Rigos Pano

Friday just passed I went back home to Treherbert for a cake smash shoot in Tynewydd park, somewhere where I spent most of my childhood and somewhere I have not been for 10 years plus!! I love going back as it gives me a chance to see all my family, old neighbours and hopefully people that i haven’t seen in ages! And a cheeky Fish ‘n’ Chips!!

Im still editing the images from the cake smash and they are turning out to be fantastic, but on the way back to Hereford, I stopped at the top of the Rigos and took a 20 plus image for a pano image as the view was breathless!!

Ive uploaded them both here but both are on my website as full res images (they are massive!!) and they are available for you to download, and do what ever you like with them (as long as you don’t use them as your own).

Ive enhanced the blues a little and they are 12 image HDRs but I’ve tried to keep the process as low as possible!

Coffee in the Sunshine

Ive been wanting to try this for some time. balancing sunlight with flash. Using harsh bare flash to illuminate the front and sunlight s a key light from behind. The shot i would have been extra happy with would have had some clouds to add something in the sky. But its not to much of a buggy. These last few days have brought some great clouds later in the day, just the time when im busy doing life. Ill catch them one day!!

So these shots have been modified quite a lot using Lightroom and photoshop. But thats me, i use the programs as much as i can to develop what i want from my photographs. I use the clarity slider quite a lot, and also the sharpening tools. Sometimes it can destroy the image if you go too overboard but sometimes throwing it up can bring out some great results. Depending on what the overall look is that your going for.

Settings wise, I had the camera in manual mode, im quite happy with that as i have only just crept out from Aperture mode. I thing its quite a bloody big step though? Always guess the first reading. I knew that i wanted a quick shutter and as i was using flash i set this to 1/160th. I posted some portrait images a few posts back and during this session, i noticed that the rear curtain of my shutter was out syncing with my flash. So then i was at 1/200th and decided that i would have to be a touch quicker to not get this again.

I wanted quite a lot of the image in focus so i set to f11. This gave me more than enough sharpness. I was using my Hänel Combi TF triggers and had my Nissin d688i mk11 on 3/4 power.

I also played around with the white balance in Lightroom to give a different style to the images. And as i enjoy doing them, i threw in a HDR to see if it would work…. not bad!!

Coffee anyone??…….

Took some time this morning to take a walk and get some fresh air in the lovely Hereford town. Here are more images over on my flickr page http://flic.kr/s/aHsjFzLt2Z

‘Out of gas’

Dont know too much about this place but what is obvious, is that it used to be a filling station in Canon Pyon. Now its just busted up! I have a grwat idea in mind for this place involving light painting and light trails. I was planning to try the first test shots this evening but other things got in the way. But i had an old image that i could process just to see what the possibilities could be. Looks like this could be a fun shot! Yeah the Graduated exposure filter is pretty heavy… i guess I’ve been watching too much Top Gear!!!! Here’s a pretty heavy HDR process again but the original image lacked any kind of definition. But now it looks a hundred times better.

Heres a shot from a while back that i had missed! The original image was great but again i wanted to run it as a HDR, as i do with most of my images just to test the water. If it looks bad, then ill revert to the original image and go from there. This has actually been run through Photomatix, then Colour eFex, and then through 2 separate full clarity edits! The original image was missing clouds on the right hand corner so i added some in. If you think that they look too processed then please do say something, i think they look ok. But thats me!

We went for a walk to oakwood green yesterday afternoon to get some fresh air! I took the camera along just incase there was anything about worth shooting. The light was not great and the rest was pretty dire but here was something from the walk. I run it as a HDR and went a touch over what i usually do but it looks great! I added the fog in colour efex and then added a low clarity grad over the top. It is a little over the top, but i like it!

A new way to change.

Carrying on from my last post, these are the rest of the set that i am happy about. With these i used HDR to see what i could get from them. I don’t think I’ve tried the technique on portraits before. They seem to work here and give a great grungy heavy feel to the end products. Im happy.

Canon Pyon Falls

 

I was extremely lucky today. I’ve had a shot in mind for a while which has absolutely nothing to do with this place. But it was the reason i was out exploring with my camera. This is taken in Canon Pyon. These ‘Falls’ are actually very small, Its a small stream that runs parallel to the park in Canon Pyon. There is a place where its possible to get down close to the water, but you have to lean up against a tree whilst wedging your feet up on a bank so you are secure… So this is where i was, in a brightly coloured, striped Winter Jacket due to this lovely weather we are having, making handheld exposures of just under 60 seconds. I do have some other areas of this stream which look nice and will continue to edit them but i liked this particular shot. So much that i decided to try a few different edits of it. The Black and White is a standout image to me, Some extensive burning and grads were involved with the final image but thats how i like to do things. The photograph i take is always just a starting point, depending on the moment. Then its to Lightroom or Photoshop to have some fun with the unreal tools available and Art is to be made I suppose.

Editing photographs on the go. Ps Touch or iPhoto?

I’ll say this firstly, nothing will ever replace my iMac when it comes to editing photographs. Even more so since I’ve upgraded to 8gb Ram. Photomatix seems instant when processing an 11 image HDR. Lightroom has also become a lot quicker and even though I don’t use it much, photoshop is now a beast. But for a while I’ve been hoping to get my hands on an apple iPad. Before I had the chance to try the whole range out, I knew for certain tat only the iPad 2 or Retina would do castin the mini aside. But once I actually went and spent some time with them, the iPad mini came out trumps. It’s weight, size, power and screen were perfect. So was the price. So once I had it, I knew that I would have to get a good photo edit program.

As of now, I do not have the camera connect kit so I use Dropbox on my iMac to get photos I wan to my iPad. The two apps I have downloaded are iPhoto and Photoshop Touch. I had already purchased iPhoto on my iPhone for £2.99 some time ago so it synced straight to my iPad. Photoshop touch set me back £6.99. As with the is version, iPhoto only edits JPEG and to my surprise Photoshop touch won’t use NEF files or RAW files. However you can use and save work as psd or png files.

First up, iPhoto. I love the journal feature within this app.

It has some nice features and looks great. It takes your usual editing features and adds some nice animations and ways to pick your edit. Quite expected from apple. But finally there are some great ways to edit your photo and end up with a good looking final image. Not bad for 3 quid!

Next, on to Photoshop Touch. Instantly disappointed with not being able to import from Dropbox and no use of raw files. But since ps touch isn’t supposed to replace the desktop, then the disappointment quickly faded.

This again was a recognisable app. I personally don’t have cs6 but from looking at YouTube tutorial videos where cs6 is used, you can see why ps touch looks like it does. Pretty sexy if I can say! Because of my initial disappointment, expectation was at a minimal and had started regretting parting with £6.99. If I hadn’t have had the £20 App Store voucher from my sis in law for my birthday then I might have been to tight.

I first played around with the preset features and tested out the curves feature. All good so far.
Then came the lens flare feature. You’ll see the finished product of this fun feature on the final image of this post.

But I was taken back by how great this app is when using the clone tool! I have yet to try the other features on the left hand bar but if they are as good as the clone, then I’m pleased.

Here’s the original image with a great big mound of mud exactly where I don’t want it to be. In the next image it’s no where to be seen!

I’m still using and playing around with the featurs on both of these apps and finding each one to have different ways of being fun and creatively inspiring. Here’s a finished image from ps touch where I added the sunburst and flare. Obviously generated to some but just good enough to look real for the others!

Les Paul ’57

A reprocess of one of my favourites. This is a fantastic looking guitar, and the chap that owns it can play it beautifully. The HDR gives it just that extra edge I think. Would love to see this as a large print someday…