The West Ring

Let’s face facts. Given that we’ve got two gorgeous, photogenic and characterful hounds, and I’ve a new interest in photography, it’s a given that they’re going to feature quite heavily, especially in these early days. But I’m aware that not everyone who reads this site is necessarily a Lurcher lover, and I don’t want to bore them. So, when we’re out I do try and look for different angles when photographing them. We were out on Puttenham Common the other day and I decided to try and get a shot from a really low position.

As I prostrated myself I remembered a project I’d seen on Neil Creek’s blog: Project - The View From Below and decided to see if I could capture a suitable image. I lay on the up-slope of a slight undulation and tried to “arrange” for the hounds to come over the top in front of me. Honestly, I don’t think the resulting shot is a model of obedience, more sheer good fortune! But I’ll accept that.

The larger version can be seen here.

And yes, I have read the Terms of Entry!

I’ve just read a very interesting and thought-provoking post by Jim M. Goldstein in his blog. The gist of it is that if you’re entering any sort of contest or even posting your pictures on the likes of Facebook then you’re possibly handing over all future rights to that image. Read his post, it’s worthwhile!

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).

Dad has very generously lent me one of his lenses on a long term loan. It’s the Canon EF 17-85mm f/4-5.6 IS USM so a real step from the kit lens. I’m looking forward to picking it up at the weekend and giving it a whirl.

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!

…is that it is as complicated as it first seemed! Especially as I have thrown myself in at the deep-end trying to photograph a fast moving subject in our two hounds. Still, I’m making progress and that’s what counts.

Looking at my first attempts I could see that quite often it appeared that their bums were in focus and their faces, well, not. I thought about this and decided that perhaps it was because I’d had too large an aperture, and therefore a small depth of field. My thinking being that in the time I’m taking to take the shot, their speed has moved them ever so slightly out of focus. So I resolved to try a smaller aperture.

This of course brought its own challenges in that it reduced my shutter speed for a given exposure. Again, not helpful when these two are charging around. To my credit it didn’t take too long before I remembered I could change the ISO setting to “increase my film speed”. Another small improvement…

Around this time I also changed how the camera was focusing. I switched it from using all nine points to just the central one to give me precise control of where it was focusing, and again think that gave me small improvements. But there was something bugging me - I couldn’t remember the difference between the focusing modes, and I was sure that one of them should be used for fast moving subjects. So, back to the guide book that I had been lent and I found it: AI Servo. This last time out I used that mode and there’s a noticeable improvement in the sharpness of the pictures. (The pictures will be online in a day or two!)

Though I’ve definitely made some progress in learning what the camera can do, and when to use it, I still need so much more practice to get a much better “strike rate” of in focus pictures. At the moment I am forever guilty of forgetting to check or change something, and it’s usually the ISO. Surpassed myself the other day though, by forgetting to alter the ISO and the shutter speed having moved from in the trees into bright sunlight…

As I said at the start: it’s complicated, this photography lark.

A bit slow in processing and posting these, sorry

No waffle this time, just a link to the pictures and a teaser (AKA nearly a classic)

I really wish I’d caught his face in focus.
Still, it makes me laugh

Well I’m almost there.  The good news is that email notification for Gallery comments is now installed and working.  So you’d better start commenting on some pics!!

The bad news is that the plugin which displayed the random Gallery image at the top of the right hand side bar doesn’t work any more.     I’ll see what I can find out over the weekend.

I seem to have broken things somewhat! That’ll teach me for fiddling!

Hopefully I’ll be able to get things back up and running at some point today…

Last of the Thursley pond pics from Saturday morning. We’ll be back to the hounds very soon This is probably my favourite because of the curving contrail*, and the snake-like reflection of it.

This is also my first proper attempt with doing some Photoshopping: I cloned out some grass that was spoiling it. In all honesty it was a rush job, but even so, it really does improve the picture.

Don’t know what’s happened with the conversion to jpeg though - seems noisier/softer than the others (I just haven’t had time to see what I can change.)

And no, there aren’t any prizes for pointing out where I did my cloning!

*@rse! The smaller pic doesn’t really show the contrail well. Click through for the bigger picture.

As a matter of fact they should have been from the start! Somehow I hadn’t noticed the module wasn’t active but it is now. So feel free to say exactly what you think!

A couple of more pictures for you, and a question. Is the wake of the duck an interesting detail, or a distraction? I know which I think but I’d be interested in your opinions.

And if you’re feeling really helpful you could take a look in the Gallery and compare the brightness of the originals (shown above) with edited versions. One has the tones set to auto, the other is tweaked by me. If you do go and have a look it’s also worth comparing the larger pictures - it makes a difference!