Leafy Tunnel

Well, it's not black & white but it does have people (a person).

Look at all that green! Shot with my 35mm f1.8 @ f5.6, with just a little bit of post to boost the contrast (particularly the greens) and darken a few of the shadows in the foreground to lead your eye into the background. I think I'll revisit this place when the leafy tunnel has regrown again.

Windows says the max f-stop of my 1.8 lens is 1.6. What?! Not that I'm excited for the added 0.2 or anything (it's a DX lens after all), I just think it's odd that the numbers don't exactly match.

Reflections

Looking up... or maybe down.

Taken on a clear but very cold December day. I saw that this fountain was full of old autumn leaves. The fountain was also switched off so the surface of the still water was like a mirror, reflecting the lightly clouded sky. The shadow that was cast by the fountain's figure and her podium cut through this mirror like some sort of keyhole and made the leaves in the bottom of the fountain much more visible. My eye was initially drawn to the stillness of the leaves under the water, but when I flipped the image vertically it looked like I had taken a double exposure of the fountain at eye level and some autumnal leaves.

Spider Hunters

I saw these kids climbing trees in the woods behind my house in the Philippines. What they were doing was looking for spiders, which they would later pair up to fight against each other. Mr. Orange decided to climb the trees, while Mr. Red was on the lookout, directing Mr. Orange to where the big arachnids were.

I kept this shot in colour rather than convert to black & white as the orange and red t-shirts contrasted really well against the green leaves. The colour also helped to define the imaginary rule-of-thirds lines; the picture is divided vertically by the two trees flanking the diagonal trunk, as well as horizontally by the dark green tree canopy up top and light green scrubland down below. The kids sit nicely on the horizontal lines, with the diagonal trunk and Mr. Red's face leading your eye upwards to Mr. Orange.

Photo Set: Animals (B&W)

In alphabetical order, I suppose:

 Gullwings. One up, one down.

 Power-pigeons. Grime and grime.

Sausages in the park.

 Trellick pigeon. I tried to focus on the bird but AF chose the building instead. Oh well.

Webdrops. 35mm goodness after the rain.

Just point the lens to the sky and...

It's usually difficult to get photos of a plant or flower isolated in a normal setting as there's always background distractions and colours lingering around, no matter how much you bokeh it out. Blurring the background heavily narrows the depth of field on a subject. and you can't really avoid all the background colour unless you're in a studio setup, or you do some selective colouring (not exactly my favourite technique). I decided to experiment with a few shots by using an overcast day as my flat, colourless background, which meant shooting upwards.

These were all taken around March-April, when the weather was still nice and grey. I set my camera's white balance to Daylight to preserve the colours; despite the cloudy day, I didn't want these shots warmed up. (I also rarely use 'auto' white balance anymore, which probably would have had the same effect.) I like that they look cold and icey, especially the last shot of the newly emerging blossoms. I think they also look a bit like slides from a microscope, particularly the shot of the green leaves. Shooting into what is essentially white light meant that the foreground subjects were a bit dark. I didn't want to use my on-camera flash because it's crap (and I didn't have anything at hand to diffuse it) so I adjusted the shadows afterwards in post.

I think they turned out quite nice. The plants are in isolation with no noisy background colours or shapes (no need for selective colour), with just a little help from Photoshop and an English spring time.

Star cluster

I don't know the name of this plant. All I know about it is that the flowers are yellow and before they are pollinated and fall out they sit in these neat little star-shaped pods.

Getting this close to a subject makes me wish I had a macro lens handy. I suppose I could always do macro-type shots with my Panny, but that's an extra camera to carry around.

The artist

I liked that he was totally focussed on painting the water and greenery of the park. If I did this I would probably be looking over my shoulder every few minutes.

 

So zen. And very green.

One crown, five rings, one eyeball

The olympic opening ceremony begins tonight, so here are a few pictures in keeping with the olympic theme. I'll throw in a few jubilee related pics too as that happened earlier this year but this blog didn't exist then, as well a general bunch of GB and flag-type pics for good measure.

 painted by the children of a nursery school

 Photographing the photographer

 Cute!

Note: if you hang the flag of the Philippines vertically, the blue portion should be on the left and the red on the right. Hanging it red-to-blue turns it into a war flag!

A pretty good summary of London's summer: The Olympics, the Shard, Tower Bridge. Missing: the rain! That happened moments after this was taken.

And finally, London 2012's mascot Wenlock, in Union Flag livery.

Beautiful Ugly

A little break from street-style and candid pics, I think. I've got loads of nature photos and I should upload some of those too.

(35mm f/6.3 1/160 ISO-100)

Dandelions, Beautiful and ugly.

Unlike the usual dandelion seed heads, this one was huge, a little bigger than a tennis ball. I was able to capture a lot of intricate detail in the full picture, despite the fairly slow shutter speed and hand-held camera (and, if I remember correctly there was a slight breeze). And yes, I knocked the seeds right off after taking this.