The Author – Bart Busschots
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Jan
25
Photo of the Week 49 – Backlit Butterfly
Filed Under Photography on January 25, 2009 | 1 Comment
When I was starting photography my Dad gave me one very good piece of advice, keep the sun at your back! The vast majority of the time this is great advice, and I pass it on to beginners when they ask me for advice. However, like all guidelines in photography, breaking them intentionally in a thought-out way can lead to great shots. I’ve never really been great at shooting back-lit subjects, it just doesn’t work for me usually, but this shot is the exception.
I shot this back-lit Small White (Pieris rapae) butterfly in the Junior Gardens on the St. Patrick’s College Campus (AKA the NUI Maynooth South Campus) in Maynooth, Ireland.
- Camera: Nikon D40
- Lens: Nikon DX AFS 55-200mm
- Exposure: 1/400 sec
- Focal Length: 200mm
- Focal Ratio: F8
- ISO: 200
- Camera Mode: Aperture Priority
- Exposure Bias: -0.67
Jan
19
Photo of the Week 48 – Lunar Cross (Black & White)
Filed Under Photography on January 19, 2009 | 4 Comments
As you can probably guess by the list of previous photos of the week, I’m not really into black & white photography. However, I do dabble occasionally, and particularly enjoy playing with the channel mixer to get more dramatic and contrasty images. This is my favourite black & white conversion so far. This shot of the Moon over the top of the spire of the Gunne Chapel (AKA the College Chapel) on the St. Patrick’s College Campus (AKA NUI Maynooth South Campus) in Maynooth, Ireland. The black & white conversion was done using the channel mixer in the GIMP (a free cross-platform image editor). It was shot during the day, but made more dramatic by turning the blue channel right down to zero so the sky goes black.
- Camera: Nikon D40
- Lens: Nikon DX AFS 55-200mm
- Exposure: 1/250 sec
- Focal Length: 200mm
- Focal Ratio: F22
- ISO: 800
- Camera Mode: Aperture Priority
- Processing: Converted to black & white using the channel mixer in the GIMP
Jan
18
DeskLickr – Flickrize Your Desktop on OS X
Filed Under Photography, Computers & Tech on January 18, 2009 | Leave a Comment
This week I went hunting for a piece of software to automatically change my desktop wallpaper using Flickr as the source. In particular I wanted it to use my set of desktop wallpapers on Flickr. There are solutions to do this kind of thing on Linux and Windows, but since I use OS X I had to go find one I could actually use. In the end I found just one solution that worked well, the donation-ware app DeskLickr.
DeskLickr is definitely one of those apps that does just one thing, but seems to do it well. I’ve only been using it for a few days but so far I’m very happy with it. I set it up, then forgot about it and watched my background change to a new photo every 30 minutes. It could be argued that the Flickr configuration could be a bit clearer to understand, and it could definitely be argued that it would be nice to have more options for choosing photos from Flickr, but, it works, and that’s the important thing.
Jan
11
Photo of the Week 47 – Into the Night
Filed Under Photography on January 11, 2009 | 3 Comments
As a friend of mine put it on Flickr, this photo combines my three nerdy hobbies, Astronomy, Photography, and trains. This is a 5 second exposure of a commuter train approaching Maynooth reflected in the waters of the Royal Canal in the late evening while Venus & the Moon shine over-head. This is a shot I’d tried before, and each time I learned a few more valuable lessons. So, although this is the result of a learning experience, I’m still shocked at how lucky I was to get everything to line up as well as it did. The train, the reflection, the silhouette of the tree, those things I could control, but the positions of the Moon and Venus, those were a pure bonus! Anyhow, if I had to pick my three best photos yet, this is one I’d definitely choose.
- Camera: Nikon D40
- Lens: Nikon DX AFS 18-55mm (D40 kit lens)
- Exposure: 5 sec
- Focal Length: 18mm
- Focal Ratio: F5
- ISO: 200
- Camera Mode: Manual
- Exposure Bias: -2.0
Jan
6
Photo of the Week 46 – A Winter Night in Maynooth
Filed Under Photography on January 6, 2009 | Leave a Comment
I shot this photo last December, but since it’s so insanely cold tonight I figured this would be an appropriate time to share it as a Photo of the Week. In summer this same grass is full of people sitting out enjoying the sun chatting or studying or playing Frisbee, but now, in winter, it’s pretty much deserted except for the occasional very determined dog-walker. This area of St. Patrick’s College in Maynooth is referred to as ‘the Graff’, and the building is St. Mary’s House. You can also see the spire of the college chapel, the Gunne Chapel, in the background.
This image is composed of four images separated by 1 stop combined into an HDR image and tone-mapped with Photomatix Pro.
- Camera: Nikon D40
- Lens: Nikon DX AFS 18-55mm (D40 kit lens)
- Focal Length: 18mm
- Focal Ratio: F3.5
- ISO: 400
- Camera Mode: Aperture Priority
Dec
29
Photo of the Week 45 – ‘de Vesten’ in Winter
Filed Under Photography on December 29, 2008 | 1 Comment
When I think of Winter one of my shots stands out above all others, this one in fact. It was also taken at the very end of December, all-be-it back in 2001, so it seemed appropriate for this week’s photo of the week. Unfortunately the photo quality is very poor, which is the main reason I haven’t used it as a photo of the week before. It was shot on a second hand and fairly early digital camera, and the memory card I had for it was far too small, so I used it at a very low quality setting. Because of this the image is small, and has a lot of JPEG artifacting, but I absolutely love it all-the-same.
This shot was taken in the town of Lier, in the province of Antwerp in Belgium. Lier is a very unusual place, it’s absolutely brimming with canals and waterways, a lot like Brugge in fact, but much less well know. Historically it was also an enclosed town, and the remains of that enclosure are what are referred to as ‘de Vesten van Lier’ in Flemish, and it’s on the south eastern region of this enclosure that this photo was taken. The ‘Vesten’ were once the city walls, but they were knocked a few centuries ago and became a long thin park completely surrounding the town.
Lier sits at the point where two important Flemish rivers, the Kleine Nete and the Grote Nete, merge into a single even more important river, the Nete. The two rivers meet at the north of the town, and the joint river snakes around the eastern side of the town. In order to protect the town from flooding, a canal was dug around the western side of the town connecting the Kleine Nete to the Nete, this means the town is completely enclosed by water. On top of this the entire interior of the town is criss-crossed by canals so there is water just about everywhere you look in Lier.
Unfortunately the EXIF data has gotten lost from this file so all I can say is that I shot it with a FujiFilm MX-2700 point-and-shoot.
Dec
21
Photo of the Week 44 – Amphibious Bistort
Filed Under Photography on December 21, 2008 | Leave a Comment
I’m not even sure this is a good photo technically, I think the depth of field is actually too shallow, but I’ve always liked the composition and the green of the bokeh, so I’m counting it as one of my best regardless.
The flower is a somewhat strange one that grows on both land and water, hence it’s name, Amphibious Bistort (Persicaria amphibia). I really like it’s spikes of pinky-white flowers, and it’s very common in Cavan where we have no shortage of either wet soil or water for it to thrive in!
- Camera: Nikon D40
- Lens: Nikon DX AFS 18-55mm (D40 kit lens)
- Exposure: 1/500 sec
- Focal Length: 55mm
- Focal Ratio: F8
- ISO: 200
- Camera Mode: Auto
Dec
17
Photo of the Week 43 – The Royal Canal
Filed Under Photography on December 17, 2008 | Leave a Comment
Apologies for the later than normal Photo of the Week, but I got distracted over the weekend preparing the talk I gave yesterday. Anyhow, with all this nasty damp and cold weather we’ve been having of-late here in Ireland I thought it might be nice to choose a brighter, sunnier, and warmer Photo of the Week.
This shot of the Royal Canal was taken from Jackson’s Bridge looking east towards Maynooth and Dublin. Jackson’s Bridge is the only crossing point over the canal between Maynooth and Kilcock and the bridge gives a great view to the east in the afternoons with the sun behind your back for good lighting. This shot was taken at about 4pm on the 30th of May this year.
- Camera: Nikon D40
- Lens: Nikon DX AFS 18-55mm (D40 kit lens)
- Exposure: 1/250 sec
- Focal Length: 18mm
- Focal Ratio: F13
- ISO: 400
- Camera Mode: Aperture Priority
- Exposure Compensation: 0.0
Dec
7
Photo of the Week 42 – Jupiter, Venus & the Moon
Filed Under Photography on December 7, 2008 | Leave a Comment
Last Monday (1 December 2008), the Moon, Jupiter & Venus were in a very close conjunction in the sky. For the non-astronomers amongst you that just means they were very closely placed in the sky. In fact, they were so close that Venus actually passed behind the Moon! This week’s photo of the week if my favourite shot of the event, you can see the rest of my shots in this Flickr Set.
This week’s photo of the week was taken not long after Venus re-appeared from behind the Moon. You can see it just off to the right of the think crescent Moon. Jupiter is the bright point of light above and to the right of the Moon.
For those of you interested in such things, here are the technical details of this shot:
- Camera: Nikon D40
- Lens: Nikon DX AFS 55-200mm
- Exposure: 1.5 sec
- Focal Length: 70mm
- Focal Ratio: F4.5
- ISO: 400
- Camera Mode: Aperture Priority
- Exposure Compensation: -1.0
Nov
30
Photo of the Week 41 – Homeward Bound
Filed Under Photography on November 30, 2008 | 2 Comments
This is one of those photos that I just love but I have no idea why. I’m not even sure it’s actually a good photo, but it’s one of my favourites all the same. What makes my love of it even stranger is that it’s of what I consider to be the ugliest class of train the NMBS (Belgian national rail company) ever brought into service! A real low-point in Belgian train design! Maybe there’s some kind of sub-concious bond because these trains are the same age as me, we both date from 1980.
For those of you interested in such things, here are the technical details of this shot:
- Camera: Nikon D40
- Lens: Nikon DX AFS 18-55mm (D40 kit lens)
- Exposure: 1/160 sec
- Focal Length: 55mm
- Focal Ratio: F6.3
- ISO: 200
- Camera Mode: Auto