3 Wishes Faery Fest (UK's premiere Faerie Festival)

I made this....

Still Life and Macro photography

Here is a slideshow I made this week. The music is by the epic Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com).

I really enjoyed taking these images. I placed the flowers in a product cube and snapped away. I used a cheap £5 converter to reverse my 50mm 1.8 lens and create the macro effect on the second half of the images. Considering how cheap the adapter was I was so impressed with the results. Beware anyone thinking of doing this though as when I had finished with the adapter I became aware that it had jammed onto my camera and no matter how much I tried to twist the ring it would not let go of my precious camera. In the end I needed to purchase a jam jar opener, the end result was the adapter was now unusable, and to be fair i don't know how likely I would be to try it on my camera again after the ordeal I want through to remove it in the first place.

I suppose I'll just have to save up and get myself a dedicated macro lens, the 105 2.8f looks rather nice.

Have you tried out DIY macro photography yourself? I'd love to know how you faired. Please leave a comment below in this blog or a link to your blog post on DIY macro photography.

Look forward to reading your thoughts, not psychically.

Gordon

I had an absolute blast at this event. The people where all friendly and approachable. The costumes where amazing and i loved how everyone you spoke to had a story to go along with their costume. I'll let the pictures speak for themselves as my words are failing me.

Video slideshow

Or view the pictures at your leisure and tag yourself on my facebook photography page here http://tinyurl.com/steampunkWM

Images from Abney Parks performance will be up shortly.

Hope you enjoyed those outfits. I'd love you know what you guys dressed up as on Halloween! Let me know in the comments below.

I'll be shooting another Photographer vlog video on the 5th for fireworks night. Focusing on light painting and firework photography. So subscribe to my youtube channel in advance to get notified when it's up.

Stay safe guys!
Gordon C Burns

Video's!

Sorry guys it's been a while.

I've been making loads of video's

This is one I shot for Laura Daligan's Wiccan Youtube channel! I love doing stuff like this.

I've also been looking into making video blogs or Vlogs my first video talks you through the making of my time lapse video. I shot it with my iPhone and edited it on the iMovie App. The cross processing effect was done with youtube's new video editing options.

And here's the time lapse video...

Please feel free to follow me on youtube.

Talk soon guys.

Gordon C Burns

An epic fail!

Well, keeping the blog updated seemed to have failed a bit. It's one of those things which just sort of slipped by me. I'd like to say that the daily grind got in the way, but that shouldn't be used as an excuse! I need to re-prioritise my life again.

Me and some friends where in Avebury as I was filming a wonderful "Gong Healing" workshop. The bed and breakfast we stayed in was looking out over Silbury Hill and in the morning we thought it would be a good idea to take a walk to it before check out. So i loaded up lightly, just taking my camera and the 17-50 f2.8 lens.

A word to the wise, don't forget your battery! They do come in handy when out and about with your camera, they don't work very well left in the charger sat in my backpack! Do'h! Thank god for the iPhone.

My three regular blog followers ;-) will know that this blog in mostly about me and my D7000, however in a diversion from normal programming, today i'm going to look at some iPhone4 photo's all shot and edited on the iPhone using various apps. As i heard said once before, the best camera for taking photo's is the one you have on you!

Enjoy the wonders of Avebury. I will be going again sometime soon without having any work to distract me, just to enjoy the place properly.

Laters ya'll.
Gordon

Video test

Just a little test of my new lens a Sigma 17 - 50 f2.8 ex dc os. I quite like this lens. It's very well built and feels as good as nikons own 17 - 50 lens. Optical quality for still images is in the process of being tested at the moment . But the video looks good, contrast is nice. And if you wanted more you could dial it in o the camera settings or do it in post.

These shots are hand held with the sigma Optical Stabiliser turned on (this helps to keep the camera stable for still photography but also works for video which is great), I think it gave good results for hand held shooting with no planning. As with anything a bit of planning and i should have rested my arm on something as i took the shots. But hey, i'm not judging my hand held skills here.

Nikon D7000

Sigma 17 - 50 f2.8 ex dc os

I think this lens is very well made. It all feels very solid, as solid as the nikkor 17 - 55mm f2.8 lens which is several hundred quid more expensive. I think i'll run this video through the editing suite again this time colour grading the image and adding some post stabilisation to make it look smoother.

The Depth of focus is really nice on the lens and although the focus has a small motion, turning from close to infinity in just a quarter turn, there is some resistance in mechanism which makes pulling focus quite smooth. The bokeh (the out of focus blurriness) is really nice at f2.8. I'll do more little tests on this lens in the next few days, both video and photography. I'm going to use it to video a few interviews tomorrow!

Anyway this has been a bit tech heavy compared to my usual blogs so if you've made it this far and have questions don't be scared to leave them down below.

Gordon

The continuing adventures...

Thursday night I was returning from a little art showing in Mayfair, where Laura was displaying one of her commissioned pieces. I as per usual brought my camera. I definitely think this blog thing has helped me to focus and I got some killer event shots.

Anyway I digress, I was walking up the tube platform with the umpteen million people squeezing themselves through the doors and barging past each other like the Gap was going to chase them down and eat their brains. I stopped, like the git I am, to do up my boot lace. I can hear the muffled moans as the Gap catches up with these people and their dispare that my inconsiderate bootlace has caused them.

After the bootlace is sorted and I can safely perambulate without tripping over and really encountering that dreaded Gap people are so fearful of, I look around me. The platform was deserted, apart from one man who was just waiting, but what for I don't know because I was on that platform for 3 more trains after my one passed and he didn't get on any of them. Digressing again...

Like any good photographer in this situation I decided to get as close to the big DO NOT CROSS FOR DANGER OF DEATH sign and lay down on the floor to wait for the next train, resting the camera on this little diddy table tripod I had in my pocket.

Zoooooooommmm.

Having the camera stable on the floor allowed me to have a long exposure speed of about a second, meaning I could capture the motion of the train zipping past me whilst the rest of the shot stayed in crisp focus. On top of this laying on the floor gave me an angle which is not seen often by the casual observer adding interest to the piece. You can try this yourself on pretty much anything, look at pictures of flowers. Who many good ones can you see taken from the top down, you'll see they're all take from the side or from down below, because it presents a familiar object in an unfamiliar way.

I've been playing around with creative borders in my pictures also.... I love borders and vignettes. Have you noticed that yet?

Talk soon.
Gordon