The Author – Bart Busschots
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Dec
27
Photo of the Week 96 & 97 – The Beauty of Winter
Filed Under Photography on December 27, 2009 | 1 Comment
With the silly-season in full swing it’s probably no big surprise that I find myself a week behind again, so another double post this week. This time I decided to choose a seasonal topic – winter scenes. As it happens both these shots were taken on the same day, the 3rd of February this year. It started to snow in the late afternoon, stopped in time to get some lovely day-time shots, and then the sky cleared to give a dramatic sunset over the snow-covered landscape. A photographer’s dream, and this afternoon has already supplied two pervious Photos of the Week (50 “Braving the Snow” & 52 “Fire & Ice”).
- Camera: Nikon D40
- Lens: Nikon DX AFS 18-55mm (D40 kit lens)
- Exposure: 1/50 sec
- Focal Length: 26mm
- Focal Ratio: f/8
- ISO: 800
- Camera Mode: Aperture Priority
- Camera: Nikon D40
- Lens: Nikon DX AFS 18-55mm (D40 kit lens)
- Exposure: 1/100 sec
- Focal Length: 34mm
- Focal Ratio: f/8
- ISO: 800
- Camera Mode: Aperture Priority
- Exposure Bias: -1.0ev
- Processing: Single RAW image first tonemapped with Photomatix Pro, then tweaked with the Dodge & Burn plugin in Apple’s Aperture
Dec
26
The Orton Effect – A Quick Tutorial
Filed Under Photography, Computers & Tech on December 26, 2009 | 12 Comments
The Orton Effect is an old effect that dates back to the film days and involved combining an in focus and an out of focus version of the same shot into a single image to give a dreamy effect where the shot is blurred yet has all it’s detail. You can read (a little) more about it on Wikipedia.
The reason I’m writing this tutorial now is that Christmas trees with their lights on make great subjects for the Orton Effect. It’s very hard to get a nice photo of the Christmas tree that does justice to the atmosphere of the scene, but the dreamy quality of an Orton image can really help.
Dec
13
Photo of the Week – 93, 94 & 95 – A Great Sunset
Filed Under Photography on December 13, 2009 | 3 Comments
With being sick and then just getting behind on everything, I’ve managed to miss two weekends so this is a catch-up instalment with three related shots. When ever I get behind and have to do multiple shots within one post I always try to pick photos that are in some way related to each other. In this case the link is that they were all taken during the single most beautiful sunset I have ever seen, on St. Patrick’s Day this year. The first two are both silhouettes of the beautiful ruins of Taghadoe church and round tower on the outskirts of Maynooth, and the thirds is a long exposure shot of cars driving off into the sunset on the M4 motorway just outside Maynooth.
The last shot was tonemapped to recover detail in the sky, but the other two are mostly as they came out of the camera with just a few tweaks in Aperture. As beautiful as these shots are, the real sunset was even more beautiful and inspiring. Just one evening like that a year is enough to make up for all the times I’ve been rained out in Ireland.
- Camera: Nikon D40
- Lens: Nikon DX AFS 18-55mm (D40 kit lens)
- Exposure: 1/640 sec
- Focal Length: 46mm
- Focal Ratio: f/5.3
- ISO: 200
- Camera Mode: Aperture Priority
- Exposure Bias: -1.0ev
- Camera: Nikon D40
- Lens: Nikon DX AFS 18-55mm (D40 kit lens)
- Exposure: 1/1600 sec
- Focal Length: 18mm
- Focal Ratio: f/5
- ISO: 200
- Camera Mode: Aperture Priority
- Exposure Bias: -2.0ev
- Camera: Nikon D40
- Lens: Nikon DX AFS 18-55mm (D40 kit lens)
- Exposure: 1/2 sec
- Focal Length: 18mm
- Focal Ratio: f/22
- ISO: 200
- Camera Mode: Manual Mode