Happy St Andrew's Day!

St. Andrew's Day is the feast of Saint Andrew, celebrated on 30 November each year. Saint Andrew is the patron saint of Scotland and St. Andrew's Day is Scotland's official national day, although Burns' Night is more widely observed. In 2006, the Scottish Parliament designated the Day as an official bank holiday.

What a miserable looking f--ker, though...



I know who should be our Patron Saint...



Have a great St. Andrew's Day!!

A nice pic to end the week on...

Chaps

A happy wee face from the time of life before real worry sets in!! Joking apart, shame she's oblivious to that fact, but I guess that's the magic of childhood!



Have a great weekend. I'll start posting some images again next week. Had some recent images I worked on be 'corrupted'; when I went to open them up in PS, the .psd files were corrupt! Argh.

Anyway, see you online next week.

Ivan

Projected Portfolio entries

Dear All

Below, by five entries for next week's projected portfolio competition. No idea how these will do, but wanted to get in a set of related images. Have dumped the Deal Pier idea, since feedback was mixed and I trust you guys.

Comments welcomed, but it's a done deal - have emailed them off, as today is the deadline, and I'll likely not be there in person tonight (Abby was coughing half the night and we are both pooped...).

Ivan

Just Blue

Guys, sorry these are so big - blogger won't let me upload them as images for some reason, so they're coming straight from my web hosting and therefore full size already. Hope this doesn't screw up the page but if it does I'll try to delete the post. edited I've created them as clickable thumbnails now.

This is my portfolio selection for the projected image competition at the Camera Club, deadline Monday. Title "Just Blue" - they're all images from Santorini. I chose a square crop which is a bit different. Thoughts?

Norfolk Coast - a couple more images...

Another image of the walkers on the beach. Different composition, and the figures a bit larger in the scene than the other one.



Also, I have cropped the other image to be even more letterbox - improvement or not?



Comments welcomed as usual.

Ivan

Reviews!

Chaps

Please feel free to post reviews (brief, if need be) on any of the following items/topics;

- new equipment i.e. camera, lenses, accessories
- new software i.e CS3
- software that the group may not have used
- digital imaging techniques you have tried

I am thinking of upgrading the PC sometime, and may also be interested in an A3+ printer, as well as upgrading to CS3! Could be an expensive time for me (but then, my 40th is in February 08)....

Ivan

2nd Print Competition Entries

Below are my entries for Monday's print competition at the Cambridge Camera Club. I can't make it that evening due to a work trip Mon-Wed, but Gareth will let me know what happened...

I held over the first image "Bath Crescent" from the last competition, submitting "Window and Chair" instead (which got a First), so fingers crossed for this one.


The next image is one from the potential Deal Pier portfolio. I have abandoned this portfolio, but this image was quite positively received on the blog, so I'm going to submit it.



You may have commented on these images before, but would welcome any thoughts, esp from Adam and Colin...

Cheers
Ivan

North Norfolk Coast - a recent photo trip...

For the first time in ages, I went on a photographic trip at the weekend. Location, the North Norfolk coast. No previous experience of the area, but I did get the inside track from someone at the Camera Club, so we headed for the beach and dunes near the coastal village of Wells-next-the-Sea.

Below are a couple of images from that trip. I took about 300, and the light was rubbish for about 2/3 of the time we were out there. Then, the sun broke through and we had 30 mins of glorious light, followed by a fantastic sunset.



Let me know what you think. More to follow when I get through the RAWs…

Cheers

Ivan

First post! Well sort of...

Well the previous message shows what can happen when the electricity goes out while posting to the blog. Anyway, inspired by Adam's pretty flower I decided to upload a macro shot of my own. Pentax K100D, Vivitar Series 1 105mm f/2.8 1:1 macro (shot at f/19... Damien liked this lens!) helped by a AF540FGZ flash. This little spider kept bounding up and down in front of my monitor the other day, like some sort of arachnid yo-yo. In the background is the O'Reilly book "sed&awk"; perhaps the spider was undecided whether to make the jump to linux?

Macro 1st attempt

Hi Cahps,

I've recently bought a 100mmm Macro lens. Here's one of my first attempts at macro photography. 1/60 f4 and used my speedlight bouncing onto a reflector. It's Ok but i feel there could be more - what do you reckon? Adam

Blog Project

Chaps

I have started, gradually, to archive all our blog posts, comments and images as PDF files. Quite easy to do, but takes a bit of time. My goal is to produce a merged PDF, with all the posts, comments and images, compiled on an annual basis.

As there were only a few posts for 2005, I'll merge this with 2006's compilation.

I plan to lay it out chronologically, with all the comments following each relevant post, and with the separate images (if needed) on following pages. I'll soon have Acrobat on this laptop soon, so can merge (and hyperlink if I can be arsed) all the separate PDFs together in the correct order.

We'll have a record of each years submission, and a useful, humourous (remember the "Miksang" incident?) and hopefully educational compilation of all our efforts.

I hope to get you all your copy of the 2005/2006 Season of Critical Light in time for Christmas...

Cheers
Ivan
Critical Light Chief Archivist

Competition entries

It's time for me to enter a competion too. Unfortunately nothing as grand as the Cambridge Camera Club, but my companies annual competion. £100 up for grabs, normally around a hundred entries. there are several categories - i am entering Flambourgh head (below)in the landscape but this one i'm think for the 'abstract'. Any feedback welcome. many thanks, Adam.

Alex, the original

Posted just for comparison with the post-processed version. This is just converted straight from RAW to jpeg with no adjustments.

Possible Portfolio submission

This is my selection for a possible CCC competition portfolio submission. 5 images, in a defined order, on an easily identifiable subject. This one is Deal, in Kent. Not sure if it'll be a print or projected submission, but your thoughts on the images and order is appreciated.

Ivan

Planets

This is one of those post-processing techniques which you'll be sick of in a few months time. A bit like that Fake DOF lens blur stuff from a year ago.

http://photojojo.com/content/tutorials/create-your-own-panorama-planets/ gives the gist, but they're all at it at the moment.

Rich, my mate and the guy who did the photography at our wedding drew my attention to it as a technique. He shot a set at the wedding to try it out but ran out of time to post-process them - I thought I'd give it a quick go using autostitch and photoshop which is what you see above. The people are flatteringly-elongated but my wife was quite amused (and pleased) with the result!

Alex

Son of a friend of mine (my Best Man, in fact), Alex has just turned three. He's a lovely, if shy little boy and wasn't too happy about me grabbing a couple of shots of him in our hall when he came round at the weekend with his Mum and Dad.

You get to know where, in your house, the light's nice, and at which times of the day. The hall's good for us because there are large plain light surfaces, even if the buttermilk emulsion gives a bit of a colour cast. The chance for some natural catchlights in the eyes is there, and the shadows are never too harsh. Even though he's standing in the doorway to our downstairs loo, a nice wide aperture makes it all OK.

I'm pretty happy with the shot - his expression, the lighting, and the post-processing. I really don't know if it's a competition-grade shot though. Thoughts?

Details: Canon 40D, ISO400, f3.2 @ 1/50, Sigma 18-50mm f2.8 lens @ 50mm. Post-processing in Adobe Lightroom.

Flambourgh Head

While I've got time, thought I'd slap another recent snap up. this one was taken in September whilst risking life and limb on. (Eos 5D 1/10 sec, F22, 17mm, ISO100, polarising filter, wet feet). Uped the saturation a little in Rawshooter. As ever, your thoughts gentlemen.

Dead thistle

Guys, I was drawn to these dead thistle heads by their colours. how do you reckon this could be improved? (Canon 5D 100mm macro 0.6 seconds f14, flash directed with lasolite reflector). Good luck tommorow at the competition. all the best, Adam

I like Cropping (and I like to Crop)...

Couldn't help myself. I liked Gareth's bridge picture, but felt it may do better with a more dynamic crop (and lightened up a bit, with a bit more contrast too). So, here is my effort.


Comments?

Ivan

Goals

We've talked here about goals before - Ivan putting most action into identifying them. I read this today and found it interesting:

http://bythom.com/goal.htm.

Perhaps my goal should be to read less on the Internet and to put more thought into photography?



I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on this one though, guys, for a couple of reasons.

The first is the colouration. I'm colour-blind, and I was reasonably happy with this tinting, but of two other people who've seen it, one has said it's fine and the other has said it's waaay too pink. What do you think?

The second is its merits as a photograph. Ivan made a point the other day that, when you're photographing your children, you can be a little too close to the subject matter, emotionally, to be properly objective about the merits of the photograph. Now, I'm pretty pleased with this (Canon 40D; Canon 50mm f1.8 lens @ f1.8) but I'd like a two steps back opinion.