Day 28. January 31th 2011

A simple picture today. Mainly testing out ways of enhancing lighting in a photo without it looking fake and exaggerated.

The colours are very "movie like", seeing as the prop is from Doctor Who. I thought the colours would give a more "real" impression as our brains, when confronted with a TV or Movie prop always find the actual objects to be somewhat flat and lack the colours we remember from the big screen. Interesting how we sometimes have to add elements to an image to give some things an effect of reality.

Does that make sense?

Gordon

Day 27. January 30th 2011

My little Mac is back from the apple store and all shiny and fixed, they even cleaned it for me! Some people think that paying for an extended warranty is a waste of money. My £100 apple care warranty on my laptop has already paid for about £400 worth of repares! So, along with the piece of mind this gives me, I think it's money well spent.

Finally had the time to snap a picture on my way to work! Yay. Didn't have time whist at work to cheekily edit it though, hence another late update. Be warned for those of you reading you may need your maths brain switched on for this!

HDR stands for High Dynamic Range. When you take an image the camera sensor can capture more information than can be displayed. So, for example, if a JPEG image can display brightness from 1 (dark) all the way to 10 (bright) , your digital camera may be able to capture from 0 to 11. That is why it's possible to brighten or darken an image in a program like photoshop.

When you shoot in RAW which on most dSLR's is the really BIG file size. They are massive files for a reason, using my made up scale of light to dark, a RAW image captures -2 to 13 this gives you much more information which you can play around with in terms of brightening/darkening an image.

Here is the original image.

Now with HDR you basically take the dark parts and make them lighter and the light parts and make them darker revealing more detail which would normally be thrown away. This can be done subtly which gives you a more natural looking image. But this next image is what happens if you take this idea to extreems, because I rarely do subtle.

And there you have todays HDR photo of the day. I love the eerily dream like qualities you can get with this process making an average looking street in north London look spectacular.

See you all tomorrow for more photo madness.

Gordon

Day 26. Janurary 29th 2011

Well the Mac's in the shop and I should be able to pick it up tomorrow. Yay! Today I filed my tax return, yup I know i was a little late doing that. But it did inspire this interesting image.

This little skeleton usually hangs by our back window surrounded by butterflies, today he became my muse along with the last £10 to my name, till next pay day.

Death and Taxes seemed a fitting name for this exposure.

Wonder what tomorrow holds for my kino-eye?
Gordon

Day 25. January 28th 2011

The London street photography didn't work out as planned. I really have to stop planning to take photos on my way to work. I'll never be able to bring my self to leave early! I was looking at a technique called Patern Matching today, which is when the eye sees a small object and the brain from it's countless memories and experiences draws the rest of the picture. I really like the idea that a photo you take can mean a million different things to a million different people.

So here is today's photo.

To me this can mean so many things right now, but it is strongly telling me to stop and look at all the opportunities around me to make a good photo, I'm not in any rush to get where I'm going. Please mention in the comments what this image means to you.

Thank you all for reading and I'll see you all tomorrow.

Gordon

Day 24. Janurary 27th 2011

Well yesterday my laptop hard-drive died on me. Killing my Mac with my photo-shop on and loosing me lot of photo's which I failed to back up recently, including all of the original photo's from my photo-a-day blog! Arrrggghhhh! A word of warning to everyone with irreplaceable files on their computer, always make a back up of everything. This has been a lesson to myself. I'm hoping that the dudes at the Apple shop can fix it, and maybe even save some of my files, when I go in on Saturday. But untill then i'm having to time share on Laura's laptop, so I shall keep this brief.

Yesterday apart from making my face look like a llama I took another headshot of a lass at work as i've been playing around with creating some idea's for a website which is in the pipeline. So I thought I'd share this picture with you today.

This is Ruby. She's a bit nuts. Most model head-shots, especially glamor, are aimed at a market were girls are just pretty things to look at. I think that is bullshit and a very one dimensional view. A good photographer captures more than just light, textures and shapes, they capture life and personality in every image. That's the type of photographer I want to be. I wanted to take a picture which showed that she's more than just a model.

Tomorrow I'm going to take some London street shots. And by the time you read my blog tomorrow I expect you all to have backed up your computers!

Gordon.

Day 23. January 26th 2011

Well I didn't really get around to photographing an interesting object at work, but I did find an interesting object at home... my face and a cheap but rather funky fish eye lens! **

Fish eye lenses are great for distorting reality, the closer you are to the lens the more exaggerated the perspective! I was merely testing out the lens when I snapped this picture. I loved it so much I thought i'd share it with you all!

So please enjoy my face.

Tomorrow i'll try to find more fun things to do with the fish eye lens.

Gordon

-------
** The owner of this blog takes no responsibility for any adverse reactions from viewing his face in this twisted mannor.

Side effects of viewing may include; nausea, blindness, watery eyes, laughter, headaches and possibly a slight tingling in the toes.

If any of these symptoms accure please seek professional help by calling 0800 M-Y-F-A-C-E
-------

Day 22. January 25th 2011

Zoom, zoom, zoom, the buses rush by you.
but none of them a twenty-four
They all become a red blur of streaks,
It's always such a bloody chore!

There we go, some really shit poetry to set the mood for today's photo.

Long exposure with the camera on one of those funky gorilla pods attached to a railing. On thinking about it I kinda wish the pedestrian crossing wasn't so busy because i think this would have been nicer if the camera was lower to the ground. But with all the people around I didn't wanna leave my camera on the floor in the rain with loads of people around.

Congrats to Leon who spotted the mistake in my little "competition." A pint of beer is in the post.

I'm working tomorrow so I think i'm going to try to find another small interesting object at work...

Gordon

Day 21. January 24th 2011

Today I tried my hand at a headshot. Possibly one of the most marketable skills in a photographers arsenal as many people require them. Everyone from models, TV presenters, corporate and business types and all the way to graduate photo's.

I was lucky enough to be working with a well established model today (not surprising really for those of you how know what my day-job is), Kate Banks. She recently appeared in the Sun's gripping photo casebook column Dear Deidre. So far in my little blog i've managed to snag two publish models.

Anyway's also taking photos at work provides another bonus which is having some TV studio lighting. Now with head-shots the trick is to have even soft light, which means soft-boxes to the left and right of the head and also above and slightly behind as a hair light. Use the correct angle which for girls is to shoot at a slight downward angle to soften features and enlarge the eyes, and for guys take a slightly upward angle to create a sense of power. Use a lens which has minimal distortion, basically anything above the normal 50mm. Finally and most importantly make sure the focus is on the eyes. All of these are not rules but mearly guidelines to achieve a textbook shot. Those of you with creative flair will understand that after you've studied and learned the textbook rules, the first thing you do is throw the darned thing out the window, otherwise everyones photo's will all look the same.

So here is todays photo.

I have to admit i'm rather proud of it. The only think that I dislike is the background. I don't like the uneven distribution of the folds in the curtain, am I just being picky?

The photoshop was simple, I did a bit of contrast tweaking and added a tiny amount of difusion to soften the image a touch, that's it. I did not airbrush the skin, it's just good lighting and make-up. I did not artificially brighten the eyes, I find it most unsettling to see an image where the eyes look too white!

I really should try to replicate this look with my little portable flashes and see how I go.

I tried a second shot afterwards but messed up a bit. I used my little flash, for some extra light, which has a different colour temperature to the lighting in the studio so we had a weird colour cast to the image. So like any pro would, I turned it black and white (using NIK's Silver Effects Pro photoshop plug-in) and pretended that was my intention all along!

There's another glaringly obvious error with the picture also... I'll leave you guys to work out what I did wrong. A pint or glass of wine* to the first person to guess correctly!

Till tomorrow guys,

Gordon

----------

Terms and conditions.

*house wine of white, red or pink variety or other suitably priced beverage.

*all travel expenses to be paid by the winner.

*the prize has no cash value.

*this agrement is not legally binding.

*a ducks quack DOES echo.

Day 20. January 23th 2011

Once again a bit of a late upload...

Today I was playing with water. Quite unsuccessfully to be honest. Below you'll see my best effort.

I feel that maybe I should have had more light on the glass and the liquid as it gets a bit dark at the top. Also I might have had more luck if i'd shot with the help of an assistant to poor the liquid and manually focused the camera as glass and moving water is not the best thing to auto focus on. Finally I think i could have got a beter show with a more viscous fluid like red wine, but alas we where out of that.

As per usual opinions and suggestions are greatly appreciated.

Gordon

Day 19. January 22th 2011

The return of the cats...

Cobweb was just begging to be photographed today. So lets simple jump to it.

I love my cats very much and things I love are often at the barel end of my camera lens.

I have been thinking more and more of looking at doing pet portraiture. I love animals and I'm usually pretty good with them. I haven't been bitten by a dog since I was about 7, I still have some scarring on my right buttock from this encounter (i'm sure I'll show you after a few pints of ale). If anyone has any idea's, suggestions, research material, or pets which they'd like to donate to me for target practice (London only guys... unless you would like to pay my train fair) it'd be most appreciated.

As always you can't have one without the other so here is the lovely Star looking a bit disinterested in my camera, so I decided not to bother her to much.

I intend to play with water tomorrow. I'm going to try long exposure to give a silky smooth quality to the water and high shutter speeds to freeze falling water and give it a striking and not often seen composition.

Untill tomorrow.... oh damnit, i've now got the Littlest Hobo theme tune in my head...

Gordon

Day 18. January 21th 2011

So... i almost forgot to do a picture today. I've been editing like a maniac on a private project! Finally got the bloody thing finished!

Firstly I'd like to thank the people who, through Facebook, Twitter and this very humble blog, left me suggestions with almost half of them coming from Leon. I will be getting to them shortly.

But today I wanted to take a picture of something with texture... Above Laura's art desk is this little box covered in a lovely red chinese style material. However, the box jiggled and rattled as i gently removed it from the shelves. This of-cause ment that I had to investigate, and two sparkling, shiny and tingling chinese worry balls presented themselves.

One of these and a nice cushion became todays subject.

Now one thing I really wanted to do was take a picture which is sort of synonymous with having a good quality DSLR so I bunged on my 50mm lens which has a very shallow depth of focus, meaning that the background is all soft and in a creamy blur, you can't get this with a point and shoot camera.

Oh and I really need to find a way to disguise my reflection...

Anyway off to the day job tomorrow... I need a day off!

Gordon

Day 17. January 20th 2011

Fire... I take you too burn.

I had this idea in my head for a few days now. It's nice to brew ideas and see what comes of them. I wanted to use a mirror and I asked Laura if we had any plate sized mirrors. And on the wall right behind her was the perfect mirror. A red fiery heart shaped mirror just the right size. Sometimes I really can't see for looking.

Simply some long exposure with a burning lighter on a mirror. I blew of the flame as the shutter on the camera was open to make the flames dance for me.

WARNING! Playing with fire is dangerous, always make sure you have supervision and suitable safety precautions in place. I had two cats on watch at all times and half a can of larger (with more in the fridge) reluctantly ready to dowse any unwelcome flames.

Randomly, is anyone on twitter? If so i'm at www.twitter.com/gordon_burns

I'll be honest I, again have failed in setting myself a goal for tomorrow. Let's see what the wind blows our way. Or maybe you guys have some suggestions?

Sweet dreams all.
Gordon

Day 16. January 19th 2011

With this blog being timed by the moon, rather than some antiquated, rustic and somewhat inaccurate calendar invented by some roman dude, I thought that the moon would be a good subject for today as it's a full moon. Also, astrologically speaking, the full moon has returned home to Cancer and now starts it's year long journey through all the other star signs, at least that's my layman's view on it. I'm sure there are people out there with much more experience than me who can tell me how wrong I am in this statement, I mean the moon doesn't really stop or start it just keeps on going around and around doesn't it?

Well anyway I could argue with myself till I'm blue in the face and many day have been spent doing just that in the past.

Onto today's photo.

I love this picture, even if i do say so myself. I really think the clouds helped me out with providing such a nice frame around the moon. However, they also hindered me in the fact that in my rush after work to capture this beauty I didn't get the chance to focus correctly and my focus is on the cloud layer rather than on the moon. So it's a bit soft in the center, but then so's my favorite chocolate bar.

Tomorrow i'm going to be playing with fire. So bring on the teflon oven gloves and i'll see you tomorrow in the burns unit (which is also my gangsta rapper name incidentally).

Gordon
x

Day 15. January 18th 2011

Whaahoooo we're halfway there.....

Halfway through my photo a day blog. Time flies when your having fun. Also I have noticed that on quite a few days i've uploaded more than one photo. I wonder if this means I can finish early? Anyways, with video editing, chroma keying visual graphics and complex computer stuff coming out of my ears this last week or so i've been finding it such a pleasure to stop and look at the simple things. So once again I return to my reoccurring theme.

These pictures really are not a chore, so I hope i'm not doing anything wrong so constructive feedback is always welcome. I've never found it easy to be creative, I've always been the guy who does the technical stuff. Anyway, i heard of this flickr group called Del*te me! Uncensored. It's a group where you post your pictures and then people rip it to shreds, hopefully constructively. I'm thinking about giving it a go. It might help me to improve... or it might end up with me standing on-top of "Kitten Kingdom" getting ready to jump.

Here is today's composition.

It's been bugging me for a bit now that one of the lights in our little chandelier is red (not like i've got off my ass to change it), so I though i'd find a way to make that my subject of today's picture. The best way, in my eyes, to make the red stand out would be to take a shot with a wide lens really close up getting the red bulb in focus and the rest out of focus or to do a black and white shot with the red popping out.

This was simply done by duplicating the image into another layer of photoshop turning that black and white then rubbing out the bulb in the black and white layer to expose the red underneath. I suppose someone with more photoshop skills will know a simple "one click" method but this seemed to work quite well for me.

As always your comments are appreciated!

Gordon

Day 14. January 17th 2011

Today I mostly spent sorting out laura's computer. I did end up confusing a few people on twitter with my tweet of "I'm installing windows in my underpants." I'll let you all ponder that delightful mental image for a moment.

After swapping bits and bobs from two old computers I managed to create some sort of Frankenstein computer. But looking inside of these computers I was presented with a plethora of colours and shapes.

A bright light shinning through the rear air vent. For this i just bunged the flash onto wireless and snapped away.

Same method as above but I chose a different composition.

I can't think of an ending to this blog so i will just wish you all good night.

Gordon

Day 13. January 16th 2011

Day 13. Sunday. Nothing better than a sunday roast with the folks and the misses down the local pub. Oh and a beer. Yum.

I'm loving simple yet effective images. I hope this sums up your sunday. Now i'm off to clean a printer.

Gordon

Day 12. January 15th 2011

With cleaning being so boring I though a walk through hampstead heath would be the order of the day. So armed with just my trusty 50mm lens and of-cause the camera body me and Laura set out.

Walking through Hampstead Heath has always been our escapism from this crazy world! There are so many things about this place which are magical. Everything from the animals to the trees screams out for me to snap a picture.

This swan danced and sang for us as he devoured the bread which we freshly brought from the shop just for this occasion. At then end of the feast he turns to thank us.

This wonderful little fountain is brilliant, Laura loves it for the fact that people bring their "woosers" along here to water them mid way through their "walkies". This fountain is surrounded by faces each with it's own character. I look forward to capturing more images here.

Sat in a puddle this log caught my attention. I was just taking pictures of ducks and I think at the time this may have resembled one.

When out in nature it's all about looking and enjoying the views. The magic and wonder which you see in someone's eye as they look at a tree and see a face in the bark is captured right here.

I love my walks and I hope you enjoyed just this one of my many amazing journeys out in nature. Now turn off your computer, walk away from that wi-fi hotspot, leave your phone at home and take a walk in the wild.

Gordon
xxx

p.s. check out my Facebook for more pictures from the heath.

Day 11. January 14th 2011

Today I wanted to shoot a model, literally. In our little flat in the busy hub of this country surrounded by concreet and glass, tubes and busses, council estates and office blocks, we have a little garden. To be more specific it's a faerie garden. Loving created by Laura. Sat right outside our window is a faerie watching over us.

This image was shot at night and simply lit with a very bright LED torch and I added a touch of magic to the image in the sense of adding a little difusion and mutting the colours.

Now some people think of me as a bit of a hippy. But I don't care, I have long hair and a beard, which more than qualifies me to believe in faeries, embrace mother nature, hope one day our world will be a better place and to watch Country File.

Catch you all tomorrow where the theme may very well be cleaning orientated as my mums popping down to visit on Sunday anyone wanna help out as we have a spare pair of marigolds?

Gordon
xxx

Day 10. January 13th 2011

Those special moments. There are certain shots which you just can't create. These are moments which you could very well spent all day waiting for. Well I was testing out some bits and bobs on the camera and voila came up with this!

Sometimes as much as I plan and arrange and organise photo opportunities, sometimes the best pictures are those which you just snap and then turn black and white.

I think i need to worry less about all that time spent setting up a shot and just take the picture.

Simple is definitely good.
Gordon

Day 9. January 12th 2011

Another fail today! A slightly frantic run to work ment no time for pictures on my way to work. But to make up for it here are some pictures from my journey home after work, which was and infinitely more interesting as I met laura at a Poet Cafe where she was giving a talk on linking art with the written word.

A tea pot held by our friend Kirsty upon a lovely leopard print coat belonging to Laura.

A black and white image of Laura's red hair adornment.

A totally random light-shade from the poet cafe.

A fancy street on the way to the bus stop.

Anyway sorry to disappoint ya'll so i'll be doing the photo walk to work on Monday. Sorry this blog is lacking a bit in written content but i've been working loads this week to keep the tax man happy. I have no idea what I'm going to photo tomorrow so i'm going to play it by ear!

Gordon
xxx

Day 8. January 11th 2011

Macro photography is the art of taking photo's of the very small! The idea is to explore angles and views which are rarely seen with the naked eye. Now people can spend hundreds if not thousands of pounds on Macro lens', but not me. I simple spent £6 and got an adapter which linked two lens' together! I'll post a picture of the setup at the end.

 The hair on the back of my little finger.

Wood grain.

The letter G on a penny (the one above the crown).

None of these pictures have been post processed as they aren't what I would call finished pieces you have merely followed me on a short journey to get some test shots as I experiment with a new technique.

It was a lot of fun looking at things at such close quarters and I'll definitely be looking at things a little closer in the future.

Tomorrow I'm going to document my journey into work in a series of "interesting" photo's! Looking forwards to it. I'm hoping they will not all be blurred in my rush to not be late!

Till tomorrow dear bloggers.
Gordon

Day 7. January 10th 2011

Exposure was the challenge for today. And my original idea of photographing trafic didn't pan out because of the lovely rain today. So I was thinking about my triptych and was wondering if I could do something similar but with a singe exposure and I think today i've come some of the way towards that future image. But back to the photo for today.

I'm lucky that I have such an understanding girlfriend who will pose for me (I can always pull the, "this blog a day was YOUR idea" card). So i started trying to capture movement in a single shot and we really don't have the space to do something as grand as I would have liked in that regard (anyone got a large empty space, like a warehouse, I can borrow for a day?). So after Laura shimmied around in her belly-dance skirt for a bit longer than she really needed to for my test shots, but hey I was enjoying myself, I moved onto another idea, to capture multiple expressions in a single frame. So I fired off the camera with a 4 second shutter speed and fired off my flash at three times whilst my mews pulled three different faces. The flash captured each expression on a single digital image like magic.

I did the usual fiddle with the colours in Apple's Aperture and added a border and the text in Photoshop.

I think this is my favorite so far.

Tomorrow I'm going to explore the world of the macro photography. Tune in tomorrow to find out all about that!

Gordon

Day 6. January 9th 2011

With another busy day I post this blog a bit later than usual. I didn't set my self a target yesterday, i think mostly out of tiredness. So I was thinking all day as to what to photograph. The more I thought about it, the  more an idea eluded me. Many idea's throughout my day in the studio popped into my head and then popped out again before I could close the door and lock them inside my sponge like noggin.

But the idea of shapes came into my head again and I tried a few failed attempts to project images and shapes on a wall with my flash but doing it off the cuff without thinking or really setting things up, it all failed rather spectacularly. I have to admit I also thought of doing more cat pictures but as tiredness started to envelope me I couldn't think up a fresh way to portrait the cats which didn't resemble my last effort.

Finally I was sorting out my camera bag and I picked up my camera spirit level, which is designed for putting on a camera when trying to get the thing level (something I failed to use yesterday). A few quick snaps and a couple of colour adjustments later and voila; The Cube was born.

It looks a little like something out of the movie Tron, I haven't seen the new Legacy version yet so please no spoilers.

Tomorrow I will try something which uses long exposure. Which means I keep the shutter open long enough to catch the blurriness of motion in an image or maybe the crisp lines of headlights zooming by...

Laters alligators,
Gordon

Day 5. January 8th 2011

So I did say I was going to take pictures of some mates doing something wacky but that didn't work out. So onto plan B something to do with reflection. My mind went blank so I did a little shout out on Facebook. Many thanks to those who gave me suggestions and ideas.

I took reflection to be quite literal for this image. I managed to convince the misses to pose for me, and I set up the camera on a tripod. I used my standard kit lens as that's got the widest field of view at 18mm and snapped a few test shots. I realised I needed a deep depth of focus so upped the iris to f9 which ment I needed a flash as things where a bit dark.

A few more snaps later I got this.

All I did with this was do the obvious photoshop effect, add a vignette and fiddle a little with the gamma curves to shift the reds a bit.

This next picture is an alternative version.

To be critical I really should have had the camera higher so that Laura filled the mirror more. And also the general composition is off slightly as I throw the rule of thirds in the bin, but hey I'm a rebel!

Gordon
xxx

Day 4. January 7th 2011

So, a triptych, this one was a bit of a headache trying to find a theme. Work's been a bit hectic so haven't had my creative brain strapped in, it's been watching from the sidelines sat in a pickle jar. But i did get a few moments on one of our brief breaks to take some more pictures.

I took inspiration from a picture I took yesterday whilst trying to do my arty shot of the thingy-me-doodle and I noticed how round it was in this photo. Then I noticed how many round objects there where just in the kitchen area alone. These pictures where taken in a 20 break, imagine if i'd spent longer, i wonder how many picture opportunities I would have found, with my snap happy fingers I recon I probably could have used up a hole memory card just on objects found at work.

I highly recommend anyone reading this to take a day or a walk or just a 5 minute coffee break and snap as many pictures as you can solely on a single theme. Be that theme a shape like I did, or street signs, or fences or clouds or anything blue or something reflective. I really enjoyed the clarity which came from pushing everything else out of my search but my one specific subject.

I used a variety of Photoshop tweaks (which, by the way, I still use CS3 if anyone cares) The first image I simply turned it black and white using the green filter and burnt the edges to vignette it, the second one I upped the colours a bit and boosted the contrast, and the last image I lowered the saturation, upped the contrast.

If I had more time I would have used Photoshop to warp and resize each image so that the circles where all exactly the same size and position with in the individual composition.

So tomorrow I'm hopefully meeting up with a few of my old Uni Pals in London and I'm going to take an action shot of a person doing something wacky. Which shouldn't be too hard knowing my friends.

Till next time,
Gordon

ps: just so it's noted if the meet up doesn't happen my back up idea is to take a photo which involves reflection.

Day 3. January 6th 2011

So I set my self a challenge to photo something interesting whilst at work. After having coffee number 3 I returned to the kitchen to wash up my cup and noticed resting on the side was this shiny little drain thingy-me-doodle, which i assure you is the technical name for it. The light was reflecting nicely off it and I picked it up and saw that it might make a good subject.

I once again grabbed my trusty wireless flash and set it out of shot so that the light would pass through it to create interesting shadows. In this regard I don't think i was as successful as I would have liked, having envisioned longer and more defined shadows. So I focussed on the object rather than the shadows it created and the nice contract between the shiny metal and the wooden floor.

Thinking about it, for longer shadows I should have had the light closer to the object with maybe some paper wrapped around it in a funnel to shrink the light source. This I may try again at some point.

All in all it's quite nice. Notice the final professional touch, i've added a little © thingy in the bottom corner.

Post processing was all done in Aperture and I brought down the saturation a teensy little bit, upped the contrast and slapped on a MASIVE vignette.

Constructive criticism is encouraged! Tomorrow i'm going to try for a triptych which is a series of three images usually with a similar theme, meaning or story presented as one piece.

Until tomorrow guys.

Gordon
xxx

Day 2. January 5th 2011

So with little time free today i thought some pet portraits would be good. So i settled down with the cats to take their picture. I'm now well aware of where the phrase never with with animals or children came from!

So portraits are about even lighting and nice simple composition and usually a small depth of field (background out of focus). Some issues with animals are, firstly they move around, A LOT! For small sleepy cats who do spend a lot of their time motionless they had to pick this moment to want to run around. Second issue with photographing cats are their highly reflective eyes which catch the slightest bit of the flash and turn your lovely little moggie into the cat from hell with bright daemonic glowing eyes!

I overcame the first obstacle with some patience (part of the reason i'm late with this blog), the second was sorted by taking the flash off camera. So holding a wireless flash at about a 45 degree angle I took a few pictures of Star.

I picked this one as it was the most serene of Star's pictures as she kept chasing my flash around as it beeps when recharging. I also love the glowing salt lamp behind her. It's been pointed out on several occasions how hard it is to photograph black animals and it's true! Best advice I can give is to make sure the light is coming from the side to help the animal to stand out from the background.

Of cause you can't have one without the other. After taking pictures of Star cobweb was just sat on Kitten Kingdom (a glorified 5 foot tall scratch post with two beds on the top) so I snapped this!

I did very basic post processing in photoshop basically just adding a touch of contrast and then a little vignetting to darken the edges.

Seeing as today was a bit of a struggle with work and all, I'm going to photo something at work! No idea what yet...

Thanks for taking the time to read this,
Gordon

Day 1. January 4th 2011

Another reason for this blog was for me to practice my writing. I've always been bad at it. I wasn't diagnosed with Dyslexia till I was 21 so i've spent quite a large part of my life avoiding writing. I'm not too sure how much detail I should be writing in this blog as I don't want to bore people with technical rubbish as this isn't ment to be a how to type of thing. But who knows what the future holds.

So, for my first picture I decided on a still life. And with quite a bit of work on at the moment, I decided to set myself something simple. So I set up my little £15 product cube which i usually use to photo Laura's larger art works and I looked around the flat for something to photo. I saw a new glass. I remember people saying that glass is difficult to photo against a black background so like a masochist I put up the black backdrop in the product cube.

I put a wireless flash outside the cube at various angles until I felt I was getting the right about of light on the glass. I then upped the contrast in photoshop and added a little bit of diffusion.

So there it is... to be honest I want to take pictures with more thought behind the images, but I surpose you have to start somewhere.

Until next time,
G

New moon, new year, new start.

With tomorrow being the first new moon of 2011 I've decided to take a photo a day to learn to focus and hone my photography skills. I have a lovely new Nikon dSLR camera which I've used for the last 2 month taking photos of everything from friends birthdays to my girlfriends bellydance performances to landscapes whilst out on walks. I'm very snap happy just pointing and clicking away taking hundreds of photos and just leaving them on a harddrive where no one can see them. Thats the reason for this blog. So that I can learn to have some direction with my photography and in the process learn some new skills.

During this month I will look at various styles of photography with the view to taking one artistic photo, portrait or landscape a day. With that in mind I'll start with still life photography tomorrow.

Wish me luck everyone.

Gordon