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.