Framed and hanging in my hall.

After a recent bout of decorating I decided that I would need to renew the pictures I have hanging in my hall.

One of my favourite pictures I have taken and sold is my picture of the big wheel when it was situated in the Castle car park in Chester a couple of years ago.



It was so big and so bright it lit up the whole area, this particular image was taken from the Queens park suspension bridge in which crosses the River Dee from Chester over to Handbridge.

I particularly like the reflections and texture of the water and the colours.

This picture is a once in a lifetime picture for me as the big wheel is unlikely to ever return to the Castle carpark as it is said to have caused too much disruption to the Crown Courts.

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The Camera Never Lies - Or Does It ??

Wandering around London looking for photo opportunities I came across a couple of old London Routemaster buses parked down a side street waiting to depart on a tourist trip around London.

I snapped a couple of shots and carried on walking eventually ending up at Tower Bridge. Stopping for a while I took a few more pictures from various angles until eventually I had the shot I wanted.

Later that week when I had time to sort through all my pictures taken that day I got back to the pictures of Tower Bridge, I had approx 10 pictures but I thought they all had something missing which I could not pin point so moved on to something else.

Later that day when I was narrowing down the pictures I was going to keep from the day I came back to the Routemaster Bus pictures and decided to try an experiment.

Using Photoshop I roughly cut out the bus from the first picture and placed it into the picture of Tower Bridge just to see if it worked. It was then that I knew I had discovered what was missing.

Then I decided to see if I could actually make the bus look like it was supposed to be there. This is when I discovered my first problem, the bus was pointing the wrong way. After a long time experimenting and changing the perspective and proportions I finally managed to get it to look as if it was travelling in the right direction and was proportionate to the scene.

After about 2 hours of trying to get the bus to look right I decided that it still looked like it needed something else to make the bus stand out. Recalling a poster I had previously seen of a Yellow New York Taxi with a black and white background I decided to try my hand at selective colouring.

Turning Tower Bridge black and white and adjusting the contrast had the desired effect and finally I had the image I was looking for.

Click for original

So if you like this picture and are ever in London, don`t bother standing on Tower Bridge waiting for one of these buses to pass because they will probably be parked up somewhere else.

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Just Before Dawn

Well I decided that rather than working that I would sneak off and get my camera out in an attempt to try and get some nice night time pics. I only had about half an hour before it got light so started off with the bridge,it is one of my favourites and I always seem to get at least one decent picture out of it. I did venture out onto one of the landing stages to take this pic and very nearly fell into the river.



After I had played around by the river for a bit I thought I would head towards the Town Hall but only got as far as this street as it had started to get light so decided that I would take a pic with cobbles in it. The picture turned out fairly reasonably but I have to say I personally prefer the bridge one.



I also took a couple of pics of the suspension bridge which I am not sure about yet, I cannot decide whether I really like them or not. Still I think my little exercise in low light photography was a success just because of the picture of the bridge.

Back to Education

Well for the first time in 24 years I am about to go back into the classroom. I have decided that I need a little bit of help with my photography and photoshop skills so have signed up to do a college course. I start my course tomorrow night and am a little bit nervous and also quite looking forward to it at the same time.
I have been learning about photography and photoshop by reading books,reading a few online forums and tutorials and also a lot of trial and error.I think that without some hands on tutoring I have probably gone as far as I can on my own.I think that I am reasonably competent but don`t really have a benchmark to set myself against so will hopefully find out on this course whether I have learned as much as I think I have.
I have a few things that I feel I need a little bit of help with so hopefully I will be able to find the answers on this course.I intend on keeping this blog a bit more up to date in the future too so I can have a sort of timeline to my studies.

"Proper" Stock Photography !

Well it`s been quite a while since I have even had time to post anything on here never mind take any new photos as I have been rather busy doing other things.Still in the last few days I have managed to make a lightbox and also get out with my camera around town and take a few pics of one thing and another.

So first of all these are just 3 of the lightbox pics I took the other day which have been submitted and accepted onto the various stock sites I subscribe to.I had real trouble with the trumpet as no matter which way I tried to photograph it I ended up with reflections I didn`t want.I have quite a few more that I intend to submiy once I have the time to process them.If I am completely honest though I am not sure whether this is the type of photography I want to spend a lot of time doing as without the correct equipment I find it really difficult to get the white balance etc spot on.Maybe I will invest in some proper studio lights and see how I get on with them.

I also have a selection of pictures that were taken on a nice sunny day around town including a few of the old black and white Tudor buildings which seem to be on every corner.They can wait for my next post though which I hope won`t be too long.

Self Portraits

I have not really had time lately to do much with my photography but seeing as how we have had such appalling weather lately I decided that I would try and get the hang of off camera flash.I knew that my D200 had the commander mode and that I could actually do it but as usual I only read the instruction manual when I cannot work out myself how something works.
Anyway earlier today I was playing around with the flash and the effects that moving it around had on my pictures and came up with this self portrait,which I then played around with in photshop to give me the other versions.
I am by no means a master of photoshop but I can do a few basics and am pleased with the end results.

Flowers in The Rain

As it was raining all day today I couldn`t really go far with my camera because I didn`t want to get it or me soaking wet through,I was out in the garden at my mums when I saw this Dahlia all covered in raindrops and thought it would make a nice picture so got my camera out of the car and took a couple of pictures.I like the way the rain reflects the light but I think the pictures could be a little bit sharper.I do like them though and think that for my first try at this kind of picture they look reasonably good.