Weeks 8 and 9. It's run away from me again, but I fully intend to do a massive catch-up this evening. Number 8 was on time, number 9 was a couple of weeks behind and is now a couple of weeks old, so I have LOADS to do. But that's a story for later, or possibly tomorrow, depending on how it goes.

Week 8/52:



EXIF:
Aperture: f/5
Shutter speed: 1.3 sec
Focal length: 32mm
ISO: 800

I thought I'd have a go with candlelight. It works pretty well, and I got compliments on my lighting. I've also been trying to get to grips with the clone stamp, which looks more wonky and amateurish the larger you view the photo. More practice needed.

Week 9/52:



EXIF:
Aperture: f/3.1
Shutter speed: 0.1 sec (1/10)
Focal length: 8mm
ISO: 80

Me and Louis reflected in the mirrorball planetarium doodad, taken on Gerry, my little red point-and-shoot. It's kind of lazy of me to use this one, really, but I didn't want to feel I'd got too far behind and wouldn't be able to catch up.


And a bonus one:



EXIF:
Aperture: f/5
Shutter speed: 0.6 sec
Focal length: 32mm
ISO: 800

Another from my candle experiment. There were loads of these that could have been good, but I was kneeling in a funny way and it made me look fat. And in my favourite one, there was a weird shadow which gave me a giant black moustache. Gah.

Next up: Giant self-portrait post, hopefully.

Weeks five, six and seven! And some bonus ones. I'm quite pleased with myself. I have a new and maybe slightly strange inspiration, but I won't talk about that yet in case I jinx something and lose it. Like I said, I've not been too well, so I've been restricted to what I can do in my flat. Since Ethel, devoted to her as I am, is not the most photogenic of flats, the last three weeks have been all about the close-ups. More or less make-up-free close-ups, at that, and I never thought I'd be posting those on the internet.




EXIF:
Aperture: f/5.6
Shutter speed: 0.017 sec (1/60)
Focal length: 55mm
ISO: 200

I set my camera on my living room table then basically just stuck my face up to the lens. This isn't my favourite shot ever, but I was running out of a) time and b) options. So here it is.




EXIF:
Aperture: f/5.6
Shutter speed: 0.017 sec (1/60)
Focal length: 55mm
ISO: 200

Looking through my kitchen door into the back garden. I mean, not that I could see anything. It was pitch black and the window's frosted. But you get the idea.




EXIF:
Aperture: f/5.6
Shutter speed: 1 sec
Focal length: 55mm
ISO: 200

Check me out with my first-ever lighting effect! Well, it was about time I got around to it. This fairy lamp is the only source of light in the house that isn't a ceiling bulb, so Lord knows what I'll do next time I get the urge. I had to balance Nicky on a shoe rack, as my big tripod was too high and my little tripod was too low. Ghetto lighting, ghetto set-up, man. I did shoot RAW for this, which in retrospect was a very sensible thing to do.

And the bonus pictures:



EXIF:
Aperture: f/5.6
Shutter speed: 0.017 sec (1/60)
Focal length: 55mm
ISO: 1600

This is a better shot of me, but there's less of a story to the photo, so I went for the earlier version as my official shot of the week.




Edited slightly. EXIF is same as above, obviously.




EXIF:
Aperture: f/5
Shutter speed: 0.017 sec (1/60)
Focal length: 18mm
ISO: 1600

Ooh, get me and my unnecessary drama. I went black and white with this one to remove the weird lighting effect in my hallway - it was yellow by the door and blue by the camera, and it was pretty distracting.

Next up: probably more of the same, unless I suddenly recover completely and embrace the outdoors with childish glee.

The problem with being permanently logged into my other journal is that I've really got to make a conscious effort to come here and update. I've been ill lately and stuck in bed, so there's not been an enormous amount of photographic activity. Two entries today, however: some self-portraits and some baby pictures that I took a few weeks ago. My cousin and his wife live in Scotland, so this was the first time I'd met their daughter, Erica, who was about thirteen months old at this point. They came down for the weekend and we set off for a picnic at Ashton Court. After I got sick of photographing my extended family attempting to play volleyball and falling over a lot, I started following Erica around with the camera. I've discovered I quite like photographing babies and little kids - they're completely unself-conscious and they don't demand to see every shot you take before pointing out the ones that need to be deleted, NOW, because they think they look fat. Anyway.



EXIF:
Aperture: f/5.6
Shutter speed: 0.006 sec (1/160)
Focal length: 55mm
ISO: 100

The only other kid I've really done this with is Elodie, and they're nothing alike. Even when she was too small to walk, Elodie was darting around on people's laps and grabbing at things and generally being too fast to take a sharp picture of. Erica, on the other hand, hardly moved at all. Very sedate child.




EXIF:
Aperture: f/5.6
Shutter speed: 0.004 sec (1/250)
Focal length: 55mm
ISO: 100

I didn't do much Photoshop work on these. It's more or less just a screened layer and and an Unsharp Mask. I probably could have done more, but I'm a bit wary of overprocessing baby pictures. Skin-smoothing on a baby just seems weird to me.




EXIF:
Aperture: f/5.3
Shutter speed: 0.03 sec (1/320)
Focal length: 38mm
ISO: 100

She was sat on her dad's lap here. I thought the matching hoodie and tights were sweet. You just can't get away with that past a certain age (she says, as though she spends her days pining over candy-striped clothing).




EXIF:
Aperture: f/5.6
Shutter speed: 0.01 sec (1/100)
Focal length: 55mm
ISO: 100

This one has a little more Photoshop, as I used the flash and felt the original picture was a tad stark, so there's selective colouring and such here. My mother labelled this the most ridiculously adorable of all the photos.


And, for a change, have a video.

Weeks one, two, three and four! I'm worried I'm now going to lose all motivation/ideas/self-confidence after starting so worryingly well. I'm not sure what I'll do next, and I definitely need more private and semi-private places to take pictures. Hopefully something will present itself. Here goes, then:



EXIF:
Aperture: f/4.8
Shutter speed: 0.017 sec (1/60)
Focal length: 29mm
ISO: 200

Upside down on my sofa. I got this sofa free from a friend, and I think it had fleas in it. Cheers, Dawn.



EXIF:
Aperture: f/3.5
Shutter speed: 0.017 sec (1/60)
Focal length: 18mm
ISO: 200

See, this is what I need. People on the internet asking me to take ridiculous photos on a ridiculous theme. Where can I find more people to do that?



EXIF:
Aperture: f/4
Shutter speed: 0.003 sec (1/400)
Focal length: 18mm
ISO: 100

By the sacred well at Chichen Itza. Nicky is balanced on a rock, and it took quite a lot of experimentation to get this. I was extremely hot and sweaty at this point, and you can bloody see it, but just be thankful you didn't see the rejected shots.



EXIF:
Aperture: f/4.8
Shutter speed: 0.1 sec (1/10)
Focal length: 30mm
ISO: 1600

I had three possible choices for week four. I went with this one because I think it has the most narrative to it. But because I'm nice, I'll share the other two with you anyway:




EXIF:
Aperture: f/4
Shutter speed: 0.067 sec (1/15)
Focal length: 18mm
ISO: 1600

A similar being-watched theme, with a little cropping and toned-down colour.




EXIF:
Aperture: f/4
Shutter speed: 0.05 sec (1/20)
Focal length: 18mm
ISO: 1600

And finally, an unprecedented I-am-being-vaguely-sexy-in-a-towel shot. Don't expect much more of this. I was brainwashed by the heat and the pretty bathroom.

I went off travelling again! This time I even got out of Europe. Jess and I took two weeks in Mexico and did, well, very little, really. So just a few photos for this particular blog, since most of what I took was Facebook-style snapshots, and one of our two massive excursions was swimming with dolphins, where they took all the photos for us. Here we are, then:





EXIF:
Aperture: f/22
Shutter speed: 0.005 sec (1/200)
Focal length: 18mm
ISO: 1600

The private beach attached to our hotel. I keep forgetting to drop my bloody ISO.





EXIF:
Aperture: f/4.2
Shutter speed: 0.001 sec (1/1000)
Focal length: 24mm
ISO: 100

My "Yes, Everyone's Done It, But This Time It's Me Doing It" shot of Kukulcan.





EXIF:
Aperture: f/5.6
Shutter speed: 0.003 sec (1/400)
Focal length: 20mm
ISO: 100

A very slightly more imaginative shot.





EXIF:
Aperture: f/4
Shutter speed: 0.01 sec (1/100)
Focal length: 18mm
ISO: 100

Jess by the sacred well at Chichen Itza. She almost never lets me take pictures of her.





EXIF:
Aperture: f/4
Shutter speed: 0.067 sec (1/15)
Focal length: 18mm
ISO: 100

A cenote, or sinkhole. It was 150 foot deep and I'm not a very good swimmer. So I went swimming in it. I'm glad I did too, though if I think about it properly I start to feel a bit nauseated.



EXIF:
Aperture: f/5.6
Shutter speed: 0.008 sec (1/125)
Focal length: 55mm
ISO: 100

An iguana, or Lizzy the Lizard. Posey little things they are. It didn't even care that I was creeping around holding a weird black thing up to my face.

Up next: self-portraits, weeks one to four. Oh yeah, that's right. I'm on track!

Yeah, yeah, I know. Not posted a damned thing since May. In my defence, I have been starting a new job and moving house. However, now that I am living by myself, I have much less in the way of excuses not to do these things. I'm going to Mexico in less than three weeks, so hopefully a litany of photos will emerge from that, but in the mean time I have got to get more use out of the camera. I'm going to start from scratch again on the self-portraits, since I have basically done four since March. And I don't have one to offer now. Give me a few days and I'll conjure something up.

For now, here are a few pictures from my first paid assignment (woop!). The main point of the session was to shoot pregnancy pictures, but I haven't finished sorting those yet, so here are three balck-and-whites of my cousin's daughter Elodie, who was an absolute nightmare during the proper photos but was a very good unconscious model.



EXIF:
Aperture: f/5.3
Shutter speed: 0.1 sec (1/10)
Focal length: 35mm
ISO: 100

My first experiment with RAW files. I'm not sure if it's something I'm going to use all the time - they take up a lot of memory card space - but I'll certainly be having another go. I was amazed she held this pose long enough for me to get it.



EXIF:
Aperture: f/5.3
Shutter speed: 0.1 sec (1/10)
Focal length: 35mm
ISO: 100

Slightly annoyed that the top of her head got cut off here. I wasn't intending to leave colour in her dress, but I was desaturating the colours individually in Photoshop and this was the last one to go. So I left it, since it looks quite pretty.



EXIF:
Aperture: f/4.2
Shutter speed: 0.1 sec (1/10)
Focal length: 24mm
ISO: 100

I just love the look on her face here. One day I will have the requisite skills to remove the sofa from the background, which is a tad distracting. Still, not so bad.

I will try my hardest to get a self-portrait up by the end of the week. Taking the camera out of its bag would be a good first step. Now that I have a decent amount of living-room space, I may ask for a person-sized studio kit for Christmas.

I'm still having problems getting self-portraits done. This is for two reasons: first, I really don't like the idea of going out in public, setting my camera up on a tripod and walking away from it. I need someone else to stand by the tripod and guard Nicky, and I don't really like people watching me take pictures of myself. Second, my house is rubbish for taking pictures in. It's messy and busy and crammed with unpicturesque stuff. I'm planning to move out, and hopefully become more minimalist and streamlined in the process, but until then I'm basically stuck taking pictures in my back garden. Luckily for the self-portrait project, we've had a lot of patches of sun lately (in amongst the rain, grrr).



EXIF:
Aperture: f/5.6
Shutter speed: 0.002 sec (1/640)
Focal length: 55mm
ISO: 100

Moody face. I couldn't be arsed to straighten my hair, and it was windy, which is why it looks such a state. I'm pretending it's all part of the look.




EXIF:
Aperture: f/9.0
Shutter speed: 0.05 sec (1/20)
Focal length: 18mm
ISO: 100

I'm in love with this dress. I have this vague idea that I'm going to become one of those people with style, and this little piece of retro fabulousness encapsulates everything I'd like my clothes to be. However, it's pretty short, and I'm not a huge fan of my legs. Apart from anything else, they are white as something that's pretty damn white. I've put a little fake tan on them since then, but Jaysus, those are some blinding white legs.




EXIF:
Aperture: f/9.0
Shutter speed: 0.033 sec (1/30)
Focal length: 55mm
ISO: 100

Mwah. I felt all fifties-retro so I decided to mess around a little.


Hopefully more self-portraits will soon follow. But more importantly, there is one of those live-action ad things alongside this update box and it is driving me absolutely mental. This bloody woman keeps flicking her hair and waving at me. Over and over and over again. STOP IT. GO AND FLIRT WITH SOMEONE ELSE'S LIVEJOURNAL. YARGH. Sorry, but it's more annoying than you might think.

I just can't stay in the country lately (yay!). I went to Rome by myself last Saturday. I don't know if you knew this, but Rome is quite big. I wanted to see a lot of stuff. So having complained at length last month that I completely overdid it walking around Prague trying to find that blasted arsing church that I still haven't forgiven, I then went to Rome and completely overdid it again every single day I was there. My legs are still killing me. I'm hoping, in my sad little way, that if I go on enough holidays I'l eventually become fit enough not to DIE IN PAIN every time I go on a photo walk. Hmph.

With that aside, a small sampling of Rome's loveliness:



EXIF:
Aperture: f/8.0
Shutter speed: 0.006 sec (1/160)
ISO: 100
Focal length: 55mm

I seem to be drawn to ruins at the moment. I'm not quite sure why. But then, I'm also drawn to green stuff, and the ruin pictures almost always come out better. Francesca would like me to stay away from green stuff for a bit.





EXIF:
Aperture: f/8.0
Shutter speed: 0.006 sec (1/160)
ISO: 100
Focal length: 55mm

See? More ruins. I'm experimenting very cautiously with black and white photos - it's the sort of thing I'd like to better at and feel I should be better at, but I get stuck on colour. I like colours, in a rebelling-against-teenage-Goth-self sort of way.





EXIF:
Aperture: f/8.0
Shutter speed: 0.006 sec (1/160)
ISO: 100
Focal length: 35mm

I realise I've been complaining about all the walking I did, and even titled this picture "my feet hurt", even though all the pictures so far have been taken within the same five-minute walk radius. I have no explanations to offer for that. I have several versions of this picture with random people wandering in from the sides - quite a few people must have gone home that day with stories of a mad girl with a camera yelling "stop bloody walking!" to nobody, or possibly everybody. Francesca's fault.





EXIF:
Aperture: f/8.0
Shutter speed: 0.005 sec (1/200)
ISO: 100
Focal length: 20mm

I took a wander to Vatican City on Easter Monday, but the Pope refused to come out and say hi, so I just took loads of pictures of his house like some creepy stalker. I have a sudden urge to send him this picture along with a note saying "I know where you live." Just to see if he gets the joke.




EXIF:
Aperture: f/13.0
Shutter speed: 10 sec
ISO: 200
Focal length: 10mm

The Colosseum at night. One of my first real goes with long exposure. I didn't think I'd get to see Rome at night, since I was staying some way out of the centre and didn't fancy chancing the public transport system alone in the dark, but a very friendly taxi driver offered me a free tour. And dinner. In hindsight I probably shouldn't have taken him up on it, but I'm still alive and I have a pretty picture, so hey, all's well and all that jazz.

Coming up next: some photos which will not see me relying on impressive foreign architecture, and hopefully a self-portrait. Have not been feeling too photogenic of late.

I went to Prague! I've always wanted to go (of course, there are about four thousand eight hundred places I've always wanted to go to, so it's not that special), and so to mark seven months of freedom Nicky and I set off for a few days' picture-taking. Well, I say a few days' picture-taking. It was more like one day of solid picture-taking and two days of complaining about muscle ache. More on that in a minute. Just a few photos in this post, as my Blaise Castle files were huge and took up most of my month's upload limit. More to come, promise. I managed to take several self-portraits in Prague, much to the amusement of my travel companion. I'll put one up now and one up in a couple of days, which should bring me up to date.

Here goes, then:



EXIF:
Aperture: f/6.3
Shutter speed: 0.01 sec (1/100)
Focal length: 40mm
ISO: 100

Charles Bridge. It's an awesome sight, it really is, but of course we managed to visit whilst they were doing bloody roadworks on it. They weren't even picturesque roadworks. Francesca sulked.



EXIF:
Aperture: f/6.3
Shutter speed: 0.008 sec (1/125)
Focal length: 55mm
ISO: 100

One of the statues on the bridge, during the six or seven minutes of sun we got. I'm quite pleased with this.



EXIF:
Aperture: f/5.6
Shutter speed: 0.1 sec (1/10)
Focal length: 30mm
ISO: 100

A house in ruins, randomly sitting on the ledge of The Hill I Will Hate Forever. I'm pretending to be all arty and shit.



EXIF:
Aperture: f/5.6
Shutter speed: 0.05 sec (1/20)
Focal length: 18mm
ISO: 100

RIGHT. Look at this. Have a good look. Pretty, isn't it? Unusual. Lovely wooden church. Yeah, that's what I thought when I saw it in the guide book. I said, "Oh, we have to go and see that." So off we went. The church is on a hill, said the guide book. So we got a little train to the top of the hill. We looked around. No church. We went all round the top of the hill. We found an observatory, a stadium, a bunch of graves and a mirror maze. No church. We followed several hundred little roads part way down the hill. Nothing. We went back to the top. We asked some locals, who were, I am firmly convinced, just making shit up for their own amusement. We walked halfway down the hill, and I finally saw something. There it is! Just a bit further down! HAH. In order to get to the damn thing I had to go all the way down to the bottom, walk a long wiggly path and then come all the way back up again. And that hill was hella steep. So I hate that hill, and I hate this damned church. However pretty it is, I hate it. It is evil. It punished me for being a heathen, I'm sure of it. I was so worried all the pictures were going to be crap, and then Francesca and I would have been forced to murder somebody. I kid you not.

Ahem.

Sorry.



Self portrait 2/52:



EXIF:
Aperture: f/5.6
Shutter speed: 0.067 sec (1/15)
Focal length: 40mm
ISO: 100

This was taken ten minutes after we finally left that godforsaken church. I think it serves as a testament to my fabulous acting skills that I am smiling quite happily and not growling and beating something with a stick. I don't think I've ever been more relieved to sit down in my whole life. I really want one of these giant wooden swings now, though. I could have spent all day on it.

Next up: another self-portrait from Prague, and maybe a couple more photos from my trip, provided I have the space (I don't want to use it all up and have a handy excuse for not doing anything else the rest of the month).

So, at the weekend Nicky and I went on a trip to Blaise Castle. The castle's not up to much - it is, essentially, Blaise Turret - but the grounds are lovely and very extensive, and we actually had some sun (I still have a few snow pictures from last month in reserve, but that's another post), so I got a good couple of hours of shooting in. I don't tend to do landscapes much, but I realised during my preliminary practice with my shiny new wide-angle last week that manual mode is sort of crucial. I have about five slightly darker/slightly lighter versions of all of my pictures. I like this lens. It forces me to work.

Here we are, then:



EXIF:
Aperture: f/5.6
Shutter speed: 0.008 sec (1/125)
Focal length: 20mm
ISO: 100

All the photos in this set have been Photoshopped a little. I thought this one was quite unremarkable when I first uploaded, but a little definition and contrast has made a lot of difference.




EXIF:
Aperture: f/5.6
Shutter speed: 0.01 sec (1/100)
Focal length: 20mm
ISO: 100

I finally, finally remembered to drop my ISO back down. When you're English and the winter days are all cloudy and crappy and you don't get out of work til it's dark anyway, you start thinking, "I know! I'll just get brilliant at night shots!" As you may have noticed, I haven't got brilliant at night shots and all my day shots from the last few months are unnecessarily grainy. Hmph.




EXIF:
Aperture: f/5.6
Shutter speed: 0.01 sec (1/100)
Focal length: 20mm
ISO: 100

Some Photoshop learning here. I did some selective colouring on the greens, intending to boost them a bit, but I found that if I dropped the cyan right down, I got a nice yellow-green and subsequently a somewhat otherworldly effect. I think I like it.




EXIF:
Aperture: f/5.6
Shutter speed: 0.005 (1/200)
Focal length: 10mm
ISO: 100

This set-up was perfect. Light was right, trees were right, colours were right. I did a small amount of post-processing because I found it actually looked better if I toned down the blue in the sky, but I didn't have to, strictly speaking.




EXIF:
Aperture: f/5.6
Shutter speed: 0.005 (1/200)
Focal length: 10mm
ISO: 100

Favourite favourite favourite. Picture LOVE. Sorry, but I'm really pleased with myself.


Self-portrait 1/52 (attempt two):



EXIF:
Aperture: f/22.0
Shutter speed: 0.02 sec (1/50)
Focal length: 20mm
ISO: 1600

Back at Willsbridge Mill. I'm determined to keep up with the damned self-portraits this time. They're not THAT hard. As a side note, what do you reckon to my sexy new hair? I love and adore this hairdresser.

Since I now have several pictures in reserve, I'm going to go back to trying to post one photo a week (I say go back as though I ever did it in the first place), aside from the self-portraits, which I WILL DO. Yes I will.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I make all these grandiose resolutions then don't come back here at all for two months. I'm terrible. However, I have a shiny new Sigma 10-20mm wide-angle lens and a joyful spirit. I did a good day of shooting yesterday and I'm quite pleased with some of my results (see next post). I'm also going to Prague later this month, so that will hopefully yield a substantial photo post too.

Just because I can, my current wish list:

Macro lens
Remote release
Circular polariser
Fully collapsible tripod (mine is a huge bulky bastard)
Camera bag to store more lenses
Some beginner's studio equipment

I am going to get to grips with lighting and studio shots this year. Lighting is one of those things that seems enormously scary, but like everything else I'm sure I'll get a good sense of it fairly quickly.

Self-portraits are go again - I MUST keep them up this time. MUST.

1. I will post at least one photo here every week, even if it's crap and I have nothing to say about it.
2. I will post something substantial here at least once a month.
3. I will use all of my lenses every month (unless I suddenly acquire a lot more lenses).
4. I will write down all the things I'm too scared to try, and then try at least five of them.
5. I will work on my Photoshopping and post at least one processed photo here every month.
6. I will start doing self-portraits again (yes I WILL).

I was going to do ten, but hey, six plus a photo is enough. Here:



Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year from some people in funny hats. This was taken with self-timer on a tripod, so technically? Self-portrait. HAH!

White balance is one of the things on the Oh God, I'm Never Going To Need To Do That list (along with metering, which I suppose I'm actually going to have to look at now). I thought it was just another stupid, finicky thing that stupid, finicky photographers went on about in order to make themselves feel superior. Then I tried to take pictures in our dining room and found that everything came out yellow. That was when I found my inner stupid, finicky photographer. I think I'll call her Francesca.

None of the pictures I took during my accidental discovery of the need for white balance really worked for blogging purposes, so about an hour ago I dragged our favourite model Fred off his sofa (yes, he has his own sofa. What of it?) and cobbled this together. It's all very last-minute, and I used my 50mm manual focus lens, which is why some of the pictures are slightly fuzzy. Francesca is sighing in frustration but has promised not to interfere because it's New Year's Eve and even imaginary finicky photographers like a night out.

So, here is Fred, in the yellow dining room.



EXIF:
Aperture: f/1.8
Shutter speed: 0.125 sec (1/8)
ISO: 200
Focal length: 50mm

As you can see, he looks yellow. And instead of going, "Oh, bugger, Fred is yellow", we can instead go to the white balance settings on Nicky's menu and sort it out. Here is Fred, in the same place, with the white balance set to "incandescent".



EXIF:
Aperture: f/1.8
Shutter speed: 0.125 sec (1/8)
ISO: 200
Focal length: 50mm

Much less yellow! Hooray!

I couldn't test out all the white balance settings, as we seem to be short of fluorescent lighting and, oh yes, sunshine), but I did take Fred outside to test the "cloudy" setting. And you'd better be grateful to Fred and me for that, because it's bloody freezing out there. Here is shivering Fred on auto white balance:



EXIF:
Aperture: f/3.5
Shutter speed: 0.02 sec (1/50)
ISO: 200
Focal length: 50mm

A tad washed-out, no? Here he is on "cloudy":



EXIF:
Aperture: f/3.5
Shutter speed: 0.02 sec (1/50)
ISO: 200
Focal length: 50mm

I'm going to be honest with you: before the awakening of Francesca, I would have looked at that first outdoor shot and said, "What? That's close enough. It's a camera, not a mechanical eyeball." However, the second picture shows the colour that Fred actually is. And having seen that, I look back at the first one and think, "Ugh, flat and dull." Dammit, Francesca.

Next up: some Reasonable Resolutions.

Eek, only seventeen? I have got to start doing more of this. I'm going to do a few posts today, including reasonablephoto's resolutions for 2009 (because I am slightly resolution-obsessed).

So, night pictures. I've done very little if any so far, as it was one of the things on my very long list of Scary Concepts/Things I've Seen Better Photographers Do That I'll Never Be Able To Do. But, out with the fear, say I. Let's start with a couple of firework photos that I took with my Sigma 70-300mm, since the work of said lens hasn't had an outing here yet. They're a little, well, amateurish, as this was my first ever try with any telephoto in general and this lens in particular. I thought I'd be terribly clever and set it to manual focus too, but have you ever tried to manually focus on an exploding firework? I'm sure it's possible, but I think I may need to work at it. Most of the time the picture wouldn't take at all, and the couple of shots I do have... you know those little CGI films they show in biology classes to show you where babies come from? Yeah, it looks a little like the race to the finish. That was an awful lot of words just to get around typing "sperm", which I have now done anyway. So having wasted rather a lot of your time, here are some non-sperm photos. Ahem.



EXIF:
Aperture: f/4.2
Shutter speed: 0.001 sec (1/800)
ISO: 3200
Focal length: 100mm



EXIF:
Aperture: f/4.2
Shutter speed: 1/2500
ISO: 3200
Focal length: 100mm

I still haven't used that one a huge amount, so hopefully I'll get better with it. Next up, we go back to the kit lens for a few pictures I took in the town centre after work one night.



EXIF:
Aperture: f/4/8
Shutter speed: 0.1 sec (1/10)
ISO: 1600
Focal length: 32mm



EXIF:
Aperture: f/4.8
Shutter speed: 0.1 sec (1/10)
ISO: 1600
Focal length: 29mm



EXIF:
Aperture: f/4.5
Shutter speed: 0.1 sec (1/10)
ISO: 1600
Focal length: 22mm

I should like to point out that those three photos were all taken in manual mode, as was every other photo I took on that trip. Not so scary now, are you, manual? Hah! (I apologise, I'm terribly juvenile).

Next up: white balance, featuring everyone's favourite up-and-coming model.

For the sake of it, here's an edited version of the mask photo.

Before I go into the actual post, can I just say that I LOVE the 50mm? It's fantastic! It's taken me a couple of days to get to grips with it, but I think I more or less have it now.

So, manual focus. This was one of those things that I was absolutely terrified of doing, because the camera has always done it for me and I might get it wrong, or miss a shot, blah blah. Turns out, it's not so difficult. The photos I took yesterday came out a bit blurred, but for some reason I cannot get the focus to work in my living room. I have no idea why that is. As the 50mm is primarily a portrait lens, I had to bring out my faithful model, whom we haven't seen much of lately:



EXIF:
Aperture: f/5.6
Shutter speed: 0.017 sec (1/60)
ISO: 1600
Focal length: 50mm (fixed lens)

Remind me to drop my ISO back down. I keep forgetting. Grrr. Anyway, this is Fred in our back room, lit by the natural light coming through the patio doors.



EXIF:
Aperture: f/5.6
Shutter speed: 0.077 sec (7692307/100000000 according to Flickr... hmmmm)
ISO: 1600
Focal length: 50mm (fixed lens)

Breakfast room light. This one is still a little fuzzy, and not in a good rabbitty way.



EXIF:
Aperture: f/5.6
Shutter speed: 0.008 sec (1/125)
ISO: 1600
Focal length: 50mm (fixed lens)

Kitchen, backlit by the window.



EXIF:
Aperture: f/16
Shutter speed: 0.002 sec (1/640)
ISO: 1600
Focal length: 50mm (fixed lens)

Outside. I'm impressed with this, in a sad sort of way.

And, to cap it all, my brother allowed me to do a couple of portraits of him wearing his birthday present.



EXIF:
Aperture: f/16
Shutter speed: 0.033 sec (1/33)
ISO: 1600
Focal length: 50mm (fixed lens)

This frightens me slightly. He's wearing a face warmer that Mum bought him for when he's out rowing, but if I were on a boat and this tried to get on it with me, I'd jump out screaming and flail about panicking in the water.



EXIF:
Aperture: f/16
Shutter speed: 0.017 sec (1/60)
ISO: 1600
Focal length: 50mm (fixed lens)

Serial killers are people too, you know.

Next up: hopefully, some firework pictures. I'll see how I get on.

It's been a while, I know, but I have a brief announcement to make: I have lenses! A Sigma 70-300mm telephoto and a Nikkor f/1.8 50mm. And the second one is manual focus! So that's something new to learn. I'm quite pleased with my two - a serious zoom lens and a fixed lens, so I can practise and try things out and find out what suits me.

Here's a quick wish list:

Wide angle lens (man in the shop showed me a lovely Sigma 10-20mm, if I can cough up three hundred quid)
Macro lens
Remote release (ML-L3)
Circular polariser
Lens hood
Light box (might try making one of these if I'm feeling creative)
Collapsible tripod that will actually fit in a bag
Camera bag with lens space

I'm going to stop there, because my wallet hurts. Hopefully I can get some shots with one or both lenses this weekend and post them sometime next week.

I haven't had much of a chance to take the camera out this week (well, I have, but there's nothing to photograph), so until I go back to Bath this weekend, here are some black and white versions of previously posted pictures. I bought a digital photography magazine and a Photoshop magazine a while ago, and the only useful thing I've learned from either is how to increase the contrast in black and white photos. These were my first attempts at it (big files, too - no wonder so many people on Flickr pay for the unlimited uploads). Since I already put the originals up, I won't bother with the EXIF data this time.



Originally taken for the shutter speed experiment. I think I did a bit of horizon-straightening on this one, too - I can't believe it never occurred to me to do that before.



I really like this one. I think the burning worked well and the tiny little man still makes me slightly dizzy.

Coming up: More Bath photos, and I swear to God I will get my self-portrait head on one of these days. Hopefully it'll get easier once I buy a remote.

Sorry about the horrendously long gap between posts. Personal problems coming to the fore, I'm afraid. I'm now months behind on my self-portraits, so I think I'm just going to start again, or I will do once I take my first new one, ahem.

Of course, I wouldn't post without photos, so here are some pictures of Bath I took on Saturday.



EXIF:
Aperture: f/11
Shutter speed: 0.001 sec (1/800)
Focal length: 22mm
ISO: 1600



EXIF:
Aperture: f/4
Shutter speed: 1/4000
Focal length: 20mm
ISO: 1600



EXIF:
Aperture: f/11
Shutter speed: 0.001 sec (1/1600)
Focal length: 18mm
ISO: 1600



EXIF:
Aperture: f/11
Shutter speed: 1/2500 sec
Focal length: 24mm
ISO: 1600



EXIF:
Aperture: f/11
Shutter speed: 0.001 sec (1/1250)
Focal length: 32mm
ISO: 1600


They're not the greatest shots I've ever taken, because I wasn't really paying enough attention. I've no idea why I had the ISO up so high. But it's the best I can do for now, and I have to get back into the swing of photo blogging. I'll try and get a better quality submission next time, and hopefully start the self-portraits again. I must embrace my inner narcissist.

On time this week! The assignment was "X-tych" - one photo made up of between 2 and 7 panels.



EXIF:

Aperture: f/4.2
Shutter speed: 0.017 sec (1/60)
Focal length: 24mm
ISO: 200

Photo 2:
Aperture: f/4.2
Shutter speed: 0.017 sec (1/60)
Focal length: 24mm
ISO: 200

Photo 3:
Aperture: f/5.3
Shutter speed: 0.017 sec (1/60)
Focal length: 35mm
ISO: 200

My cousin's kids, Josh and Elodie, at a family dinner thing. I wasn't going to use them, but I ran short of time and ideas. I think I'm going to end up using one of this batch for next week's assignment (auto mode) too, because I'm hugely lazy and the photos fall into both bands. Hopefully next up will be another self-portrait, because I have really got to get a grip.