Picture of the Day - Burnham-On-Sea

This picture of the day comes from the weekend just gone by. I found myself at Burnham-On-Sea on the seafront. The reason I picked these pictures to show is that I wanted to show that it doesn't have to be a nice day to go and get good pictures. The weekend weather was pretty miserable for most, but I decided to make the most of my time as Emz was on another job near by.

I decided to shoot for HDR (High Dynamic Range), this is were you take a series of the same picture at different exposures and then combine them using a program call Photomatix. There are two ways of doing the pictures for this. Firstly you can put you camera on a tripod therefore getting shots that will all be aligned correctly and then manually adjust your exposure to under and over expose the image, plus you could use the bracketting feature of your camera if it has it. This is when you can sent the camera to automatically a set number of frames.

Or if you have a camera that shoots at 5 frames a second or higher used in conjuction with the camera bracketting feature you will get very little movement bewteen the pictures. Photomatix also has a align feature built in.

Also I use the a plugin filter for photoshop made by Topaz Labs called Detail which has some selected bulti-in filters of which my favourite is bold detail. When using it I duplicate my image layer and then apply it to the upper layer. Some the effect can be pretty harsh, if this happens I reduce the opacity of the upper layer.

I also did a some none HDR shots as well

If you have any questions regarding HDR or anything that you have read please ask.

Picture of the Day - Fenit Harbour, Ireland

This shot was taken by Emz in Fenit Harbour in Southern Ireland just outside the town of Tralee. Emz and I were attending a family wedding near by and were making a long weekend of it. We were returning to where we were staying as the sky started to suddenly break into this glorious sunset. Turning from the direction of our accommodation, we headed for the harbour and got there just in time to catch the sun beams bursting over the hill. 

It was shot on a Nikon D2x with a 28-70mm on ISO 100 at f5.6 1/125th. The image fits a panoramic crop easily with a nice 50/50 reflection.

I shot the scene as well but favoured a longer Nikon 70-200mm lens. I focused in more on the boat itself with the castle ruins in the background.

Picture of the Day - Chicago

This shot was taken underneath the central train loop right that runs around the center of the city of Chicago. I was actually on my way to Willis Tower as I wanted to try and do some cityscapes from the top. I had about an an hour and a half to kill before I had to leave to catch my flight. Although I never got to shot any pictures from the top of the tower due to a very unlucky timed arrival. I just missed the start of the 20 minute video on the tower (which I didn't want to watch) so that combined with another 20 minutes watching the video I didn't have enough time to get up down and back to the hotel.

Luckily, on the way to the tower as I crossed the street I saw this scene. I loved the way the light shone down through the grid pattern of the rail track onto the road. As I jay walked across the street I stop in the middle and quickly shoot off a few frames. I love the leading line of the shadow and the metal framework that creates a natural frame in the image. Ironically had I not stop to take this I may have made to the video at Willis Tower.

What I can tell you is that it was shot on a Nikon D2x and a Nikon 28-70mm lens. I would love to give you the shooting information but sadly the original files were lost in a hard drive crash in late 2007, before I had backed it up. It just goes to show you the importance of backing up your digital files. Lesson learned the hard way!

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Jamie and James

Please take your time to look through some of our latest wedding picture of Jamie and James, who were married at Bicton Botanical Gardens followed by a reception at the Royal Beacon Hotel.

Picture of the Day - The London Eye

This image obviously of the London Eye was taken back in 2007. At this point I had switched over to Nikon and was sporting a Nikon D2x. This shot was taken at about 10 pm with the camera tripod mounted with a 12-24mm Nikon lens, I wanted the shot to be as clear as possible and sharp from front to back. So the camera was set to ISO 100 and f22, at this time of night I know I was going to get a long shutter speed which was 30 seconds.

This is probably one of the most common shots you see of the London Eye, so why not try some different one too.

 Shot from across the river, to catch the colourful glow in the water reflection. as you can see from the shot the wheel was moving at the time combined with the slow shutter speed you get a nice blurred effect on the image.

Also so try using a longer lens to get in close and get some detail, again you can see the blur due to the slow shutter speed at night.

Lastly, don't forget to shot wide. This time the long shutter speed and the moving cloud has created nice movement within the shot

Please let me know what you think of the images.

Stonehenge

Picture of the Day

This being the first Picture of the Day we ar have started by going back to near the beginnning of our archive. At this point we had just started out as professional photographers we would spend as much time as we could building our portfolio. 

This shot of Stonehenge was taken back in 2006  on a late afteroon in April. Using my camera of the time Canon EOS 20D with a 70-200mm with a yellow P type filter fitted. Trying to find a new vantage point or view of the henge can prove pretty difficult. We had come from the Amesbury direction and parked off the A303 at the top of the hill over looking the stones. Then slow made our way along the side of the road taking different shot as we went. This was taken about half down from the top of the hill to the junction. Taken at f16 1.250th iso 100 at 130mm.

During the editing a picture editor I was working for commented that he had never since stonehenge stone with the mound in it before especially with the sheep stood on it. He suggested a panoramic crop, which I think works well.

Picture of the Day

Picture of the Day

We are trying out a this new feature of picture of the day. We will be looking back through our archives and picking some of our best picture and posting them along with a short how, when and where to go with it.

Please feel free to comment and ask question on the images as they are posted and we'll do our best to answer any questions you may have.

Regards