How I shot this

Hi Folks,

Well last night there were plenty of volunteers to explain how they shot a particular photograph. There were a variety of ways used to approach the said subject.

Chris gave the first talk of the evening and we were shown an image which was taken in a subway at King’s Cross Station. Apparently for those that have not been to the subway the sides are all lit from behind.

Chris said, he used Photoshop to reverse the image and then layered the two images on top of each other. This method allowed Chris to then unmask part of the top image to create an appearance that the tunnel walls were merging into one another.

Next to give a talk was Chenxi on the image of ‘The star on the peppercorn seeds’.

Chenxi said, he was having trouble finding a perfect shaped star to go into his image but eventually found a reasonable one. Chenxi then said, he had to buy a whole kilo bag of either stars or peppercorns but not sure which lol.

Chenxi went on to explain that he took 15 images adjusting the lense a little bit each time. All the images taken were then entered into Photoshop to blend them into one image. Photoshop picks the sharpest bits of each image to produce a high quality photograph.

A big hand for Nigel one of our new guest members on only his second visit and he was good enough to give a talk on his passion for taking stars at night.

Nigel has a way of setting up his camera on a clear night and adjusting the light to get the perfect shot

I then followed up with a little blog on how I came to take a picture after returning to Benidorm after nearly 50 years. I was hoping to replicate a photograph taken that many years ago only to arrive and find it had changed into New York

I stumbled across some amazing sand sculptors but struggled to get a picture without getting unwanted things in the way. I eventually obtained GIMP which was free software to crop and clone my picture from this

to this, only for the judge to say it was really someone else’s work

I did point out it was mine and not his lol

Last to speak before coffee time was John who described how he produce the slow speed images of his Grand Daughter who is a keen Gymnast.

It was taken in bright light in front of the patio door

His Grand daughter is always pleased to help

And John said he was up above on a balcony taking this recent image whilst his Grand Daughter spun around

Vicki was next and she explained that she was involved in farming and goes to Thame Market on a Friday and gets some good pictures

This is the auction room

People are proud of their cattle and a lot of work goes into getting them ready for viewing.

There are some good characters there to photograph.

A member of the audience asked if it was open to anybody and Vicki said it was but you would have to get permission to take photographs but as she has been going for many years she has been accepted.

Next was Steve and he produced this image

The background is blue showing a cold feel whilst the model had a bright vibrant look. This was achieved by a special orange filter in his flashgun with the camera setting put on tungsten or 3300 Kelvin. The orange colour only works on the model making her stand out from the background which is too far for the flash to have an effect.

Next was Peter who said he wondered what he could do in Photoshop with a flat looking image taken in Cornwall.

Peter said he used the smudge tool to make the waves all rough but the boat didn’t look right sitting up right, so he cut and pasted it at an angle. He then cloned in the spaces created from moving the boat to a finished image. (sorry boat is faded in this image)

Another picture Peter had was of a deer taken in Ashridge. He had to get up early in the morning and just sit and wait for an hour and if a jogger or cyclist came along it would ruin any chances as the deer are very wary in Ashridge unlike at Windsor where they are seen by many people.

Peter said, he just enhanced the sun rays in this image.

Peter’s last picture was of Birmingham ice rink, he rested his camera on a bench with a slow shutter speed. He wanted it to be artistic so he just move his camera slowly a few inches to the left.

Then Carol gave a talk on Picasso software which she used on her image in the Time competition. Carol said she is a painter and likes to be creative / artistic and her photograph images are often influenced by the style of her paintings.

Carol gave a demonstration of how to use Picasso software by selecting five images from her library.

All of these images went onto the same background still as individual pictures which could be moved around or angled

Apparently the software is free but there will not be anymore updates for it. Carol showed us how she used Picasso  from images taken on ‘the candle lit’ night we had earlier in the year

last on for the evening was Julia who gave a talk firstly on the water drops on a clothes line.

She explained that the clothes line was just a plastic line.

The lens Julia uses has a fixed focus so it has to be brought into focus by getting very close in and needs to be handheld.

Because shooting in macro needs a lot of light Julia has managed to fix two flashguns at the end of the lense for extra brightness.

A member of the audience asked how she got the black background and she explained the flash is so close it blacks out anything beyond the subject.

This image of St Paul’s was taken with a slow shutter speed and zooming in slowly at the same time

The water drop was taken handheld whilst Julia laying in the wet on a beanbag and her neighbour looked over her fence to ask if she was ok lol.

Julia said there was just a small white patch on the left of the droplet in the image below.

Images that are reflected in water are always upside down and the white patch was caused by the sky so Julia cloned it out.

This was one of Julia’s favourite images, the wings the girl was wearing were almost translucent and the lighting was perfect.

She needed to crop it to get the girl’s angelic face

The final image was of St Paul’s walkway where Julia used a slow shutter speed to capture ‘Time’ but the judge was fairly narrow on the subject theme and it didn’t impress

A very good evening

Next week is

Safe Sensor Cleaning – Peter Brogden