Christmas party

My work Christmas party was on Friday and I think the unspoken understanding was that I would be taking photos. This is more than fine by me as it gives me a license to both take sneaky candid shots and also pester people to pose for me. Additionally, I've had a couple of drinks so don't mind pestering people and they've had a couple of drinks so they're more amenable to having their photos taken than usual. The party itself was very pleasant and was fancy dress so there were some good costumes on display. Admittedly the majority of photos were more of the Facebook 'Woooo, look at us having a crazy old time' style but I did get some nice portraits out of it, both candid and posed.

Sadly the batteries for my flash gave out part way through the night (lesson learned there) and the club we moved onto later wouldn't let me use my camera there but still, practice and some good photos. A net win.

Self portrait

I'd been taking more portraits of people at work and, being in a portraiting mood, took one of myself when I got home. It's probably one of the better of me and one of only two that features my Movember moustache. As I've mentioned before, I'm pleased with the portraits I've produced from a crispness and subject POV, I think next I need to work on varying composition and pose.

Movember

As you may or may not have been aware, last month was Movember and many of the men in my office grew moustaches for the occasion. Not only did we raise £1,400 for the charity but I got to photograph the results. I found this was a really difficuly shot to take; poorly lit corridor, large group and a single flash. Yeah, the composition could be better too; I should have told the guys to spread out a bit more since I was using my wide-angle lens (that shot's cropped quite a bit) but that would only have exascerbated the lighting issue really. Anyway, any suggestions as to how to best light a scene such as this with a single flash?

HDR - 1st attempt

Apologies for the delay since the last update; sorting out the huge volume of photos from Hong Kong took far longer than expected. The above photo is one of the reasons why- I had my first attempt at HDR photography while in HK and then had to find and learn how to use (i.e. play around with) some software when I got back. Here's one of the better shots. As a friend pointed out, the composition could be better (I'm blaming lack of tripod at the time) but I think the HDR aspect of it has come through quite well.

Dragonfly

I discovered this little fellow keeping obligingly still on the edge of a pond in Hong Kong park. Easily one of the best macro shots I've ever taken. The remainder of the Hong Kong photos (all 1,941 of them) are currently undergoing audit and whittling before I select which ones to upload but there was no hesitation with this one. No tripod either, this was taken resting on the scenery.

Comparison piece

The portraits I've been taking at work have also been a good platform to try a bit more post-processing. Portraits tend to call out for it a bit more than, say, architecture photography. I've tried not to be too heavy-handed with it, especially where the raw image (above left) is nice and sharp to begin with. Let me know what you think of the post-processed image (above right); is it an improvement or no?

Co-operative Models

My boss at work asked if I could take some portrait shots of our managers and new starters for an end-of-year newsletter. I was delighted; I've never had models I could boss about before and I got what are easily some of the best photos I've ever taken. Including the one of Leah, shown here. I actually forgot to deploy the diffuser for this shot but I love it the result. Beautifully sharp.

Another one from the march

Anti-government cuts march

There was an anti-government cuts protest in Manchester yesterday (the ruling party are holding their annual conference in the city at the moment) with some 35,000 in attendance. They went up my street so obviously I went out to join in and take photos. Sadly, this was the only half-decent photo I got and it's not much; the composition is out and it's blurry. Overall, I think the Pride march spoiled me a bit in terms of photogenic parades. Also it was a typical grey Manchester day so the light could have been better and the sky could have been a nice backdrop. Still, at least it was right outside my door.

Also my remote has croaked again. Seemingly permanently this time so I've ordered another since it's probably my most-used bit of extra kit (I use it much more than my flash, for example) and I will want it for my holiday. Given that the dead one was an official model and didn't last long, I didn't see any point in doing that again so got a 3rd party one for a whole £5.

HK$10

As mentioned, I'm off to Hong Kong in a few weeks and this allows me to experience glorious foreign money! Ours is so dull by comparison.

This shot was actually taken with my old Nikon D3000 and it's standard 18-55mm kit lens which I find is a superior macro lens to the 50mm. Obviously it has greater zoom but I also think the minimum focus distance is shorter so you can get closer in.

This shot is also an example of early experiments with post-processing. It's not something that I've traditionally liked to do. Part of it is a complete lack of experience with that type of thing but part of it is that it feels just slightly dishonest to me. I don't want you getting the wrong idea, I'm not a 'straight out of the camera' purist but for my own use, what I want is an exercise in photography, not digital art and post-processing starts you down that route where there's no difinitive cutoff. If I want to use it for correction, surely the obvious feeling is why didn't I achieve the effect with the photo itself?

Anyway, artistic insecurities aside, I did want to explore Flickr's inbuilt editing software (via Piknik.com). It's features are best described as basic but fundamental by which I mean that you can create profound effects (if desired) by playing with rudimentary settings. It also saves versioning so if, after I save the file back to Flickr, I decide I don't like it, I can hop back in and click 'Undo'. Nice.

This is one of the areas where Flickr has shone through a little bit; one of the reasons for me starting this blog was wanting to test Blogger/Picasa/Google+ interconnectivity but Picasa's inbuilt editing doesn't seem to be on the same level as Flickr/Piknik's. Obviously there are a myriad of 3rd offline and synchronised solutions but an integrated host/edit package really appeals.

In any case, the post-processing effects have certainly allowed me to turn the above shot from something decidedly unremarkable into something rather more... eye-catching? The trick now will be to resist slathering every shot in garish post-processing effects to try and make something out of nothing. Frankly I could do without the temptation.

Pause for effect

I've not taken any photos for a bit and there's nothing in particular in the immediate future that I'm aware of to photograph but I do have a trip booked to Hong Kong next month so hopefully some photos will come out of that.

Magic fingers

I seem to have managed to revive my Nikon ML-L3 remote that died. I took it apart and, as expected, it's a single PCB with no obvious visible faults so I just reassembled, left the battery out for a day and when I tried it again in vain hope, it worked. Mysterious but not complaining. I was lucky this time in that a friend had a remote I could borrow but I wouldn't like it to crap out like that again when I'm in the middle of a shoot that needs it. Still, buying a backup remote seems a little extreme. Just have to deal with it if it happens, I guess.

F1 comes to Manchester

On bank holiday Monday (29/08/11), some of the main roads in the city centre were closed to create a closed circuit for former F1 champion Jenson Button to do his thing in the street. I had no idea how big F1 was in the UK; apparently 19,000 people showed up to see this particular event. The course was only a mile long. That meant crowds up to about five deep in places despite on/off rain.

Due to the fact I didn't fancy getting there early early in the rain for an sport I don't really care about, I was behind aforementioned crowds by the time it came to the main event.

This meant that I had to take photos blind by mounting my camera on a tripod, manually setting levels for everything (including manual focus point to stop it focussing on the crowd) then raising my arm at full stretch, holding the tripod from the bottom, pointing it at where I thought the car might be and setting the camera off with a remote. Bear in mind that this thing isn't exactly slow moving either. All in all one of the most difficult shots I've ever taken in that I had no idea what the view through the viewfinder was. A sharp picture? No sir, but pretty good all things considered.

Annoyingly, my camera remote died in the process. Not the battery, the remote itself. It's a cheap thing to replace but it's not exactly done lengthy service and I spent just that little bit more on the official model (Nikon ML-L3) rather than the third party one precisely because the unofficial ones are famed for unreliability. Slightly disappointing.

Manchester Pride parade

It was the Pride festival in town over the bank holiday weekend. I only live a couple of hundred metres from the gay village so it would have pretty negligent not to stroll out and take a look. Also my climbing skills let me scramble up the side of a building a bit to shoot over the crowd. The only downside is that my Tamron lens is really soft when shooting at the full 250mm (should have stepped down the aperture) but some of the shots look ok at this resolution.

You can check out the other photos I took at Pride here.

Form over function

I took this photo of a ridiculous chicken while staying with my parents last weekend. What purpose do you serve, o chicken? Neither meat nor eggs, I'll warrant.

Event horizon

These are my Flickr stats for about the last three weeks. You can see where the riot happened, no?

I was at my parents' house last weekend; took some photos of local wildlife but nothing particularly came out. I'll see if there's anything salvagable.

Moral of the story: take risks

It seems that the deluge of redirections from various contintental news and blogging sites has died down now. The news cycle moves quickly. At least now I know what I have to do for exposure- war photographer.

I jest. Well, mostly.

I picked up my tripod on Saturday and my wireless flash triggers today. I'm still awaiting the flash itself but I've been able to confirm that the trigger and receiver are talking to one another. Hopefully the flash will arrive in the next couple of days.

I was in work on Saturday and was hoping to take some sunset/night shot photos from the 24th floor of my work building but the project finished up sooner than anticipated so that was a no-go. Never mind, there'll be another opportunity in 26 days.

Atypical levels of exposure

My paid Flickr account expired on August 6th. Despite the fact that my intention was to explore Google+-Picasa-Blogger connectivity for photos, the fact that there's been quite a bit of interest in the two photos I took of the burning car and the fact that I'd handed out a few business cards made me think that perhaps I should get the account back up in case anyone took a look.

I'm very glad I did; the paid account gives me access to stats and lets me see where my photos are being linked from. They're being linked from your run of the mill blogs like this guy but also a number of other more serious blog/news sites:

Economics Intelligence: 'The economics of riots and austerity'
Future Conscience: 'UK Riots: Are We Limiting Our Understanding of Violence?'
CommonDreams.org: 'Police and Thieves: Making Sense of the English Riots'
GOOD: '"If We Don't Riot, You Don't Listen to Us": The Case for Chaos'
NieuwsUit: 'Rellen in Engeland - Rellen in Manchester & Birmingham'
Youphil.com: 'Angleterre: la pauvreté, responsable des émeutes?' (currently featuring on their front page)

On top of that, the Wikipedia page about the riots features one of my images (albeit under slightly the wrong day- may have to edit that) with about a dozen Wiki news articles in various language using it.

That's... quite a bit more exposure than I'm used to.

Manchester riots

Another photo taken during the night of rioting in Manchester city centre on 09.08.2011.

Fire

Detail of a burning car taken during the rioting in Manchester on the night of 09.08.2011.


Riot policeman in Piccadilly Gardens.

Manchester Town Hall

Flash update

An update on flashes: Speedlights.net has an excellent guide which seems to simply flat out say get the YN-465 to get TTL support for Nikon cameras. The 465 seems to be the only model in the line which provides this functionality and fully integrates with the camera. The TTL still isn't wireless; only the upcoming YN-565 provides wireless TTL and I'm happy to do without that for the sake of the wait and the price tag. I found a nearly-new 465 on eBay so went ahead and bought it.

Flash triggers

Tied in with the last entry about off-body flashes, I'm also looking at wireless flash trigger kits. Cactus seem to be your go-to guys for this and I've used their stuff before so I know that they're compatible with both my camera and the line of flashes that I intend to get. I don't know how much compatibility is an issue with these things but I'm reasoning that it's better to be safe, especially when you're ordering online.

Google 'cactus flash triggers' and you'll find a plethora of reviews and discussion on the products, almost universally positive (it almost gives the impression of them being industry standard), but oddly few places actually selling them. Even major retailers like Amazon and eBay (despite having sponsored links hawking them on Google search results) don't appear to have any. The Amazon search result just yields flash triggers from other manufacturers.

Essentially, I've found two places:
Gadget Infinity, a US site linked from the official Cactus site, so I guess they're the preferred supplier. Adjusted price is a little under £30 inc. shipping.
1stopbrighter.com, a British site where they come in at around £40 including postage.

Obviously the US is a cheaper but I do risk getting hit for VAT and charges if customs pick it up. It seems to be arbitrary as to whether that happens or not.

Worth noting is that the V5 transceiver model is also out but I don't see that my usage is going to require anything not provided by the V4.

Off-body flash

I'm looking for an off-body flash at the moment. I really don't think I can see the additional benefit/justify the additional cost of buying an official Nikon one so Yongnuo would seem to be the maker of choice. I've used a friend's YN-560 before and I know it's compatible with my camera and does the job. So the question seems to pretty much be which model? They have a bewildering array.

I think it's straight progression so YN-468 is the more recent YN-460, YN-565 is the latest rather than there being actual differences between the models. Obviously more features may have been added as the series progresses, performance improvements etc. but I would have thought that, since I would assume that my needs are fairly basic, one of the older models would be sufficient. Current price for a 560 on eBay is around the £55 mark. 460 mk.II is closer to £35 so unless I can really find something the 560 does that the 460 does not which I think would yield a particular benefit, I suppose that logically I should do for the cheaper one.

Sample photos