Family, Photography and other misc news
If you are after a filter system you cannot get better then the Lee Filter System, but if you are after a particular filter get your order in now. The popularity of the Lee Filter System has exploded and there is a very long waiting list now.
I have now been waiting four months for a new set of Glass Grey Graduated filters, hope they arrive soon, I have a foreign trip planned and was hoping to use them.
Another trip out. The morning found us exploring the moors. We then headed to Rievaulx Terrace which as well as some interesting architecture, has some dramatic views down the hill and through the trees to the ruins of Rievaulx Abbey.
We took some shots of the temples built as items of interest by Thomas Duncombe the landowner. The sun climbed and illuminated Abbey below, so both Caroline and myself took some shots of the Abbey using our medium format gear.
We then popped down to the Abbey itself to visit their tea room for lunch and photograph the dramatic ruins from close up.
The sun had gone in but the dark clouds with some glimpse of blue had potential, so we carried on carrying the medium format gear, tripod and Nikon SLR with the 12-24mm f/4 DX (APS-C) around the Abbey ruins in hope.
At the end of our visit we walked slowly back to the car, when I saw the hills in the distance slowly becoming illuminated in light.
Looking at the clouds I guessed that in about 5 minutes the break in clouds would illuminate the Abbey. Quickly finding a good position I had spotted early, I set the tripod and Medium format camera up.
As the golden light reached the Abbey I quickly metered the scene with my spot meter and two shots, one with Fuji Velva 50 and one Ilford FP4.
I quickly repositioned and shot two more frames before the sun when in again.
With that we packed in and headed home.
A day out at Whitby.
It’s the start of Whitby Goth Week and I am not sure but the Photographers may just out number the Goths.
As always the outfits are fantastic and whole family’s get involved.
With so many Photographers, Goths, Steam Punks & Emo’s not to mention lots of bikers clad in black leather (not us this time thou), I am not quite sure what the ‘Normal’ holiday makers made of it all!
If you are going to Goth week during March or later on this year in the autumn, remember to treat everyone with respect.
Today we had a trip across the North Yorkshire Moors and spent several hours at the Ryedale Folk Museum.
William Hayes’s (1871-1940) Photographic Studio has been moved there. It’s the oldest daylight lit studio surviving. His studio still has his large format camera with 7.5 inch portrait lens and his dark room is also there.
The studio was set up in 1902 in Monkgate, York, and moved to Hutton-le-Hole in 1911.
In many ways its not much different todays studios, a selection of cloth backgrounds, props, but instead of flash, a side wall of glass and a glass ceiling.
The Museum opened in 1964, and the original exhibits comprised of the private collections of Wilfred Crossland, Raymond Hayes and Bertram Frank.
If you are ever near Lastingham, try the Blacksmiths Arms, good beer and fine food.
Game terrine starter, belly pork, black pudding and a bottle of fine red wine. Glad I was not having to drive.
If you are ever in the area do pop in to the church. St Mary’s has a wonderful crypt well worth a visit.
We have decided to have a long weekend of photography.
We will be spending Friday to Monday in North Yorkshire and we will be visiting as many local National Trust and English Heritage properties as we can.
For you gear heads we will be packing just two Digital SLR’s with a Nikkor 12-24mm f/4 DX on one and a 24-70mm f/2.8 on the other. We will also be packing our Medium Format Kit (Hassleblad) and a good heavy tripod.
I’ll be blogging when I can using WordPress for iOS using the iPhone, but due to the very rural nature of the area’s we will be stopping in, Wi-Fi and even a mobile phone signal for voice, never mind data, will be extremely limited, so i’ll be updating these posts during the following week and uploading more photographs.
Friday consisted of a trip to Nunnington Hall, a rather fine country house, with lots of willing Peacocks all trying to impress.
I had a Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 on the camera but a long lens was fortunately not necessary as the birds were extremely tame. In fact one Peahen walked up so close I thought she was going to peck the lens.
This weekend will also be the time I’ll be testing GPS4Cam. A piece of iOS software for the iPhone which Chris Bennett uses and has reviewed on his site.
I’ll possibly not get round to posting many photographs until Monday so I’ll update these posts then.
Posted using WordPress for iOS
Updated
Many photographers have a Love & Hate relationship with HDR, I like it when its used with a degree of subtlety but even I have sometimes gone over the top when I feel the image suits it.
Interestingly the general public tend to like HDR more then photographers.
This is about as over the top as I go, but felt the image suited it.
If your interested in HDR check out the website stuckincustoms.com, some very dramatic examples and tutorials.
When it comes to standards and companies not following them, I could have a good old rant about many top companies, computer and software companies being the worse.
The other day a photographer friend of mine was demonstrating his new photo editing software.
While key wording and adding other important metadata, we wondered where it was writing this data.
As I suspected, it was using a sidecar file to accompany the jpg’s and raw’s.
What really rilled me was instead of using an xmp sidecar file (an open standard developed by Adobe) which many other software programs can read, not just Adobe Lightroom or Camera Raw, it uses it’s own proprietary format.
Why! Lock in, thats why, but the worry is, will the companies own future software support their own proprietary formats, past history suggests not.
From Wikipedia:
XMP sidecar files. For file formats that have no internal support for XMP data, the data is stored in separate .xmp files with the same base file name. Many photo cataloging applications have support for this file format.
Well last week I did say I was going to photograph the Daffodils. Well the blooms were not yet open but this weekend they were so, with the trusty Nikon D200, 100mm f/2.8 macro lens and the macro flash gear I spent some time trying to get some good shots.
Near the back door next to our poor dead bay leaf trees that have been killed by the hard winter were a likely bunch of Daffodils.
Setting up the tripod, nearly as low as it would go, I composed on the open flower. I wanted a black background so I laid a black cloth behind.
The cloth together with a fairly high shutter speed to under-expose the background, this made the background a nice black.
With only one Daffodil in bloom, I then switched over to the bush that had lots of yellow flowers.
Once again I employed the black cloth and a high shutter speed to underexpose the background.
My attention was then next drawn to the bush next door which seemed to have an inordinate number of lady birds on it.
With so few flowers to chose from my last flower to photograph was the crocuses, a rather pretty purple.
A pleasant afternoon shooting. Nothing to dramatic but good practice.
The lighting was nothing special just front lit via the macro flash. Later in the month when we have more blooms to choose from I will definitely try something a little more challenging.
A few cut flowers, cut glass crystal vase and some studio lighting is in order
During my recent research into studio flash equipment, I came across an announcement by Elinchrom. They are planning to release an app to control your Elinchrom Flash heads.
No real details yet but another posible reason for a photographer to have an iPad around.
Oh and don’t forget, iPad2 released today; at least in America. Oh well just have to wait. Still tempted.
Decisions, decisions:
iPad2 or GF1; We will just have to see.