New Year wishes

Forsaking my usual black background for florals, I've gone for soft and subtle with shades of pink to finish off 2012.

Tomorrow is a new year, a new canvas, time to try new things: Have a great New Year everyone.
David

The emotional dimension

The goal, so I am told, is to envision the final picture before you press the shutter release; it's called having 'artistic vision'. But, I have to admit, that for me the vision often comes later on. Take this picture for example; on the screen I had a technically good, full colour, picture but it just wasn't doing anything for me. My initial vision to capture the wind-swept emptiness, had come up short.

Then I decided to make it a black and white and darken the blue sky. Suddenly it ceased to be a picture about water and sky and became one about horizon-less tones of light and dark, and cloud shapes that reflected a wind swept tree. Finally split toned with hints of blue and yellow and it became a moody, surrealistic, landscape which echoed the, windswept, desolate feeling that I experienced that day at the Waipara River Mouth. 

Perhaps it has less to do with 'vision' and more to do with 'emotion'; recreating emotion is not just about capturing visual components but presenting them in a way that elicits the appropriate emotional response.

It seems to me to be a picture that needs a large canvas ...

Favourite model

My favourite model, again. She's not quite taking direction yet, but if I follow her around long enough something good transpires ...

From Christmas day, all natural light.

Little tip makes big difference

The week before last, I attended a workshop by Trey Ratcliff. It was a great day with lots of useful information. But, it's turning out that the most useful takeaway from the day was a very simple tip about not processing all your photographs as soon as they are taken.

My habit was to return from a shoot and then process that shoot before embarking on the next shoot. This created a lot of self-induced pressure to complete processing quickly so that I could move on. The consequence was that processing often didn't get the attention it deserved, and sometimes good pictures got passed over completely. Since the workshop I have been processinga shoot quickly in Lightroom (quick adjustments only) and then moving the very best pictures into a 'To be processed' collection. Then, when I am good and ready, I can dip into that collection and process a few photos.

Without this approach I would never have made this picture from the Weka Pass Railway - it simply required too much work to complete as part of the 'shoot and process' workflow. But I had gone back and dragged it (with many others) into my newly created 'To be processed' folder where it later caught my eye. Thanks Trey.

PS. See 21 October for the original picture.

Home grown models

Photography is expensive enough without having to hire models to pose for your photos. But there's a way to get free models - get married, have children, get them married and soon you have little models everywhere. Here's one of my favourite models - Indie.

Just turn to the left ... yes, that's good. Hold it ...

Oxford Vintage Fair

Actually, to give it its full title; Oxford Country Garden Vintage Fair and Fete - at least it includes all of those words though the order may be debatable. Held on Saturday and Sunday, the first day was a bit of a washout with constant and heavy rain nearly al day. Sunday however, dawned bright and warm as the tractors started up against a back-drop of freshly snow covered hills.

One of the main events for the day was the vintage ploughing competition which while a lot of fun and certainly not a race (as you might imagine from this picture) ...

... some take very seriously.

The fete had stalls of all sorts including this 'music man' with his collection of old gramophones including the original cylinder type. I didn't realise that these unamplified devices could put out so much sound; presumably turning it down involved stuffing one's hat in the trumpet!

Altogether it was a great day out with heaps to see and do - I'm looking forward to next year.

Smell is a funny thing ...

... it can do things that sight and sound just can't manage - like evoke a memory. When I was a kid we used to live with a rail track at the bottom of the garden. It was towards the end of the steam age but I have memories of standing on the over-bridge at Kings Cross station full of steam locomotives, of camping in a tent in Scotland and listening to the night express whistling in the distance and taking a trip to Devon on a steam train.

Those memories didn't come back when we decided to ride the train today, nor when I saw the locomotive steaming at the ready, nor when I heard the whistle blow, or the engine puffing away. No, the memories came when I was seated in the carriage and a whiff of coal smoke drifted in through the window - that's what sparked the memories.

Happy engineers building up a head of steam prior to leaving Glenmark station.

Unhappy engineer telling stupid photographer to get off the tracks.

 

A428 - a 4-6-2 Pacific class locomotive built in 1909 cresting the Weka Pass.

Bird spotting

This morning's walk in the woods bagged a 'Bellbird' and a 'Silver eye' (sometimes known as a 'Wax eye'). There were also some lovely 'Fan tails' but they were moving so fast that I didn't manage to lock on for a good shot.

With the D80 I was never able to get close enough to these small birds to get a decent quality picture. Now, with the increased resolution and high ISO capabilities of the D600, I've been able to get the shots without too much difficulty (300mm lens + 1.4 tele-converter).

Spring into Oxford

Last year it was was called the 'Spring Cruise', this year it was 'Spring into Oxford' - a good family day out including a fete on the rugby oval and, of course, the regular vintage car rally. Here's one of my favourite cars - the Austin Healey 100-6. It was for sale but I dare not ask the price.

There was the usual turnout of American iron but many old British beauties including; an Austin A55, a Vauxhall Cresta, Singers (Gazelle and Vogue), Triumph (Stag, 2000 TC and a TR3), Morris Minor (split screen and 1000 convertible), Austin Healey 100-6, Jaguar 420, Rover 90,  and Jowett  Javelin (with working traficators!). Here's the Morris 1000 convertible:

Not a cloud in the sky today; tomorrow its back to rain and possibly snow.

Out with the D600

I've been out and about with the D600 this weekend; what a lovely camera this is. My yardstick for this comment is my old D80 which I also thought was 'lovely' when I got it. But the goal posts for 'lovely' have moved a lot in the six years since the D80 was introduced - partly because technology has moved on and partly because this photographer has also moved on.

Despite only being announced a week ago, this D600 purchase was not an impulse buy; I have been looking to upgrade since the beginning of the year and knew that the D600 would be the way to go since the rumours started around June time. Sample pictures started appearing as soon as it was announced so image quality was well known, but there is nothing like using a camera with your own lenses and technique - that's what this weekend was about. I am duly impressed.

High ISO performance is incredible; I never used the D80 above ISO800 but the D600 doesn't give similar amounts of noise until ISO6400! Finally I feel comfortable allowing the camera to choose ISO automatically for general shooting. As well as improved ISO performance, the auto focus is  also a huge improvement over the D80; using the same set of lenses I find that auto-focus is fast and accurate - no more fidling around while the shot gets away from you:

I wouldn't have got this shot with the D80 - on the D600, fast focus acquisition and an ISO of 1600 gave a usable shot (actually six in burst mode). 

The other huge improvement is in Dynamic range. There are high dynamic range boosting settings but I wasn't even using these. This shot of the river bed was a single exposure at ISO 200 and everything from the sunlit snow on the mountains to the shadows under the trees was well within the dynamic range of the sensor (shot in aperture priority mode). This would have needed a three-shot bracketed exposure on the D80, on the D600 I didn't even need a graduated ND filter. Wonderful.

A different picture but a similar situation. This one uses also used the D600's continuous shooting mode which, with the highest quality RAW setting shoots up to 10 frames at a selected rate up to 5.5 frames per second. I used 3fps on this shot to make sure I got just the right composition (longest train possible without obscuring the green track light).

I can see that the D600 and I are going to become firm friends; she's certainly delivering a much higher 'keeper' rate than I was getting with the D80.