Photographs of Portlaoise based singer songwriter James O' Connor recording their new single ' Lorraine ' at Golden Egg Studio recently. We made a video also in the studio and I'll post it here as soon as the final mix is finished.
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Fog descends on Forest..
There's nothing better than heading off into a Forest on a foggy night! The fog landed on us yesterday and stayed for the night. At around 9pm when things were quiet in my house I got into the car and drove to a few spots I thought might look cool in the Fog. I eventually settled on Togher Wood. After walking around for a bit I realised that the fog was a bit too heavy for my hand torch to make any great light source.So, instead I drove the car as close to the forest as I could, left the lights on and stumbled about with my hand torch trying to find a good angle to make a pic.
I settled on the pic above..the setting on the camera were 30 sec. @ f11 (w/tripod).
All comments appreciated thanks,
joe
Snow fall on the Downs..
Snowfall on the Downs,
During the recent snowfall I managed to get out around 8.30pm to try and capture a night pic (which I don't get enough time to do lately, and I must say, is probably my favourite type of photography).
I thought it might be interesting to show how quickly and dramatically a scene can change in the space of a minute or two.
Below is a series of 5 pics which I took at around 9 pm at night. I had the camera on the tripod and took a test shot of a 30sec exposure @ f5.6 and 400iso..which is usually the first setting I'd use for a test shot at night, assuming there's a bit of moon
or street light. Then I'll either use a longer exposure, increase the aperture and/or (ideally) lower the ISO. I used a hand torch during the exposure to light up the foreground also, trying not to shine the torch for long in one spot, and trying to avoid any hotspots.
The pics below are unedited, straight from the camera, and were only converted from Raw to jpeg for this. The photos were taken in quick succession and each pic had the exact setting and duration as I said above, but as you can see they have all changed quite a lot.
In the time it took to expose each shot (30 sec.) the scene has changed. I think the main reason for this is the cloud cover. When the clouds broke, the scene became darker. When the clouds started to pass over, the reflection from the light in the town gave it an Orange/Red glow. Then when the cloud cover was complete and it began to snow, the scene brightened up. The pic looked as if it had been taken in almost daylight.
I always find it amazing how quickly and dramatically a scene can change and when I looked at the results here I just thought it was a great example of why they say ''its all about the light!''. Thanks for visiting.
Terrible weather were havin...
This is a picture I made a while ago. It was for a monthly competition in the club (Mountmellick Camera Club). The theme was Winter. Around that time I had wanted to try my hand at making a composite image (blending 2 or pics together), partly to learn how it is done and partly for the fun of it. I came across an excellent photographer called Adrian Sommeling who makes amazing composites and he did a small tutorial on how to make this picture. I was doing this pic as a test and didn't really think it would turn out right but I was surprised how well it worked and how easy it was to do.
As you can see from the pics above I took 3 pics.. I took a pic at the front of my house first. Then took 2 more inside using a flash to simulate where the sunlight would be coming from. Thats the key to doing something like this, if the light isn't consistant then the eye will be able to tell that there's something wrong.
Using the camera set on timer and on a tripod, in the first pic, I got Senan to lay on a chair and took the pic with the flash (which is visible in the pic ) at half power. Then I switched roles with him. Note : it made it a lot easier to blend the images because we used the coat in both pics, and also because the light sourse( the flash ) is the same in both pics i.e. its in the same position and at the same power.
The next part is Photoshop..there are lots of tutorials around to show you how to blend pics. I didn't go to too much trouble refining the edges, but if it was an important pic I would have spent more time on it, making it much more realistic.
Once I had the 3 pics blended together I used a lot of dodging and burning on the sky to make it more dramatic. Then I used the Liquify tool to bend some of the trees to simulate the wind. After that I used Levels and Curves to add even more drama. Finally I introduced the rain, which can be done by adding Noise to the pic on another layer, then using motion blur to make it appear to be falling/moving.
I found that making a pic like this is great way to learn more about how to use Photoshop. Even if making composite images isn't your bag ( I use it a lot in the Unlaoised Project 52 - for fun ), its a valuable way to learn the ins and outs of Photoshop.
Hope you find this blog post of some interest or some help.
joe.
Out with the Old and In with the New..
Week 1 of the unlaoised project 52 this year was - Out with the Old and In with the New..
My idea for this was a bit of a play on the many New Year resolutions that we make, like giving up the drink!
Instead of giving up the drink I thought it might be funny to give up beer for something more lavish like cocktails!
The setup is simple.. Using a plain backdrop I used one flash (580ex on 1/32 power, with a wireless trigger) pointing into an umbrella. I then took a pic with the lighting on my right. The second pic i switched the light to the other side and tried to stand in the same position (i didn't do it exactly correct which made the blending of the 2 pics a bit tricky and on close inspection you can see my head is a bit distorted)
I then blanded both pics in photoshop (getting rid of the distractions with content-aware). I finished it in Lightroom, adding a bit of colour to blend the pics more.