My nephew Sam

Here is a pic of my nephew Sam. I like it a lot...just a quick post. I took this with my fixed 50mm 1.4 lens.

Call For Entries!

The ART OF PHOTOGRAPHY SHOW 2010 is an international exhibition of photographic art which will take place August 28 through November 7, 2010 at the elegant Lyceum Theatre Gallery, located in the historic Gaslamp Quarter of downtown San Diego, California. The Opening Reception Gala will be on Saturday, August 28th, and will be a world class event!

WEBSITE: www.artofphotographyshow.com

JURIED COMPETITION:
Natasha Egan is the Judge for the Art of Photography Show 2010. Ms. Egan is Associate Director and Curator at the Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chigago. She has organized and curated photography exhibitions around the world and has written numerous catalogs, essays and articles on various aspects of photography. She holds an MA in museum studies and an MFA in fine art photography. Natasha Egan is highly respected in the global photographic community, so it's a significant honor to be selected by her.

$10,000 IN AWARDS:
$2,000 1st Place Award
$1,600 2nd Place Award
$1,200 3rd Place Award
$ 800 4th Place Award
$ 400 (11) Honorable Mention Awards


ENTRY FEE:
$25 for the first entry, $10 for each additional entry. There is no limit to the number of entries an artist may enter. The entire registration, upload, and payment process can be done securely right on the website.

My shot at the horse's eye

Here is my "vision". I was going to leave the colour in but I found the pinkness off-putting. I was then going to create a strong black and white contrast but that didn't fit with the softness that the original image had. That is, the pinkness, to me, implies more delicate tones rather than harsh tones (comes from the pinkness in albinos). Anyway, I used black and white and attempted to create a soft and pure image.

Enough with the la-di-da arty-farty stuff. Here it is:

Market buskers

This is an image I took a while ago at the local Market. These lads use to play often there. I took this by climbing up some stairs above them.

White Trees

Final one from me for today.

Taken at a local National Trust property near Cambridge (Anglesey Abby) - this patch of pure white trees planted against an intentionally dark backdrop makes for a quite stunning scene. I cropped this to accentuate the effect - this is also a stitch of 3 images to get the wide view.

Ivan

A very English affair...

Took this one a few years back, while on a camping trip to the Peak District in England. Can't recall the place, but I wanted to put the players in context with their English game and general backdrop, so I included it all in a wide, panoramic style crop, bleak skies and bricks and all. I quite like this, and it's a kind of "reportage" photo I don't usually take.

Ivan

Silver wave

In the spirit of posting something different to one's usual style(e), let me know what you think of the above, kind of an abstract study of something (prize for saying what that "something" is). I know there are technical deficiencies (some blown highlights), but any "artistic" comments welcomed too.

Ivan

What the horse saw

Yup, another horse eye! And what did she see?

Montreal

Way back in October 2006 I visited Montreal and went to Mount Royal. Both of these pics are from there. Like the boat in the previous post, they seem to have a painterly feel to them.

Overdone?

Experimented a bit with this one and went a little wild on the rt hand side of the sliders in LR2. Overdone, almost certainly, but I kind of like it...thoughts.

Something?

OK, before this blog dies completely, I'll try one last time. Just a little something from this afternoon. Like it? Hate it? Just say something.

Adam's photo - now in mono and cropped

As suggested, Adam's excellent shot cropped to echo the lead-in lines of the huts more and emphasise the letterbox element of the pier PLUS a nice mono treatment, and lose some of the somewhat redundant shoreline..

Thoughts?

Ivan

Southwold Pier

Sorry it's been so long - been travelling loads and working like a dog. As a result have barely picked up a camera, but here is one I did manage to snap at Southwold pier at sunset in early October. Pretty miserable day but I tred to make the best of it.... 24mm f22 8 secs....

Available light

Available light is my second photography exhibit and at the same gallery as last year. This exhibit will feature myself and three other photographers that will present work of images captured using only the available natural light and careful consideration of the moment. The idea is to show the ever present beauty in every day life.

The exhibit will run for one month and will open on the eve of Nocturne; an evening event when many galleries in Halifax open their doors to exhibits on show for that evening.

In our case the images from the four photographers will be projected on to a 12 foot screen in a park opposite the gallery. Three musicians (violinist, cellist and guitarist) will play a one-hour 4 to 5 movement piece composed for these images. In a sense, a musical interpretation of the images.

My work will be a series of images of light striking my bathroom basin. This particular light occurs only during the summer, enters through a window and bends around the basin. The light creates wonderful patterns of shadow and light.




Unfortunately I will be on Sable Island for the opening (!) but will be able to see the gallery exhibit.

Damian

Running sanderlings

I took this photograph in January 2008 just before leaving Sable Island. I was at the West Spit and crept up to these birds on my stomach so as not to disturb them. I also wanted to be at their level to get a different view. The seals and gull in the background maintain a sense of scale. This photograph reached the semi-finals in the 2008 BBC Wildlife Competition.

Canon EOS 40D, 100-300mm 4.5/5.6 lens, 1/160th sec, f/5.6, ISO 500, focal length 300mm

Damian

Online, web-based photo editing with Pixlr.com

Found this via the BBC tech website. It's an online photoshop clone called Pixlr.com. It's free and no registration required (I think).

Looks and works very like it apparently, although I have not fully tested it (review to follow). Have a try and see what you think. May be useful if away from your PC and Photoshop not available...

It does layers, but not masks, and I can even see how to erase one layer to reveal one underneath, so you can't - it seems - do anything really funky on it. But if your shots are ok and only need a little tweak, it looks pretty good. I'll keep investigating and see their on line help just in case you can do more.

Happy time-wasting!

Ivan

The issue of sunlight

Here is a technical question for you budding photographers.

The situation: I am slowly crawling along a narrow beach at high tide, occasionally wading, to reach the thousands ofsandpipers and plovers on a narrow stretch of beach. When I get close enough to start shooting, I run into the problem of shooting into the sun. Colours are washed out and there is haze. I can't get to the other side of the beach because I would disturb the birds and they may not return. I am shooting with a 100-400mm zoom lens.

How can I minimise the effects of the sun, such as losing colour saturation, and haze etc. This question is directed at both the camera and post-processing RAW captures.

Any thoughts on that?

Rain Sky - 2; the DCL crop

Taking Damian's advice, cropping off the lower black layer...better?

Ivan

Birds, and lots of 'em

I recently made three photographic trips. The first was to Evangeline Beach where I photographed thousands of semi-palmated samdpipers and plovers. I will post the other two trips later: the Bay of Fundy and Kejimkujik National Park.

Each year in July thousands of these birds congregate on the Minas Basin to feed on the mudflats. If you go on the fall of high tide the birds are crammed together on small beaches waiting for flats to be exposed so they can binge on those delightful invertebrates. So I went down there to have a look...

I used my Canon EOS 40D and 100-400mm L USM lens.

At the smallest of sounds, or movement or smell the birds take flight.

They have a brown upper and a white lower so in the air they produce wonderful and colourful patterns

Rain sky

Another 3.2MP image taken on the cybershot phone. This time tweaked quite a bit more - I wanted to see if I could make a decent mono image. I think I can. Not much interest in the foreground, and it's a little imbalanced across the image, but the limitations of the colour image (noise) works out to give quite a nice mono grain effect. I used a vignette too to increase the moodiness of the image. Let me know what you think.

Is anyone else planning to post? If not, I shall surf your sites, take screenshots and post for you!!

Ivan