I took the following photo using a Nikon D600, my newest toy that I received this week. Still learning how to use it and the manual feels bigger than the bible. It is a steep learning curve from the D40, but enjoying it so far and can already feel the quality being significantly better than the D40.

The picture is heavily cropped from the original, which is why there is a lot of noise in the picture. I used  the using fully automatic setting on the camera with a 85 mm prime lens.

In Photoshop I added various layers to increase the colours from the bird.

If you want more information about how I did the processing drop me a line and I will provide a break down. Got other “boring” things to do now, so can only give a brief comment.

Hope to provide more photos with my new D600 camera soon.

Another step towards becoming a professional photographer

Evejam Photography - Capturing the Moment

Today (18 January 2013) I woke up early to get out and take some winter shoots. Unfortunately there was no fresh snow over night (Or fortunately for some). However I didn’t let that stop me and ventured out in to the cold.

In my local area there is a nice memorial park with lines of trees, my aim was to get there before the little blighter uhum I mean the sweet little children arrive and started playing snow ball fights (Not something I want to be involved in with my camera). Armed with my tripod and trustee D40 I marched to my local park only to discover that the gets don’t open till 8:30 am, another hour away!

So I went to my local landmark the ‘Old Bridge’ unfortunately I couldn’t find a good angle, but then I thought why not a view from the top of the bridge! I took some well exposed pictures and learnt more about exposure, but the pictures were nothing to write home about. So onwards and upwards I went back to the park and the gates were still closed, However I spotted a concrete model/carving or what ever you want to call it of the local land mark with some snow on top of it. I used a large aperture as I wanted to be able to hold the camera, so needed a shutter speed of about 1/100 sec and used ISO 200. I like how the narrow depth of field created a somewhat dreamy look.

After waiting a while longer I decided to go for a walk along the fence and saw the line of trees I wanted to take a picture of. Thought well why not try and take a picture through the fencing, the gap in the fence was just wide enough to take a picture through. I got down low, I just wished I could have got rid of those damn bollards. I used a fairly smal aperture of f22 as I wanted to get as much of the scene in focus and a shutter speed of 1/2 a second. I used the bollard as a focus point. One issue I had was I forgot my remote cable release, so used the 10 second timer instead.

From this I was starting to get cold waiting to get in to the park, only to find out it was closed due to hazardous conditions, booo, oh well, so I went back to the bridge and as I was walking pass I saw an image in the opposite direction to where I was looking earlier!!! Must remind myself to keep looking behind me every so often as sometime the better picture will be there. So the last picture is of the river coming down from the mountains.

All the photos have some post processing, such as viginatting. The river I used photoshop to make the red building look reder, to give it a bit more punch and in all of the photos I used the Selective Color layer to remove the blacks from the whites, to make the snow look whiter and purer.

Let me know what you think and let me know if you would like more information on these shots.

BTW, you may have noticed I have reduced the file size and the quality of the photos for publishing on the web.

Evejam Photography - Capturing the Moment

Every year during the festive period Cardiff has their “Winter Wonderland” near Cardiff Museum. I did some night photography using slow shutter speed to capture the light trails on the biggest ride there.

Here is the result . Grateful for any comments

Evejam Photography - Capturing the Moment

Below is a fabulous video explaining f-stop, which is probably one of the most complicated aspects of photography to understand, but potentially one of the most simple part of photography when you have got it.

Many thanks to Dylan Bennett for creating this video and subtitling it so Deaf people can learn as well.

Hope you will enjoy this video

Evejam Photography - Capturing the Moment

Last weekend I went to Penarth Pier to do an early morning landscape photography shoot. I met a friend Paul at 7:15 in the morning to try to capture a sun rise, unfortunately it was too cloudy to capture the sun, however there is no such thing as bad light, a photographer must be able to adapt to the light available. However when it is cloudy as this, it is a tough challenge for an amateur like me.

First thing I did was expose for the sky as the sky always end up being over exposed in these situations, so using the manual and spot metering settings I pointed the camera at the sky to record the exposure. I decided early on I wanted to use a narrow aperture of around f20, f22 and I wanted to use the lowest ISO possible which was 200 ISO. The metering gave me a shutter speed of around 2 to 3 seconds, the time was reduced as the morning went on.

The photos shown have been post processed using Photoshop CS3, I have tried to include as much detail as possible as to what post processing I did. To read what post processing I did click on the photo and you will see a description.

For some reason the photos seem quite grainy, grainer than I expected. I think this might be due to the camera or the fact I had a cheapo tripod. I really need to save up for a sturdier tripod soon.

Anyway it was a lovely morning and I enjoyed the company of Paul. I look forward to doing this again after Christmas as I enjoyed the calmness of the twilight hour. Hopefully I will achieve my ambition of getting a good sun rise or sun set photo, I haven’t had luck on my side so far.

Hope you enjoy looking at the photos as much as I have enjoyed taking them on a cold freezing autumn morning

Evejam Photography - Capturing the Moment

Hi Folks, I have been attempting self portraits today, The following photo is a result of my practice using what I have learnt from the Mark Cleghorn workshops.The set up for this photo is exceedingly simple.

Equipment used

- Nikon D40

- North Facing Window

- Light Meter

The light conditions were not very good outside, So I decided early on I wanted to throw open the aperture wide open as far as possible, on my lens that is f2.8. I also wanted to use the lowest possible ISO to get the best possible quality, the lowest my camera will go to is ISO 200. All that remains to find out is what shutter speed is required. Using my sekonic  light meter I got a shutter speed of 1/80, which is just about ok for static portrait photography.

I place my camera on the shelf about the height of my head and zoomed the lens to the maximum (70mm). I then used a remote shutter to take a picture of myself.

For post processing I simply cropped the picture in tight. I am pleased with how the shadows fall on my face, I am not a natural poser, but I am glad I don’t look to stupid .

This is a simple photo and one that works well. I will now be using this for my various profile pictures

I would welcome any feedback you might have about this photo.

Evejam Photography - Capturing the Moment

This is a very interesting video on how you can make interesting Bokeh effects in photography.

I will have to try this one day as it appears to be a very simple technique. For those who don’t know what Bokeh is, it is basically the blurring of the background through use of narrow depth of field. The video below shows better what bokeh is than I can explain.

Enjoy the video, and let me know how you get on.

The video gave links for photos so you can see what they look like unfortunately I can’t find any photos as a result of the video. Let me know if you find anything. Happy Shooting.

Evejam Photography - Capturing the Moment

This is a fabulous video on how to use the light meter, and it what I have come to realised that despite all the technical wizardry found modern cameras, this is still an essential tool of the photographer.

The light meter in the video is the Sekonic L-358. If you wish to buy one just click on the link given.

This seems to be one of the best light meters around and Mark Cleghorn uses this as well. HOwever if budget is a problem you can buy the Sekonic L-308S which is about £80 cheaper and works just as well. However note of warning the Sekonic L-308S can only measure in shutter priority mode, not aperture priority mode, which can be a bit of a nuisance when doing flash photography.

But both meters will help you improve your photography. For your convenience I have added links to amazon below.

• Sekonic L-358
• Sekonic L-308S

Enjoy the show

Evejam Photography - Capturing the Moment

As a Deaf person, the biggest challenge in my life is to get access to information so I can learn. So much information is excluded from Deaf people, it is a scandal in this day and age.

A friend of mine has attended college to learn photography to try to advance himself and make a contribution to society and get out of the benefits trap, however the college provided him with a sub standard sign language interpreter that he struggled to learn much.

Enter Mark Cleghorn who can see the issues that Deaf people face, he believes photography is for all and nobody should be excluded from learning the arts. My friend learnt more in one day with Mark Cleghorn at St Fagans (Click to see the photos I took) than he learnt in a full year at the college. Mark himself is also learning sign language. Even though he only knows the basics it was a joy to watch him signing during the one to one sessions. If only more people could be like Mark the world would be a much better place.

Mark also add subtitles to his videos online at Phototraining4u.co.uk with the aim of getting them 100% subtitled. This is a massive boost for photographer like me that can’t watch the free DVD’s that you get with the photography magazine because they are simply not subtitled or closed captioned.

Anyway the purpose of this post is to make videos that are out there on YouTube and other places that are freely available and pull them in to one place to make it faster and easier for Deaf and hard of hearing people who want to learn how to become excellent photographers. I have tried to categories the videos methodically so they are easy to find. Mostly the video will come from YouTube, but if you know of any videos please let me know.

They MUST be subtitled or Closed Captions.

Many thanks for your support.

Evejam Photography - Capturing the Moment

This is a very good video that makes good use of animation to explain the relationships between the 3 basic elements of photography when you are thinking about exposure.

Enjoy

Evejam Photography - Capturing the Moment