I completely forgot about using my graphics tablet to draw directly onto photos. I’m glad I found it.
People
Hair Raising
Saturday, May 15th, 2010Launchpad
Wednesday, May 12th, 2010
A Cautionary Tale
“Ive been papped, ooh my life is going so well, someones taking pictures of me aren’t I
beautiful, Im going to tell all my friends Im going to be on the world wide intaweb,
life is sweet, Summer summer summertime, the groove is quick and slightly
transformed, just a little break from the norm of all that soft southern style….”
thats what this beautiful weed was thinking in the few seconds before it was
mercilessly uprooted and chucked in a green bin bag, how dare it besmirch
my lawn begone!
……………………..It’s brief fight for survival ended.
And if there are any other weedy type things thinking about firing your
spores over my fence let it be known I will hunt down your offspring and
publicly humiliate it like this one and when I have finished milking it’s beauty
for selfish reasons I will kill it, fact don’t do it !
Shot with a GX20, Tamron 70-300mm macro at full zoom macro, external flash
set on hotshoe, sigma ef 530 summat about super. iso was set to 400, 180shutter
speed aperture f5.6 and flash on ttl
Nepal
Tuesday, January 26th, 2010There are so many things I love about travelling but it’s the interaction with the local people I find most rewarding of all. Nepal is renowned for the friendliness of its people and they didn’t disappoint. Walking around with a camera, no matter how inconspicuous you try to be, will always guarantee some sort of engagement with a curious native, especially if you’re caught taking their photo. The interaction this tends to generate is quite often priceless. I’ve been incredibly lucky to meet some truly amazing and fascinating people in this way.
Generally I like to try and take candid shots of people in their everyday environment. However, if you’ve travelled in Asia you’ll know this isn’t always possible. It’s fairly common to find yourself surrounded by people all wanting to see themselves on the LCD screen. The kids in this image were no exception.
I don’t remember the name of the village where these images were taken. In fact I’m not sure I ever knew the name as it wasn’t in the guidebook, but it was obvious not many tourists passed through. Well, this was my assumption as there wasn’t a guesthouse or shop, and for the fact that I seemed to be the centre of attention. I can quite honestly say that by doing absolutely nothing of any interest whatsoever, I’ve never been so interesting to so many people!
It was a fantastic rough and tumble little place. I must have spent a couple of hours wandering around, soaking up the relaxed atmosphere. If there had been a guesthouse I would have stayed for a night at least. It was so refreshing not to encounter another westerner. I did manage to capture some natural shots before I left the village. I applied a water colour filter in Photoshop to this photo. The effect complemented the colours and textures really well and added another dimension to the image.
Snow!
Monday, January 25th, 2010
The rumour is that the snow is coming back! I really hope so because it was such great fun last time. Obviously Christmas is a fun time for everyone and being a student away from home it is great to go back and enjoy that time with my family. However my friends and I have been snowed under in more ways than one. The Christmas period is often the worst in terms of work, deadlines and revision and interspersed with the festivities were very healthy dollops of work. So the snow was a welcome relief. I didn’t get as much time to play in it as I would have liked however, if it makes a return appearance I shall be out and about straight away!
The shots in this post show just how cold it got! The canal was completely frozen over and didn’t move for almost a week, and the post box had icicles forming on it!
The last two shots were taken when I went to the golf course near my house with my brother and sister. The first one is of my little brother getting some very impressive air on the golf course and the second is a shot of my sister just before she crashed!
Feeling Photographically Challenged?
Saturday, January 16th, 2010Make a short film instead…
Seasons Greetings
Thursday, December 24th, 2009This year will be the first time in 10 years that my partner Andy and I will have Christmas alone. Usually, we spend Christmas with family, but this year, we thought we would have a nice and quiet one. So Andy is certainly the best present for me this year!
Wishing you all a very merry Christmas and a very happy New Year.
Shot with GX-20 dSLR and a glass or two of Christmas cheer
The Magical Art of Sak Yant
Tuesday, December 22nd, 2009
Buddhist monk Hlwong Pi Phaew sits on the veranda of his quarters at Wat Bang Phra, a temple approximately 50km outside Bangkok, Thailand. He sits cross-legged on a cushion, with a long silver tattooing needle in his right hand. The monk wears saffron robes over biceps, back and chest covered in magical Sanskrit text. Large dragons coil around both of his lower legs. He is half way through tattooing a large, geometric grid of Sak Yant, ancient protective tattoos, on the middle of a man’s back, whilst three comrades pull their friend’s skin tight from three different angles.
The monk smoothly, silently and precisely pricks away at the man’s flesh with his two-pronged spear, only stopping to occasionally dip the points into a pot of ink, made from secret magical ingredients, supposedly including cobra venom.
HP Phaew, who prefers to work outdoors, is one of the most respected of all the monks in the temple and also one that retains the strict traditions of the art. Like all of the tattooist he will only make marks above the waist, and his designs all come with specific spells, chants, symbolism and meaning. The wearer has to abide by a set of rules in order to retain the magic of the tattoo, although all Sak Yant will lose their power over time.
Why I like photography
Friday, December 11th, 2009The thing I love about photography is the fact that it can be creative. It is not just the practice of capturing the world around us as it is, although that is a valuable part of it, but it is also the opportunity to create images from scratch. This is partially one of the reasons I enjoy self portraits by people. Often, the photographer will have thought about exactly what they want in the photo, creating an image in this way allows you to include or exclude whatever you want. This photo is inspired by some quotes in some of my favourite plays.
The first Under a Blue Sky by David Eldridge “his sightless blue eyes still shone in the sun” and Angels in America by Tony Kushner “A baby…who stares up at us with big mirror eyes and who does not know who we are.” These two quotations really stuck in my mind, the idea of sightless eyes gazing at the sky. I wanted to create an image which showed this idea of looking but not seeing and death, the final view before the end. I knew I wanted it to be a dark photo, not one with sun and I also wanted it to contain a contrast, so I wore my normal clothes as I felt this image of me, as I look day to day would contrast with the idea of death. Finally I knew I wanted two shots, one distanced to show the idea of loneliness and abandonment and one close up to show the eyes.
Taking the photos was actually easier than I imagined. I set up my tripod and stuck the ST550 to it, I was surprised that it had been designed to fit to a tripod, as many of my other compacts weren’t. I then set the camera to timer with the front screen on so that i could see myself. Usually I don’t use the front screen, as I’m behind the camera, and having it on while taking a photo of someone else distracts them. However in this case I found it really useful, I managed to get the shot a lot quicker than I do with my SLR camera, as I could see what I was doing rather than guessing my position or facial expression.
Overall I think in the case of self portraits the ST550’s front screen is a great idea, it made taking the photo I wanted much quicker and easier, and meant I could get in out of the rain!
CHILD LIKE
Friday, December 4th, 2009
And so it was, having to try out the ST550’s child setting, I was kind of struggling for a subject. My son is 14 and he deemed himself as being far too mature to participate in this experiment. No matter how childish and immature I rate myself, I hate being the ‘wrong’ side of a camera so that ruled me out. My last hope was my nephew.
Ahhh yes, young Mikey. At 2 years of age an ideal candidate, this was gonna be a cinch, or at least it should have been. Trying to get a 2 year old to stay still long enough to get a blur free image should in theory not present a problem, more so when you consider the smiling clown that animates away on the front of the ST550 to help hold their interest. Well I hate to admit defeat, but after somewhere in the region of 20 shots, young Mikey decided that on this occasion running around with teddy was way to much fun to help me out in my hour of need.
With the clock ticking away I was thinking I had no chance of uploading anything using this very inventive setting, when a very recent trip to the Holy Island of Lindisfarne came to my rescue. I had arranged a shoot on the island with a group of friends, whom despite being no teenagers are always up for a hoot and now I seized my oppourtunity. They are all aware that I carry the compact with me on every shoot, for those just incase oppourtunities and when I called for a group shot, this bunch of non camera shy, wannabe models were only to happy to oblige.
Out with the 550 and a quick tap on the touch screen to select the required mode and I was ready. I have to say that despite my reservations, this group of mature people were reduced to laughing Hyenas as the clown’s face done his thing and kept the gaze of his captive audience. A questions and answers session was to follow and these folks were genuinely impressed with the child mode this little compact has. My family has never increased this quick as I now have 9 more kids to add to my album.
kindest regards to you all, Steve
Can a 9 year old be trusted with an ST550?
Friday, November 20th, 2009My little girl embarked on an adventure of a lifetime, but before she left I handed her my very much loved ST550, I wanted to find out if it was just me or was this little puppy as intuitive as I thought. Being a technofile, I’d pretty much worked my way around the settings after 10 minutes, but I didn’t tell her anything about the settings. Mwah ha ha.
Off she went and here is her story and pictures!
Hi, I’m Amira and I went to Euro Disney for my birthday on a very fast train, I couldn’t believe the station was so close to Euro Disney, helpful people carried our bags to the hotel while we carried on straight into the Toon Toy park. It looked so realistic just like the telly. We went on a spinning car ride with Lightning McQueen and Tigger was right next to us, making a wheeeeeee sound, when Tigger asked for it to go faster Nannie was enjoying it so much she had tears of fun in her eyes.
Getting away from the baddies
We had a new camera to try out, it was easy to use and I like that was able to get the screen on the front to work. My first picture was a bit blurry, but after that I got the hang of things and really started to enjoy taking pictures. I worked out quickly how to check if the pictures I took were blurry or not.
When we were in the Phantom House ride I let my mummy take the pictures because I was worried that I might drop the camera when frightening things happened, first a spiders web appeared, then it got larger and larger and the train we were in went right through the yucky sticky web, with the spider still in it! Skeletons kept appearing from the walls , going “woooaaaah” our ghost train rocked from side to side, I cuddled grandad, closed my eyes and put my hood over my eyes.
After a skeleton tipped a bucket of spiders over us we thought the scary ride was over, the ghost train went down a big dip making my tummy tickle my tonsils. We tried lots of rides on the first day and laughed at all the fun we had over dinner in the Hotel. Tigger came up to the table, I was excited to see him from my Winnie the Pooh books which are my favourite. I was even more excited about the next day and even dreamt of Winnie when I finally fell asleep.
When I woke up, I ate yummy Pain Au Chocolate for breakfast. Later I watched as Mummy, Grandpa and Auntie Danella went on Space Mountain, after the ride Grandpa felt really ill and looked pale, he went back to the hotel for a lie down and mummy couldn’t stop laughing. The rest of us went to the Parade which was amazing, the floats were colourful and all my favourite Disney character were taking part in the parade
Indiana Jones was just like the movie, Auntie Dan was very brave she was the only one who went on the ride, we were relieved that we didn’t have to go on it to and cried with laughter. Thunder Mountain had boats that went on the water, it was perfect. On Friday we went to the stunt show, it was amazing there was a shootout and stunt men fell from the highest roof , one stuntman even caught on fire but the flames were put out by a fireman, everyone cheered like mad.
This was by far the most entertaining holiday I’ve ever been on and I would thoroughly recommend it to other children as it really does bring the family together, with laughter entertainment, surprises and a few scares.
Thank you for reading my first ever blog.
Amira
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