Seeing your work on the internet etc is all well and good, but nothing beats seeing it printed on dead trees!!

Photography in the evening

T'was a full day of photography yesterday.

I spent the morning photographing a new lighting set up at Zaugg AG, a large construction company based in Rohrbach.

The afternoon and evening were spent about 10 kilometers (six miles) away surprisingly enough, in a another construction firm also with new premises by the name of Koenig.

Of particular importance to us was the exterior lighting provided by the company for whom I work, Regent lighting.

Dusk is the best time to photograph "night time" images as you sill get detail in the sky. Unfortunately, you only have about 20 minutes to a half an hour before it gets completely black and featureless.

Luckily, darkness is coming earlier as we draw towards the end of the year and that meant that dusk (or Dämmerung as it's called in German) is earlier. I took some twilight photos for Regent earlier this year and had to wait until a quarter to ten for it to start to get dark. Last night I began at a quarter to eight.

Luckily I have a standard exposure which I use for twilight shots. I set the exposure to 2.5 seconds at f10 and bracket one and a half f/stops each side. Then I combine all three later into a HDR which I DON'T (most of the time) Tone-Map.

Here's a picture I took of my EOS 5 on the tripod. I used my new Samsung Galaxy phone to test it^s night time capabilities.

 Taken with the Samsung Galaxy

This image however is the finished HDR picture.

Taken at 20:04 in the evening

 That's it for now. Have a great weekend.

Tom

You learn something new everyday.

I'd previously seen a group of old cars (mostly Citroen 2CV's) in a village called Hauenstein and made a mental note to return and take a few snaps.

This is where the village is located

I returned last weekend with the express intention of doing something new.

I've experimented with HDR's, I've tried black and white and done lots of other stuff besides but looking at the old cars I felt that they deserved something a little different. But what?

Then I cast my mind back to my days of shooting slide film. (I actually still shoot transparency but it's for the firm). One method I used to experiment with was combining an unsharp image with a sharp one.

Simply put. Take the first image (on a tripod) about one and a half to two stops overexposed and the second image out of focus at about one stop or so overexposed. The processed slides would then be mounted over one another in a slide frame and give a sort of "dreamy effect" when projected. 

 Before the Orton effect.

There's a lot of trial and error involved with getting the right amount of unsharpness. I didn't want too much. Just a hint.

  After the Orton effect.

Here are two more before and after images.

Obviously, this technique isn't confined to colour images. You can also use it with sepia as seen here:

So what is this technique called? I hadn't a clue until I came across this link which explains how to do it digitally, It's called the "Orton" effect.


Ive submitted my pictures for Google Earth so you should be able to see them soon as a part of my collection here:


That's all for now. Please feel free to leave a comment.

Two years in the making...

As I mentioned previously, I always have a sketchbook with photo ideas or poses to try out.

One such idea came to me several years ago. I have an apartment in a quiet village with a great view from the kitchen window.

When I first moved in I would look out of the window at the changing seasons. I decided two years ago to document it. Naturally I couldn't set a tripod up permanently in the kitchen so I tried to make the process of photographing the same view as simple as possible.

I always used a full frame camera fitted with the same lens (my 17 - 40 Canon zoom) set at the widest setting.
The camera was always manually set for focus and exposure and I used the histogram to prevent any clipping.

The middle focussing point of the lens always covered the middle of three trees that you can see in the centre of the image.

The reason it took two years was because I had to wait until conditions were perfect, including a nice sky (except for the winter shot). As this was a spare time project, I wasn't always at home when conditions were right so I had to wait until the next year!

Anyway, it's now done and I'm personally pleased with the end result.

What do you think?

Till next time.

Walzwerk, Münchenstein.

I documented a business seminar held by the company for which I work, last Wednesday. During the breaks I ventured outside and recorded some of the surrounding area. Very interesting for me and I'm definitely going back to do some serious HDR stuff at a later date.

Solothurn project

These images were all made last weekend as part of a private project in Solothurn which has the finest Baroque architecture in Switzerland.



They were all taken in and around St Ursus cathedral.



More details to follow.