SACC Printed & Projected Images

On Sunday 6th December the SACC (Southern Association of Camera Clubs) round of the National Printed and Projected Images Competition was held in Clonmel. This was the first year that I was placed in the Open section of the competition (as opposed to the Intermediate). In the Projected Images section I came in third. OK, not earth shattering but nice to get some recognition.

This was the image that took third.

Out of the 9 images I submitted 7 are going forward to the finals and the club had 18 out of 30 passed on to the National Final in February. Fingers crossed again.

Film Photography

"I'll never take up film photography"

It's funny how statements from the past come back to haunt you. I gave this statement about 18 months ago on Photography Ireland and got a few retorts that put me back in my box. It was an innocent statement but one I wholeheartedly believed in.

18 months later and I've put Ebay under stress as well as the bank balance. To date I've received a Nikon FG that I had given to my father over 20 years ago as he has "a digital camera and won't ever use film again"...some trends go up generations too.

So I've bought 4 film cameras...not content with 1.

The Brick (Argus C3 Matchmatic):

A "Zero Image" MF pinhole (6x6)

A Holga 120N

And on its way in time for Christmas is a Hasselbladski, aka a Kiev 88CM MLU

So, happy days!!

Please note - the images you see represent the cameras that I have purchased and these images are from other review and sales sites. If you click on the images you will be taken to these sites.

Bark

Woodstock, Inistioge, Co. Kilkenny. I'd never been there before and didn't know what to expect. "There was a house" was all I knew. I'd seen recent images of flowers...so there were flowers too. Other than that it was into the unknown.

It's a large park area with an old house and well kept grounds. The time that we ventured around the area (October) it was just turning yellow with leaves and we were blessed with the weather.

But from a photographic perspective this is a treasure trove, especially for myself when I'm in the Ansel humour. Trees, lining paths, bends, waterfalls, contrasting light, etc. And around each corner there's something different, a different challenge.

This shot was quite difficult and simple. I had to slap the camera into manual mode to measure the closest tree, then spot meter the background trees. There was a 6-stop difference so I went for the mid-ground. So at ISO200 I went to 55mm 1/60sec at f2.8 (despite what the EXIF data says this was a 24-70mm f2.8 lens). Then in conversion I had to pull back the nearest tree and hold the reigns of exposure while bringing out the background. Cloning out a few stray leaves to the left, burn/dodge the tree then dodge a few highlights in the background all complimented with a mild vignette. Then some selective sharpening of the ferns and grass to the foreground and hey presto.

As ever the original can be seen by clicking on the image above.

Competition win

I love competition. I was a competitive cyclist for many a year and when you change hobbies it sticks with you. Photography is different as it's soooooooo subjective. A couple of months ago I started actively seeking competitions and I won one...get that!!

The image above won first place in a monthly competition at www.trustedreviews.com where the theme was "Power of Nature". I was thrilled with the win and seeing what stiff competition there was I was equally bowled over. The prize was a Panasonic Lumix DMC LX3 (as seen below), a Sandisk Extreme III 2GB card and a card reader.

Here's to next Month.

Stoned

Bless me Father for I have sinned - it's almost a month since my last posting. Above is the aptly named "Stoned". I'm looking at film photography and I was blown away by an image taken on a Bronica SQ-Ai camera. I wasn't trying to replicate it but you get the idea of stones and DOF in your mind and you try.

As ever the original can bee seen by clicking on the image above. This one is just a crop, a conversion, a little curves adjustment (not too much - not too contrasty) a "Lens Blur" overlay with a horizontal mask to further emphasise the DOF then a little sharpening.

They watch

This is a sculpture created for a Memorial Garden or Millenium Garden in Kilmore Quay, Co. Wexford, Ireland. The statue overlooks the Ballytiegue Bay, otherwise known as the graveyard of 1,000 ships. The statue depicts a mother, wife or partner looking out to sea being comforted. The memorial garden that it is adjacent to has engraved the names of hundreds of people who lost their lives at sea.

The image was exporeted from Lightroom to Photomatix as 3 bracketed images of +2,0,-2 Ev. Then they were finely balanced so as not to look like a HDR image. This then had a few sample presets applied before I settled on an infrared one. Then the orange and yellow saturation sliders were adjusted to reduce the orange effect. This was then exported to CS3 to remove noise, add a little subtle contrast and sharpen. Obviously this preset had a deep vignette too which I thought suited the atmosphere.

As ever the original image can be seen by clicking the image above.

The Pier

This is St Helens Bay in Wexford, Ireland. It draws you in...there's nothing spectacular there apart from a bay, a few rocks and a quaint little pier. But it can be a nice little place for images.

This image here was as a reesult of a failed "moon watch". I had seen a great moon the previous evening rising around 9.30pm so with another reasonably clear sky I went in search of the moon. The reason for this particular spot is that a couple of miles off land there is a lighthouse, Tuskar Lighthouse, so I was hoping for both in the one shot. Shooting a moon at night isn't what you'd call clever. You either get a blown moon, or a non-existent landscape. You live and learn.

Anyway, this image. I straightened the horizon and lost a few dust spots. Then I converted to B&W which was straight forward enough. I added a little contrast and burned in the edges of the steps. Then I got the curves layer and used the white eye dropper to find the brightest spot (with the "show clipping" box ticked). Then I added a gradient overlay for the top of the image. Well, not an overlay as such just added a black gradient and reduced the opacity until I was happy with it. I then copied this gradient and reversed it to cover the bottom but had to reduce it's height so as not to infringe too much on the image. Lastly an octave sharpening run with a reduced opacity. BUT, the work done had given me some noise so I ran a noise reduction bit of software over it to clean it. I didn't mask it as it looked OK without it. And voila.

The original image can be seen by clicking on the image above then hover your mouse over the button on my website.

Croke Patrick

A holiday around Mayo brought us to this spot. It's Croke Patrick, the place for the annual pilgrimage on July 26th to the top of the mountain you see in the image...the one in the clouds. There's a church on the top and mass is celebrated there. A fit person could take 2 hours+ to get there but some, including the elderly take the trek barefoot. Up to 20,000 people can be on the mountain at any one time.

We visited a few days before the pilgrimage and took a few hundred yards of a trek...purely for photographic reasons, you understand! Although having 3 young lads with a fetish for throwing stones does limit your time anywhere. If you're in the region of Mayo, Ireland I'd recommend a visit. The views from the top are spectacular...I believe.

As ever, this image was processed. You can see the original by clicking on the image above to see the subtle processing done. A word of warning - this may look a little washed out on an uncalibrated monitor.

Clowning around

This was the first visit to a cuircus in many years...last time it was me looking for the candy floss and not my own 3 sons. SO, a photographic opportunity arose...

I tried to check what shutter speeds and f-stop to use but the initial lighting for when the crowd flooded in was different than the acts but I had to start somewhere. I shot the entire time on Aperture Priority mode. It didn't take long to see that ISO800 was required at f2.8...oh the joys of a 2.8 lens. The WB had to be left at auto as the colour lighting was changing by the second and the fact that I was shooting RAW I wasn't too concerned anyway. I also found out quickly that if you use evaluative metering you get the crowd in the darkness coming into view and slowed down your shutter speed...which was useless as the performer was a blur so I went to centre weighted light metering on the performer and that worked.

The announcements came - no flash photography or videoing as it frightens the animals...that was me covered...I was safe. A rotating ring that went way into the roof of the tent moved too fast so I missed it. Then this guy came out and when he stayed still it was worth a few shots. Animals were a non runner as even at ISO800 and f2.8 I was still only getting 1/30sec thereabouts so it was futile. I considered going higher in ISO but with such bright lighting it would have been even less of a useless exercise. Some balancing and juggling worked well as the guy was still and the 5 balls were at varying levels of motion so that worked well. Overall a good evening.

To summarise if you want to go to a circus to take shots - high ISO depending on lighting is a requirement so assess your cameras capabilities. Use a fast lens and use spot metering or center-weighted metering for the lighting. You don't need a wide DOF so go as low as you can...f2.8 if you have it. Shoot in RAW so that you can cope with the changing light temperature.

If you want to see the original image before processing just click on the image above and you will be directed to my site. Oh yeah, have fun!!

On the harbour wall

Kilmore Quay, Wexford Ireland. I had a need to use a polarizer on my lens earlier in the day when I took these shots. It was the first time and I liked what it did to images. So armed with this and the Sigma 10-20mm & the Sigma 24-70mm lenses I went to Kilmore Quay seeing as it was a fine morning.

The clouds were of a peculiar shape and looked like they were eminating from the Saltee Islands. It's not often that you get a quiet harbour either so I took full advantage with the image above.

There wasn't mich processing work to be done on this image but what was done can be seen on my site. I cloned out a couple of cars, leveled the image, added a little contrast and a strip of yellow colour overlay along the pier to give it a boost. Then I ran the Octave Sharpening that I keep harking on about. I masked out the boats so that they didn't look soo gaudy, and so it was.

Sunset in the Cull

Every 3 months or so there's a frenzy of activity within our local club and photographers with aspirations across the country. I speak of the RTE Weather Photo Competition. The summer event is just about to close for entries and the image above is what I've sent on. Does it look over done - yes, of course it does. What I've found is that the image is half covered by the presenter of the weather for the few seconds it's on and then there's a green band across the bottom of the image to show the presenters name. Something has to be strong to get by the initial selection process to survive being presented.

I first entered the competition for the spring of 2008. I was hugely surprised to come in 3rd runner up. I failed last summer but Autumn and Winter I reached the finalists selection with the Autumn image being presented throughout Christmas and was the first image of 2009. This spring I was again optimistic but failed...but my wife got her image in as a finalist. 

The image itself - this was taken in a place called Cull Bank near Kilmore Quay, Co. Wexford. It was almost an accidental shot as I was out in a hide to take some photographs of local wildlife but they failed to play ball. This, I spotted going home and thought of a good composition to show it with.

The image was taken from 1 exposure where I upped the exposure in lightroom in a virtual copy and blended both exposures in CS3. I boosted the saturation of the yellows and reds, and "fixed" the fence across the sun.  A run then of octave sharpening and masking for the edges of the fence and hey-presto. The original can be seen on my site, as ever.

On der fone

Duncannon Fort, Wexford, Ireland. On the June Bank Holiday in Duncannon many historical groups converge on the fort to present their depictions of history. Re-enactments, battles and displays of a military nature take place. It's a prime spot for presenting images which defy logic, such as the one above of a German officer with a mobile phone...yes, we know it's a modern day necessity but it does seem odd looking.

The processing was quite simple at this one. A slight rotation, an adaptive contrast layer and a mask on the face to bring up the detail again and then a B&W conversion in CS3. Then the Octave Sharpening that I referred to in an earlier post with the "flowers" masked out and the opacity changed to 75%. The original can be seen on my site.

As always contact me for any further info. Of course, there were other oddities too...such as 2000 years of history in the one image!

Smile for the Birdie

Street...where would you be without the candidness of people. Like animals in their own habitat they do the silliest of things. This shot isn't silly...just think of the concept of a photographer taking a photograph of a person taking a photograph...sounds like some sort of perversion.

Anyway - the processing. I dropped this shot by 1 full exposure in Lightroom and then applied a preset called WOW-d_BnW_02...it's the most contrasty of the 10 WOW B&W presets. Then export to CS3. I applied a macro I developed to give the image some contreast. It involves creating a mask from a 50% gray layer and the background copy of the layer, then applying this as a mask to a curves adjustment (S-curve). I removed a couple of bits of white and then ran the white dropper from a curves layer onto the ladies scarf...this brought it up nicely.

I got the lasso tool and loosely marked around the edge of the image (press Alt when you're doing this and you can go off the side of the image too). I applied a 250px feather (that's why you go outside the edge of the image). Ctrl-J and you have a new layer made from the selection. Change the layer property to multiply and you have a selective vignette. Duplicate it if you like to increase the strength and play with the opacity (I used 2 layers with the second on 70% opacity).

But I had too much noise...the ladies face was splotchy. As always when I'm converting images to B&W I tend to get noise...not to worry. I ran the Octave sharpening routine (as previous blog entry) and removed the 500%/1 radius/50% layer and flattened the image. I then ran a noiseware removal piece of software to clear the image on a duplicated layer. They say you should do this before sharpening...it depends on the image. I would normally check for areas where definition was lost after noiseware removal but this was fine.

You can see the before/after on my site.

Yeee Haaaw!

I don't normally do colour street stuff but this was just perfect for the job. St Patricks day, 2009 on the streets of Wexford, Ireland. The reason I'm processing this one is because of a new sharpening technique that I picked up from Ciaran Whyte. It's called Octave sharpening where you copy the image 4 times as layers and change them to luminosity. You sharpen the first image to 500%, 0.5 radius and leave opacity of the layer at 100%, The second is 500%, 1 radius and 50% opacity of the layer. The third is 500%, 2 radius and 25% radius and the last being 500%, 4 radius and 12% opacity of the layer. The threshold in all of these layers sharpening is zero. You will have to play with the opacity and strength of these so I would suggest creating smart objects of each layer first. Then ultimately make an action from it as it does take a little time.

The size of the image here doesn't give the full extent of the technique but if you go to my site you'll see a bigger version and of course the original version. If you want any other information contact me.

You're screwed

I find competition brings out the best in your imagination and exercises the brain as well as the ability with the camera. A club competition coming up (May 25th) has the title "What the hell is that?" so I had to ge tthe thinking hat on. Did I get anywhere? No! The oul imagination had to rely on Flickr to boost it. I had seen an image like this on Flickr but I thought I'd bring it a bit further with a mirror and a couple of torches. Obviously these are screws...now that you've twigged the title. At first glance were you sure?

The 4 larger screws weren't wanting to play ball on this occasion. As they are so tall and I discovered that they were magnetised they would wobble and stick to each other before knocking down other screws. That's why there's only 4 of them.

A tight beam LED torch above the "silver" screws to the fromt as well as waving a wide angle beam torch side to side during the 4 second exposure helped to illuminate and add contrast. Will it do well? Only time will tell...

The original shot before some saturation boost and a few other tricks were applied can be seen on my site.

Hook Storm

Hook Head. Probably the most photographed landmark in the South East of Ireland. I've a pain in my face trying to get a different angle on it that hasn't been seen before but I suppose many people have. You look for a sunrise, a sunset, a funny looking sky, a night shot. Then a storm comes along. It's particularly nice when you leave home with a bit of a wind blowing only to get to a destination like Hook Head and the Wrath of God has been unleashed.

The image above - I was wondering how close I could get to see the wave breaker rise alongside the tower. There were several that came the same height as the lighthouse itself but I was cleaning spray from lenses at the time. Just after this shot was taken there was another wave coming in. I could see it'd be a biggie...I focused on the tower...then it hit. All I saw was a wall of white water bouncing back in my direction wetting and my A700 in the process. I didn't take any more shots.

The process for the image above was to create 3 images in Lightroom and transfer to CS3 to get a balanced image. Then convert the image to B&W, some burning/dodging of the waves, a little distortion straightning and a slight vignette in Lightroom at the end...then some last minute dust sopt and seaweed removal for good measure. You can see the original image on my site.

Ansels Ivy

Ansel Adams had a way with imagery. He had an eye for an image which is always a good start. He had a passion for his art. But what I rremember his images for best was his ability to draw out the tones in an image. He was a master in the darkroom. I managed to get a hold of one of his books, "Ansel Adams, 400 Photographs" a couple of years ago in Waterford City for the knockdown price of €40. At first I thought what a waste of money that was. Then I had second look, and a third. Nothing exceptional in the book but how he took the normal, everyday stuff and presented it soon became addictive. It was images like Dogwood that set me on the trail of the simple shots.

Ansel could pull out the best of a Black and White image. It's easy to say it can be done nowadays in Photoshop or other processing software...not so.

This image was of a green ivy (Duh!) and I used the B&W layer in CS3 to give it a start. The ivy was never going to bounce from the image due to the fact that the trunk had a hint of green too...let's face it, it's a tree. So what I did then was to create a mask from the image itself and create a black layer, then used the mask to boost the blacks (after inverting the mask).

This was fine but didn't bounce the ivy so I had to take the normal route of hitting the highlights with the dodge tool and hitting the midtones with the burn tool. A little vignette when brought back into Lightroom helped to emphasise the isolation of Ansels Ivy. The original of the species can be seen on my website. If you want clarification on any points just place a comment below and I'll gladly oblige.

My favourite colour is not blue

Culletons Gap...near Curracloe where Saving Private Ryan was filmed...well, the opening sequence anyways. I'm not too fond of colour images. Lately I've been pushing them just to get familiar with methods on post processing for colour. Particularly seascapes. This one was going to be an entrant into a competition on Photography Ireland but I decided to go on another tangent alltogether. I liked this one but there's definately something amis. Maybe that's why I like it. It's a funny game, this photography lark.

By the way - all posts in this blog have been predminently blue...it's not intentional...my favourite colour is not blue.

The Gannet Island

Saltee Islands off the coast of Wexford, Ireland. We took a trip to the island early July 2008. It's a spectacle at the best of times and many of the group were quite happy to try to capture the beauty of the island and try also to capture an image of a puffin. There were many.

But the island has something special. I said to Hauke Steinberg that the gannet colony was like Jurassic Park. First you get the smell...but you don't see any gannets. Then you come over the crest of a hill and you see a few strays flying by. Cresting the hill you are faced with the sight of an inlet in the cliffs that is decorated with thousands of nesting gannets. When he saw it he agreed - Jurassic Park.

These creatures are easily approachable and timid at the same time. On this day (when the image above was taken) the storms were passing which made for an incredible contrast to the colour of the gannets and the rocks.

Here's to 2009.

The Storm Cometh

Ever since I was young I've been interested in weather...especially storms. Nothing like a good thunder storm to liven the place up. My idea of a good holiday would be to  chase tornados in the US. Probably because I've already seen three of them. OK, not the US ones, just small Irish ones. I think they're called straw whirlwinds where frequently in calm summer months you'll see a whisp of straw shooting up from a field...harmless things. 

The best one was froma true storm one afternoon while at work. Looking out through a window where it was snowing, hailing, thundering...typical Ireland weather, I saw clouds rotating in the sky...then I saw a shot of water come up from a field. A JCB at the back of the factory moved in the wind, a 6' x 8' shed turned 90degrees, 2 rolling doors blew out and a car was damaged. Still tame though.

The image above was from an odd evening lately where thunder was forecast but not in the sunny South-East. This was a cloud formation coming in against the direction of the wind which normally indicates thunder. On this occasion it didn't so I have yet to capture a photograph of lightning. Some day...

popular demand

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The top two images I had taken on a lovely early morning in Rosslare Strand, Co. Wexford last March. Quite pleased with myself I was! The second image above was the first time that I used the polariser to lose the reflection on the water to see the home-made slipway in all its glory. I posted both of these on our Camera Club forum and the feedback was positive...but the calls were "I'd like to see the old rustbucket in next to the slipway".

So an hour of my life later and PS combined with a Trust graphics tablet I played God and moved the boat from one area 250 yards from whence it came to where you see it in the last image. Nothing special about the move other than a lot of fine detailed masking to remove the old background from the boat and place it in over the original green boat.

Sadly the response by one was "I'd like to see a green boat next to the slip". There ain't no pleasing some...

Whassa Blog

I've seen blogs, I've read you need one...but I thought...why? It only provides for the ramblings of the few to be queried by the many. But when it's free...then why not.

I'm hoping to get this updated frequently and with sensical comments and additions...couldn't guarantee it but we'll give it a go.