Rudi and his mini-me:

Haggis does the Conga:

Lottie and Chester:

Being the cruel, heartless owners that we are, we took Rafferty for another walk on the Sunday!  This one was the “Puppy Party”.  All of Rafferty’s siblings, and his mum and dad, gathered in Lydiard Park to celebrate the puppies’ six month birthday.  Obviously, I took the camera along Unfortunately some of the photography was curtailed when Rafferty, trying to be too clever and cut some of the other off, got clattered and cartwheeled through the air.  It didn’t look good when we picked him up – it appeared that he might have dislocated his hip.  Thanks to Martin’s ministrations we thought it might not be as bad as we feared and, after a bit of lead walking, Rafferty definitely improved.  At this point I decided that I wouldn’t be wracked with guilt if I got the camera out again!
One thing I did find was that with so many hounds (10) and associated owners it was very difficult to get a clear shot.  That’s my excuse and I’m sticking to it! So, some pics:

Rafferty and Ember:

Bella (the bossy sister!):

All seven pups plus mum and dad:

More pics in this bit of the gallery.

I emailed the others and used the name Charter Photographic Society.  James’s name for it?  Charter Ring of Amateur Photographers…  The consensus was that we could start with some lunchtime meets and, once the days got longer, arrange for either morning or evening shoots.

For our first trip out we popped down the road to the local graveyard.  Wandering around I found I was looking for shapes and/or patterns whilst James and Stephen said they were both looking for detail/macro shots. 

After a few shots I put the nifty fifty on in order to try and achieve really narrow depths of field.  This seems to be something I’m very keen on.  Not entirely sure why; possibly just “because I can”!  In the shot below, I’ve actually focused a couple of gravestones in, hoping to get blurred ones before and after.  Hasn’t really worked, has it?!

When reviewing the above pic on the camera I could see that the DOF wasn’t nearly as “strong” as I hoped given that I’d shot it at f/1.8.  I mentioned it to Stephen and he very helpfully explained how the distance you are from the object you’re focusing on affects the DOF.  He then told me to get physically close to a gravestone and focus on the first letter of the word.  And bingo!

You’ll have noticed that I’ve converted two of the above photos to black and white.  I found that it vastly improved the pictures, turning something fairly dull and ordinary into something a little more interesting.  Plus it seems to match the subject quite well.  The picture below is my DOF experimental picture straight from camera.  

All in all it was a great way to spend a lunchtime whilst working so in honour of that I’ll finish with my fave of the set. 

There are a few more pics (and larger versions of the above) in the gallery.

I took 396 shots on the day so sorting through them will take a while, though on my first pass I immediately deleted 150.    The Black Kite below is a firm favourite, and I just wanted to get a post up to recommend the Hawk Conservancy.  It’ll be a little while before more get added to the gallery.

Canon 350D, 180mm, f/5.6, 1/1600, ISO 200

In processing it I cropped, upped the exposure by 1, brightness to 0, contrast up a little, and applied a little bit of sharpening.

We got there early whilst the first group were having their run so I went in to take a few test shots. Even with the ISO pushed right up to 1600 and a fairly large aperture I couldn’t get a non-blurry shot. Luckily I had recently re-read about the Program (P) mode and decided to give that a whirl. What that allows you to do is set the ISO and let the camera decide on the aperture and shutter speed. So I set the ISO to 800 and began shooting.

It did feel kinda like cheating, using this mode, but I decided that getting a usable shot was more important than insisting on a level of control. Luckily part way into our session the sun began to break through.

The rest of the pictures can be seen here.

There is a follow-up thread on Gap where people have posted their pictures. When looking through that thread I was really amazed by those taken by Ali. I couldn’t see any exif so I had to badger her for details As suspected, she does have some fairly fast glass, and the ones that really caught my eye for the clarity and depth of field were taken using a fast prime lens, 100mm f/2.8. It’s certainly worth a few minutes of your time to take a look at her pictures from the event and her website as a whole.

If you’ve any tips on low light photography (other than buying fast glass!) the please let me know in the comments.

I finally found a brief moment of time to take a picture for the DSLR Photography magazine competition. I arrived home Monday evening to find the gorgeous evening sun streaming through the living room window and I knew I had to act fast as I didn’t have long.

I placed a piece of A3 paper on a chair, half on the seat, half up the back and set the chillis up. I tried a few different compositions but this was easily my favourite. (I’ll not say “best” as it’s totally subjective!) I knew that I wanted an odd number, with more greens than red, and the solitary red chilli to not be central. I just wish I’d had more time to experiment, and to have been able to try out a few shots, check them on the computer, and then make changes. But then, it’s my own fault for leaving it until the last minute…

Genius.

I found that the reason why was actually quite simple. It’s the “Save For Web” option within Photoshop Elements 6 that strips it out. I haven’t checked but guess that it does it to produce a smaller file size. If you use “Save As” instead you get to keep your Exif so that’s the way I’ll be creating my Jpegs from now on.

Using this method throws up a complication: image resizing. When you “Save For Web” you get the option to resize by pixels but this doesn’t happen when you “Save As” – you have to resize beforehand. However, selecting Image | Resize from the menu doesn’t appear to allow you to resize by pixels. You get a choice of percent, inches, cm, mm, points, picas or columns. Now I’m sure I could work out the percentage I need, but I don’t want to! Luckily the solution simple, if not obvious: tick the box to “Resample Image”. Bingo, you can resize by pixels.

Can anyone tell me why it should be this complicated? Or what the different resample options (bilinear/bicubic/etc) mean?

Let me explain. Our holiday cottage in Cornwall was booked long before the 350D arrived and blew me away with its potential. In the weeks before the holiday I read a load of back issues of a variety of photographic magazines (thanks go again to Stephen ). Some of the pictures that really grabbed my attention were the coastal scenes, particularly sunrise/sunset ones. So, I was really looking forward to coming back with some stunning shots in the bag.

It turns out it’s not quite that simple. First time out the only thing that I tried was the rain cover on my new camera bag. (I’m loving the usability of my Lowepro Slingshot 200 BTW.) The following day the early evening looked promising – dry and not too much cloud so I grabbed my tripod and set off on the long walk to the beach… 250 metres away

I was very conscious of composition because the beach at Sennen is really quite large, and therefore quite likely to appear flat and uninteresting in a picture. Luckily it does have quite a selection of large rocks on the shoreline at one point. With the sun setting behind me I was able to use a couple of them as foreground interest as they were quite nicely lit (click for the larger version):

I think everyone who’s seen the (unprocessed) holiday pics has has liked that one so I guess I shouldn’t be so critical!

The other thing I was expecting/hoping for was that as the sun settled below the horizon it would light the underside of the clouds. It was looking great until it dropped behind a narrow band of cloud right on the horizon! However, I did manage a couple of shots whilst it was setting. I took one shot exposing for the ground and one for the sky with the intention of combining them in Photoshop. So here it is, my first attempt:

Again, I think I’m perhaps being a little too critical (or wishful perhaps?) as that’s not a bad shot, but it’s not magical.

The following day I deliberately planned things so that we’d visit The Lizard late on in the afternoon. I did this so that I could go to Kynance Cove near sunset as this is reputed to be the most beautiful part of the Cornish coastline. Sod’s Law: the tide was in and the cloud blocked the sun as it set!

So what have I learnt other than to not get my expectations up? Well, I think I can see why people use sun compasses. I didn’t realise how much the time of year affects where the sun sets. I can now imagine finding a great location and coming back at a different time of year in order to “place” the sun in a better position. Studying the tide times is also useful. And I can’t believe how harsh a critic of my own photos I am! Oh well, hopefully I can turn that into a positive, learn from it, and take magnificent shots in the future!

If anyone thinks”I can do better than that” in a post processing stylee the please shout. I’d quite happily pass on the RAW files so you can work your magic. This would be on the understanding that you’d have to explain what/why/how you did what you did though!

Now, I’m not saying it’s an issue for me because I don’t envisage selling any pictures, but it’s something to think about. I’m certainly going to go read the Terms of Use of the projects/assignments I’m thinking of entering (and I certainly wouldn’t have beforehand).

For those not up with the Canon acronyms the IS means it has Image Stabilisation which should help banish camera shake. Not that I get any now I have worked out what I’m doing!