25.02.13 - Ghost Dog.......... A variation of my main Daily today. I was trying to catch Mr Willis waiting at the door, but he kept moving so with a 2.5 second exposure is just a ghost :)

I've been taking a photo every day for almost five years and posting to the main Smugmug Daily Community. That has got very large and impersonal, making it difficult to do justice to every wonderful photographer there. So I joined the alternative Daily Post Community as well, to get back some of the more personal feedback that can be missing from the bigger group. I've now been here well over a year, and loving every minute :)

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04.03.13 - Light Painting

This is a reworking of an image from a couple of years ago that will be published in a magazine shortly with some articles I wrote about hidden gems of nature locally. One of the hardest things to capture with a camera is that shimmer you get when leaves catch the light in a breeze. I've tried many things over the years, increasing the contrast slightly sometimes works, but this is the glamour glow filter in Color Efex pro. There isn't a lot of difference to the original, but the slight painterly effect does give a little shimmer I think

03.03.13 - Panning for Dog!

When I'm out with Mr Willis I occasionally try panning shots to capture some idea of how much he hurtles about and rarely stands still. It is much harder to pan with a dog than a racing car because they change direction so unpredictably! This is a case in point. He was running across the shot and suddenly turned and headed towards me. I tried to stay with him but was on auto focus and so the camera was always a little way behind him! I should have been in manual focus, but I'll know better next time, unless I forget again :)

02.03.13 - High Flyers

Two high flying aircraft illuminated by the setting sun. Thankyou for the wonderful comments on my golden sunset swans yesterday :)

01.03.13 - Grace

Sunset at the Old Fishponds.

28.02.13 - Watercolour Trees

Late afternood sun in Boultham Park Lake. Rather than shoot the whole scene I thought I'd concentrate on the reflections of the trees in the water.

27.02.13 - Roses

It's been over a week since I posted a Daily shot in daylight, but yesterday was unbroken sunshine so how could I refuse? I rarely shoot cut flowers, prefering wildflowers out in nature, but the light in the conservatory was too good to waste. I liked the reflection in the glass too.

Thanks for the comments on my ghostly white shoes yesterday. When I do those I always get a lot of questions about how I did it, and people tend to think that they're really difficult, but they're really very easy. There is always a lottery element to long exposures, you never know quite what you're going to get, but with practice you can start to control the results a bit more.

Moving objects will always be blurred in long exposures obviously. They will disappear completely depending on the shutter speed and direction of their movement. Something moving across the shot will disappear at much slower shutter speeds than something moving towards/away, so if you want "ghosts" it is usually best to choose people moving towards/away. The feet are often the last things to disappear as they are momentarilly still when in contact with the ground. It is common to get "one legged people" because one leg will be in motion while the other is in contact with the ground.

The principles are very simple, but it sounds really complicated when you try to write it down. The best way to understand it is to play around yourself. You can use a tripod if that is what you're used to, or do as I do most of the time and use what objects there are to hand to stabilise the camera. Yesterday's shot was on a flat topped metal post. One thing I've noticed when I take people on guided photo walks is that they have the ISO set to "auto", and at night that adjusts upwards as high as it goes, and this works against long shutter speeds . It is best to set it for 100 or 200, then go into shutter priority. You control the shutter speed, the aperture will sort itself out. The best "people ghost" shots are between 1-3 seconds, traffic light streaks are best 3 seconds and upwards. But there are so many variables it is just best to play :)

26.02.13 - The White Shoes................

Can you see them?

24.02.13 - Full Moon Rising

When I took the dog out at dusk I was hoping for a nice sunset in the west as the clouds were breaking up rapidly. They didn't clear completely in that direction, but they did in the east just as the Moon climbed above the ridge. I rarely take shots of the Moon, because I don't have the pixels or the lens power to do it justice, but I quite like this one with all it's faults.

25.02.13 - Ghost Dog..........

A variation of my main Daily today. I was trying to catch Mr Willis waiting at the door, but he kept moving so with a 2.5 second exposure is just a ghost :)