Berlin

A little bit late in posting, but earlier this year I took a trip to Berlin, essentially I was there to visit a very good friend of mine and to see a certain Mr Buble in concert, I did make time to take some photos in an attempt to capture the feeling of the city. Since it was -5 Celsius with biting winds and snow underfoot, time was of an essence. That said with relatively minor adjustments the photos produced helped me capture the feel of the city without the need for classic tourist landmarks in every shot!

 Poster wall.

Chamonix in Monochrome

Whilst out in Chamonix I took some inspiration from a photo edition of the snowboarding magazine white lines.
There is a current trend in snow sport photography to take colours and contrast to extremes to make the images more striking.
After looking at some of the photographs on my return to the UK I found that they often lacked any real focus, and although the scenery was stunning, often the mood wasn't even close to being captured.
As I tend to lean towards black and white photography I decided that converting some of my images, and then tweaking the contrast and colour conversion was a good place to start. As usual I used Lightroom5 for this process. 
When it came around to choosing which images to pick for the black and white conversion, the strongest images often had either plenty of natural tone variation, or there was a colour variation that could be exploited later in the process. In particular it helped bring out the definition in the clouds and the snow, which all got a bit lost in the colour images.

Chamonix in colour

Just back from a recent trip to Chamonix, it involved meters of snowfall and some of the best powder I've ever seen.
Despite using a standard point and shoot (I didn't want to land on my better camera) and a little bit of touch up in lightroom, I'm pretty pleased with the results.

Natural v artificial light

 In winter natural light can be hard to come by, especially with all storms of late. 

Whilst my last set of flower photos were all taken using a series of lamps, i decided to try using what little natural light makes its way into my spare room, and combined it with longer exposure times to produce the following two images.

 

 The weak diffuse light combined with the long exposure times turned the black background to a blue shade, and grain has been introduced into the images. This gives the flowers a softer feel.

However to produce the sharper more detailed images, it was necessary to supplement with iridescent lighting. 

The Language of Flowers

"A Rose By Any Other Name Would Smell As Sweet" - W. Shakespeare

 

"And lilies white, prepared to touch The whitest thought" - E.B. Browning

“If you take a flower in your hand and really look at it, it's your world for a moment.” - G. O'Keeffe

Studio Shoot 2

This week I tried a more fashion forward photoshoot. Using a few props such as fishnet gloves and a trilby the following images were produced. (Obviously a degree of photoshop has been used to enhance the images.)

Macro Worlds

Yet again I have been using the extension rings added to my camera, to try and capture detail seen in the botanical world, in a studio like setting. Using only a table lamp, and some pieces of card the following images were produced. The decision to use a 16:10 ratio for the pictures is to allow more white space into the images. and effect that was particularly successful in the last two photos which almost feel desolate and lonely.