Soldiers Dawn

April 13, 2015 by John Wallace in Digital Enhancement, Moods and tagged buddies, dawn, mates, merged, silhouette, sky, soldier, Sunrise, warriors | Leave a comment

Sometimes I find that I’ve captured a great image of the sky and then wonder what to do with it. On this occasion it was the beautiful lighting that occurs at daybreak and then only lasts a moment or two. Having captured it, it seemed to cry out for an image in front to make it more dramatic somehow, that’s when I found this statue of the soldiers in the local park. So just grabbed the figures and reduced them to almost black, scaled back on the cropping to fit the sky image better and merged the two, the result gave me what I’d been thinking of.

Dawn of the Warrior

Ok so I failed on the basic rule to not put the subject in the middle of the frame but on this occasion it seemed to work better, open for comment on this one.

More images can be found in this sites galleries as well as high definition versions available through my online shop, please visit, all comments welcome.

Take the Moon

April 2, 2015 by John Wallace in Digital Enhancement, Moods and tagged Camera, Canon, Digital, EOS, images, moon, night, Photography, silhouette, zoom | Leave a comment

It’s a clear night and there’s a full moon just staring down at you. Ever tried to take a photo of the moon, you have a camera right so of course you have and what do you get, a white dot in a sea of black. It’s pretty tricky right, it’s very bright and the shot looked straight forward until I took it and looked at the result.

What was obvious was that for me to get a reasonable image in the frame I needed a telephoto lens and ideally a tripod. I tried a few shots with my 250mm telephoto resting on a beanbag, left the lens on AF and achieved big patches of white blur, not good. So moved to manual focus, and started bracketing shots and achieved some reasonable (though still small) images, great if I just wanted to add a moon to a landscape.

Moon Example

Then I managed to get hold of a small telescope (1200 mm) and with the camera attached for once managed to fill the frame and yes I had to use a tripod but the telescope spotting scope helped as the image was being viewed using the camera preview and without the spotter I would have found searching the blackness for that elusive bright patch really frustrating. Adding to this the fact that for all long lenses the slightest movement to the tripod this end caused big movement the other didn’t help.

The end result after a lot of shots was passable but it was great fun trying to work it out not forgetting of course that the moon is moving all the time so a few minutes after I put it in the frame it was out again. I’ve attached an image showing the result and an image of the cats that I thought would work using the moon as a silhouette.

Togetherness

I’m certain better images can be achieved so no doubt will try again soon.

More images can be found in this sites galleries as well as high definition versions available through my online shop.

Sunset Opportunities

March 10, 2015 by John Wallace in Moods and tagged Camera, Canon, Digital, EOS, Florence, images, Landscape, Photography, silhouette, sunset | Leave a comment

The sunset time of day can present more varied opportunities than just photographs of the sky with a few interesting clouds in them. That very low sun can set the mood for contra jour shots where as expected you take directly into the light, this would give a strong silhouette to the foreground structure which could be a tree, pier, building etc and show the brightness of the sky behind. The first of these two images demonstrates the basic silhouette effect achieved by shooting into the light and can be achieved at most times of the day.

Silhouette Marker

Alternatively however the lighting of this time of day can be used to accentuate the foreground and produce almost no sky imagery at all, whilst still contra jour. This very different second image of the cyclists was taken utilising the warmth of the setting sun, this creates a very moody atmosphere.

The long ride home

This shot was taken whilst walking along the banks of the river Arno in Florence, the sun was directly in my eyes and all these cyclists were passing me heading home no doubt. The opportunity was too good to miss so with the opportunity of high shutter speeds from my trusty Canon EOS DSLR I listened for the cyclist coming up behind and shot as they went past.

High resolution versions of my photographs are available through my online shop, please enjoy.