy chuckle).

Ducking Ducks

2008-08-03T01:58:00+00:00

I decided to post this image as I think it has a certain fun value. This was taken whilst I was out with the wife walking beside a canal.

Some of you may remember a post I made some time ago now about photographing swans and how it's like shooting snow? This was one of the shots I took on that day.

Getting this shot was fun for me too. The way they kept coming up together and then going down together was almost comedic, these two are clearly the river clowns.

The Haytrain

2008-08-02T14:28:00+00:00

I started the day today with a trip to the shops to buy a new pair of proper hiking boots, some padded socks and a waterproof jacket - amazingly - this jacket folds away into its own pocket! I picked up some good boots as I knew I was going to be on my feet for a good 3-4 hours today and most if not all of that time would be walking rough terrain. When I got back from the shops I put on my new boots, put on my new jacket and boonie hat. I threw some food, water and my tripod into my rucksack (which doubles as a chair - very cool) and off I went. My plan at this point was to walk to the next village (about 2 miles) and investigate what's there. Sadly there wasn't much there, so I decided to walk back to my village via the surrounding farmers land.

I was a couple of hours into my walk when I came across the hay rolls on my return journey. I didn't stop because of the rolls specifically, I stopped because the land the rolls were on was very elevated and sunken in places, it made it look like the rolls of hay were racing downhill. I had to wait for the light that would truly make this shot come to life though. I wanted the light to come through the clouds and strike the closest roll of hay, leaving the others outside of the direct sunlight, fortunately this time I got what I was asking for.

Low Cumulus

2008-08-01T15:25:00+00:00

This image is so simple and yet it has an incredible amount of depth. The dying tree together with the sun lit wheat field and the added backdrop of healthy green forest merge to form a typical English countryside view. Then, just when you think the entire visual experience is over, the cloud - soaked in detail - leaps from the deep blue sky to make this image bounce back at you. The colours in this shot really speak to me and I enjoy looking "into it".

As for composition? I think between the wheat field, the tree and the forest in the background the sky is framed well. The detail in the cloud soon becomes the main focal point of this image and almost seems like a well earned dessert. I hope you enjoy this image as much as I do.

Grazing Sun

2008-07-30T12:55:00+00:00

This week I went back to the general area where I had taken last week's shot - Watton Sky. Only this week? I found a different view point, I scaled up the detail and toned down the photoshop work. I think this shot - although enhanced slightly - is more natural looking and the wide aspect in the vertical allowed me to show plenty more sky - even more sky in the reflection from the still water - which of course is what Sky Watch Friday is all about, sky.

This will be the last shot I take from this area, I think I've shot it to death now. I did learn something from the last Sky Watch Friday shot though and I believe it's going to be one of the key factors that enables me to produce better images in the future. I learned that sometimes you can add too much when you're enhancing an image, more often than not, less will most certainly be more.

Some of you may or may not have noticed that I've added an extra link to the "Sites Of Interest" menu on the left. Photonic Harmony now exhibits on Flickr. I made the decision to add the site images to Flickr as to allow all you picture loving happy snappers to browse them all at once on the same screen, rather than sifting through posts. Naturally I will expect you to come back and read the posts anyway, but you can do that when you have more time (smile).

Purple Crowd

2008-07-28T13:30:00+00:00

I didn't bother going into work today for reasons I won't bore you with, but I spent the day walking the countryside with my wife and daughter. Of course I didn't waste the chance to do some picture taking!

I found this group of flowers hugging the side of an old house in a quiet country lane. The picture doesn't give you a true indication of how many there were, but I'm sure there were at least a hundred or so in total. I picked out the prettiest section and started snapping.

This was the first time I'd had to walk on to private property without permission. I knew I was only going to be about a minute or so, so I didn't go to the effort of seeking permission. I couldn't hear any of the usual big dog noises coming from the house, so I took a chance! I think this is so nice I'm going to give it away as desktop wallpaper. If you would like this on your desktop leave a comment on this post with your screen resolution size and I'll email it to you.

Fro Naturale

2008-07-27T13:48:00+00:00

Today has been a colossal learning curve for me - for instance - this will probably be the last time I ever go walking with my camera in the midday sun. If I owned a parot, it would have spent this evening set on continual reminder with "Who's a silly boy then!".

I took quite a few pictures today but I made lots of schoolboy errors, spot metered when I should have matrixed, forgetting to lock the exposure, the list was endless. Despite having a poor day photographically I did manage to come back with this shot and it was the one shot I'd hoped I would be bringing home. It doesn't exactly take your breath away but I've always found these flowers to be quite fascinating. I'm quite happy that I happened across a perfect specimen to photograph. The first one I came across I accidently destroyed with my man fingers as I was clearing unwanted foliage out of the way of the camera. In future I think I'll leave shooting flowers until mid to late afternoon.

The Lock

2008-07-26T04:26:00+00:00

The lock caught my eye yesterday evening whilst I was out walking, you don't see many old squire locks these days and I thought it would be the perfect opportunity to capture it. At the time I shot this I also had in mind HDR (High Dynamic Range) processing. If you've not heard of HDR then pop over to Google and do some research, it's a fantastic approach to image processing if you want that little extra detail. To give you a rough understanding of HDR, you combine multiple variant exposures of the same subject/frame and combine them to bring out the detail in the shadows, mids and highlights.

I think it brings the image closer to what you would see with your eye. Your eye will adjust very quickly to bring you the detail across the range, whereas the camera has a single shot and it will only capture the detail at the metered position and instant of exposure. I don't know if any of that made sense, if not, drag yourself over to the greatest resource on earth, Google.

As a side note to this post I just want to thank everyone who left a comment on the "Watton Sky" post this week. Some of you have caused me to change the way I think about image manipulation. The more I think about it, we'd all be missing out on a great deal of creativity and personal expression if every photographer had a purist approach to their work. In addition to that, I would be short changing myself if I couldn't produce the image I wanted to using conventional methods. Unleash those dogs of awe!

Watton Sky

2008-07-24T15:50:00+00:00

Originally I hadn't planned on putting this image up as part of my photographic journey here on Photonic Harmony, as it has been heavily photoshopped. At this point in time I want to keep my images on Photonic Harmony "pure of click", meaning I only want to include "undoctored" images straight from the camera.

With that said I have made an exception in this case as a fellow blogger over at Picture This Digital Photography put me on to a site called Sky Watch Friday, and I thought it would be great to submit this image. For those of you that are curious, in this image both the sky and the water have been "burned" in using the non destructive approach in Photoshop. The section of grass in the middle has been "dodged" slightly to pull in some detail.

Living Gradient

2008-07-24T09:05:00+00:00

You simply would not have believed the position I had to get my body into - to get this shot. I now consider myself to be a near professional contortionist and that's not a pretty sight, by any stretch of the imagination ... Okay, enough waffling.

I like this shot, but at the same time I don't like this shot. I like the idea of it, I love the way the sky has been reproduced, I love the angle, the altered perspective and the way it forces your eyes to move from bottom left all the way to the chain at the end of the pole, what I don't like about it is that in terms of photography - for me - it was a near miss. I wanted more detail in the dark areas of the pole, and I didn't get it!! I know, I know, I could photoshop this to death to get what I want but I wanted something closer to what was in my minds eye before I took the shot.

I sat on this shot because I loved the way the light blue sat against the living gradient of the sky and as if by magic someone lept out from behind the scenes and said "Hey, just to remove the boredom from this shot, let's throw in some rust!". Perhaps the shadows will grow on me if I keep staring at it.

Oh, if you can guess the purpose of the pole in this picture, add a comment to this post with your thoughts and if you're correct I'll add you to my blogroll.

Sawfly Banquet

2008-07-22T14:37:00+00:00

Two posts in a single day, I know, it's all too much for you. I got the itch to photograph something when I got home from work this evening and I found myself walking aimlessly into the rear garden, in the hopes of discovering something worthy of getting my lens dirty, I found it! Or perhaps I should say, them!

I don't normally venture into the garden as it serves as a constant reminder to me that I should be out there doing green fingered things as opposed to leaping around like David Bailey, but this time it was worth it. I found a leaf on a newly established and unwanted tree that had lots of little worms on it, or at least that's what I thought until I "Googled" the little critters. They're sawfly larvae and they were all munching away like it was the king larvae's birthday!

The interesting thing about these little guys is that when you get close to them they throw their tails in the air, not only that but they all do it at exactly the same time and in the blink of an eye, it's impressive to watch! I am impressed with this particular shot as I had very little space to work with and the point at which I focused is pin sharp. I was hoping for a deeper depth of field, but I just couldn't push the aperture any more than I did. I also thought the skeletal leaf formed interesting lead-in lines for this shot. Let me have your thoughts if you have any.

Amelia

2008-07-22T02:57:00+00:00

I went out shooting yesterday evening for some colour, as my "Next Post Info" section had promised. Given it was the evening I didn't really have a lot of time to travel any great distance so I settled for the river Lee in Hertford. On my walk along the river I came across this typically coloured narrow boat, so I set the tripod upon the ground and went crazy. I like the angle this image was shot at but I must say that's the only thing I like about it. I don't favour the background much and I don't think the evening light did anything at all to lift the deep colours from the boat. I also think there's too much green in this shot, it's like a green explosion! On the whole a very average shot, but that's okay, I've factored it in to my learning process. Speaking of my learning process, yesterday I learned that although people walking by may not be in shot of the camera, they do cast shadows Andy!

Perhaps some good news? Before I went out shooting yesterday I had done some reading up on HDR (High Dynamic Range) processing. With this in mind I took 3 slightly different exposures of the above image and when the time comes I'll try out some HDR techniques using this image, see if I'm able to salvage it in some way or another.

Gracie Goldfinch

2008-07-20T08:59:00+00:00

I was out taking pictures yesterday and I learnt a very valuable lesson. I learned that swans are evil, they're evil because the light meter in my camera hates them as much as it hates snow and other tricky lit situations. I must have taken at least one hundred shots of swans yesterday and to my fussy eye they're all over exposed and useless. So I woke this morning, threw my camera round my neck and went out into the garden to find next door's cat (she's black and white you see). Although this picture of Gracie the cat isn't exactly one to shout about in terms of composition, it is in terms of exposure. The blacks are black and the whites are white. I am beginning to realise that the point and shoot approach is perfectly acceptable when we're talking about holiday snaps, but it's the need to record images accurately that's seriously challenging.

The Start Of Something New

2008-07-08T13:22:00+00:00

For me this journey will be all about what I can learn on the subject of digital photography. I already have a small understanding of how a camera works and enough knowledge to be able to get myself into trouble, what I truly lack is the experience and the knowledge that will enable me to move forward and take large creative steps. In short, I have an understanding of the toolset, I just don't know how best to use them in unison to create something worthy of a second look.

With each post I shall discuss different aspects of digital photography and share what I have discovered. I hope some of you decide to join me on this quest as I know there are lots of people out there with very expensive camera equipment and haven't a clue how to best use it. This must be true as statistically I cannot be the only one?

I also plan to make this blog a good resource for others that are interested in learning about digital photography.