Decaying Bulldozer Hastings



Decaying Bulldozer

Was out and about with my wife over the weekend and we took a trip out to Hastings, which is about 70 miles from where i live. Walked along the seafront and found lots of small fishing boats on the shingle beach. These small boats are launched by these bulldozers towing them into and out of the water. Due to the salt water these bulldozers are decaying fast but are still working hard.

This image was taken handheld three exposures to create this hdr. Converted to mono with silver effex 2 a red filter applied to darken the sky and made a few adjustments in CS5 such as dodge and burn sharpening.

Comments welcome here or in either my flickr or 500px accounts thanks for looking

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RX8 Interior - Speedlite 52 - Week 6

RX8 Interior

Had this shot in mind for a while but i wasnt sure how it would work out. My RX8 is fitted with blue interior lights so wanted to highlight this by using a blue gel on a 580 ex ii which was connected via a sync cable.

Camera was mounted on my travel tripod as my main tripod was to big to fit between the rear seats.I used my sigma 8 - 16mm ultra wide angle lens. I used the live view to set the focus and then switched it over to manual so it wouldnt hunt when i took the shot.

I used my 7d a 580 exii with blue gel a sync cord and the flash was set to ETTL II mode with a blue lee filter attatched.

Fired using a canon infra red remote control

Made only a few adjustments such as sharpening,saturation,noise, the border and copyright

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Black and White Conversions

If any of you are wondering how i convert my images to Black and White i use Nik Software Silver Efex Pro 2 i find it very simple to use with some great default settings but i use the manual conversion sliders and the control points are just fantastic to fine tune your work. I am a big fan of Nik Software very simple to use and great results


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Kingsgate Bay Broadstairs Kent

Kingsgate Bay Broadstairs Kent

For years i have lived and worked in Kent but today was the first time i had actually been down onto the beach below the Captain Digby in Broadstairs Kent. This little bay has so many photographic opportunities. Today wasn't the best day as i really wanted to try out my new circular polariser but the conditions were not as i hoped. But mental note made for a return to this spot on a better day!

That is my point, keep an eye out for photographic opportunities of where to shoot and at what time of day and year then return to the location to bag your shot!

The above shot is a HDR image with just three exposures i used photomatix pro 4 to create HDR image then tweaked in Photoshop CS5

Will return here during the summer for a evening sunset shot
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Thats Magic - Speedlite 52 - Week 5



Now thats Magic!

Found myself nearing the end of the week and no speedlite shot taken so i thought i would try something with second curtain sync . The problem is i had just finished work it was getting very late and i was tired, not ideal for being patient and creative. That is the problem with a specific challenge like this, sometimes you find yourself cutting corners of settling for second best. I really wanted to avoid this but here i am in only week five!

The idea was to get the ace of clubs streaking in from the right and finish up on top of the king, could not get the shot i wanted and instead of doing it another night i settled for this shot !

I will try this again on another day when i have more time.

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Tulips - Speedlite 52 - Week 4

Tulips

This week seemed to come round really quick and thought i had better take my next shot while i had the opportunity. I brought some flowers in the week for my wife and i really liked the colour and remembered i had some speedlite gels of the same colour so i thought i would be nice to use them.

Set up my home studio in the kitchen as you can see this was taken with two speedlites.

Strobist info

Speedlite 580 ex ii in Lumiquest softbox iii to front camera left at 1/16th power
Speedlite 430 exii with colour filter to camera right and above and behind flowers at 1/8th power

Set up shot



Tulip set up

Made a few adjustments in lightroom and photoshop before publishing

Really want to get out and do a few outdoor shots but weather been bad but still i am storing a few ideas for later shots.
As ever like to hear your comments and suggestions thanks for looking
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Splash of Milk - Speedlite 52 - Week 3

Milk Splash

So week three and the weather had turned nasty outside so a indoor shot was the way forward, and with splash shots being very popular at the moment i thought i would give it a try myself.

I wanted to to photograph something with a splash in the composition so this seemed a good first attempt

So i set up the shot, which i have included a set up shot below, and set about trying to capture the seconds after the impact.

I tried various objects to drop in the cup from peas, carrots, cauliflower but finally decided the ice cube was about the best results

Then it was just a matter of timing sounds easy right ? That's what i thought too but with the camera set to fire via remote IR release and flash units in wireless mode trying to time it was very difficult. The height it was dropped from and when to fire remote proved a challenge!

Then after every shot the clean up operation reset composition and try again, took a long time i can tell you and still not totally happy with result but i did learn to set a greater DOF next time.

Milk Splash Set Up

So here you can see the set up of the two speedlites in relation to the cup and camera and also you will notice i have a large reflector on the right. This is to block some of the daylight coming from rear door and also fill in shadows.







Strobist

Rear Speedlite 430 exii at 1/128th power
Camera left Speedlite 580 exii at 1/64th power

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Camera	Canon EOS 7D
Exposure	0.004 sec (1/250)
Aperture	f/6.3
Focal Length	41 mm
ISO Speed	200

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