The Author – Bart Busschots
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Jun
15
Photo of the Week 17 – Stars Over Taghadoe
Filed Under Photography on June 15, 2008 | Leave a Comment
I shot this photo quite a few months and all but forgot about it. It sat un-processed and forgotten in a dark corner of my gallery gathering electronic dust until I stumbled across it yesterday. The raw image didn’t look too promising, the whole thing had a very nasty red colour cast and didn’t look at all appealing. Some fairly extreme twiddling with sliders in iPhoto managed to turn this ugly duckling into a beautiful swan! The moral of the story, don’t be too put off when your shots don’t look great straight out of the camera! To give you an idea of how much editing had to be done I’ve included a small version of the original below.
If you’ve been following this series you’ll have seen Taghadoe before, this is the same round tower you saw silhouetted in Photo of the Week 5 – Nightfall in Taghadoe. It’s a real hidden gem located just a few miles outside Maynooth Village in Co. Kildare, Ireland.
For those of you interested in such things here are some of the technical details of the shot:
- Camera: Nikon D40
- Lens: Nikon DX AFS 18-55mm (D40 kit lens)
- Exposure: 14.6 sec (using tripod)
- Focal Length: 18mm
- Focal Ratio: F3.5
- ISO: 800
- Camera Mode: Manual
- Exposure Compensation: -1.0
[tags]Photography, Maynooth, Ireland, Kildare, Taghadoe, Round Tower, astrophotography, stars, night[/tags]
Jun
8
Photo of the Week 16 – St. Patrick’s College by Night
Filed Under Photography on June 8, 2008 | 2 Comments
Just after sunset there is a window of an hour or so where the sky turns a deep blue on long exposure photographs. Unsurprisingly you’ll hear it referred to as the blue hour by some photographers. This shot was taken during the blue hour and shows the most famous building on the St. Patrick’s College campus in Maynooth. This is St. Patrick’s House as seen from St. Joseph’s Square. The twin towers over the front door are used as the logo for St. Patrick’s College.
For those of you interested in such things here are some of the technical details of the shot:
- Camera: Nikon D40
- Lens: Nikon DX AFS 18-55mm (D40 kit lens)
- Exposure: 1.6 sec (using tripod)
- Focal Length: 18mm
- Focal Ratio: F3.5
- ISO: 400
- Camera Mode: Aperture Priority
- Exposure Compensation: 0.0
[tags]Photography, Maynooth, Ireland, Kilare, St. Patrick’s College, night[/tags]
Jun
5
Updated My Photo Gallery for May 2008
Filed Under Photography on June 5, 2008 | 3 Comments
It’s taken a while but I’m now fully up to date with all my pics for May. With all the great weather we’ve been having I ended up with an abnormal amount of shots. I got out to shoot for 15 out of 31 days in May! That’s a real rarity for Ireland. Got some nice shots of the ducklings on the Royal Canal at the moment and a lot of nice nature shots, in particular or Horse Chestnut and Hawthorn blossoms. I also got a lot of nice landscape shots of the Royal Canal.
You can have a look for yourself in this gallery.
[tags]photography, Royal Canal, wild flowers, ducks[/tags]
Jun
2
Photo of the Week 15 – Wild Cherry Blossom
Filed Under Photography on June 2, 2008 | Leave a Comment
something I’ve come to realise over the last few months is that a little cropping can make a huge difference. In particular I find that I love working with square crops. This is an example of a square crop I really love. It’s a shot of a little cluster of Cherry Blossoms on a wild Cherry tree near my parent’s house.
For those of you interested in such things here are some of the technical details of the shot:
- Camera: Nikon D40
- Lens: Nikon DX AFS 18-55mm (D40 kit lens)
- Exposure: 1/1600 sec
- Focal Length: 55mm
- Focal Ratio: F5.6
- ISO: 400
- Camera Mode: Aperture Priority
- Exposure Compensation: 0.0
[tags]Photography, Cavan, Ireland, Cherry, Wild Cherry, blossom, flower[/tags]
Jun
1
The Nikon D40 One Year On
Filed Under Photography on June 1, 2008 | 6 Comments
It’s been a little over a year now since I got my Nikon D40 so now seems like a good time to reflect on what the D40 is like to live with. I was very positive about it in my initial review a year ago and I’m still very happy with it now. It’s a great body for the price and I’d highly recommend it to anyone as a first DSLR. However, you have to bear in mind that the D40 is an entry level model both in terms of price and functionality. As I’ve advanced as a photographer I’ve begun to run into some of the D40’s limitations and am now ready to move on to a higher level Nikon body like the D60 or the D80.
In this article I’m going to focus on the limitations of the D40 that I’m now starting to run into, but I have to stress that I’m not in any way un-happy with the quality of the D40. I consider it to have been money exceptionally well spent and I’d like to think that the photographs I’ve taken this year testify to to the amount of enjoyment it’s given me.
[tags]Nikon, D40[/tags]
Jun
1
“You Must Have a Great Camera”
Filed Under Photography on | 5 Comments
“You must have a great camera”. Anyone who’s even remotely into photography has probably heard that a lot. At first glance it sounds like a very innocent thing to say, and indeed it usually is said very innocently, but think about it a little more carefully and you’ll see it’s actually very insulting. It really is equivalent to telling an engineer that he must have a very good calculator or a painter than he must have a very nice brush! It actually boils down to: “your shots are nice because you have expensive kit”.
I’ve never heard this said with any malice at all. It’s completely down to the fact that most people have no idea what goes into shooting a great photograph. They consider all photography to be a point-and-click affair and that great photographers get great pictures because they have a great camera to point-and-click with. That could hardly be further from the truth. A great shot is the result of a lot of skill before the shutter is even pressed. Obviously a good photographer has to have an eye for detail, for composition and for the mood they want to capture. But there’s often also hours of waiting for just the right light, or in the case of transient events, months of planning and waiting. Once the shutter has been pressed then the pain-steaking post processing begins. The tweaks are often immensely subtle but they make all the difference in the world. Tweaking the white balance so everything looks just right, pushing those curves ever so slightly so you get good contrast across the dynamic range of the image, dodging and burning ever so slightly so the subject really stands out and so on and so forth.
After all that it’s no wonder you get a shot that looks fantastic! The thing is, the big factor was not the camera! A good photograph has almost nothing to do with the camera, and almost everything to do with the photographer. Bear that in mind before complimenting a photographer’s camera rather than their craftsmanship!
May
25
Photo of the Week 14 – The Moon Over the Gunne Chapel
Filed Under Photography on May 25, 2008 | 3 Comments
I took this shot back in December last year as the sun was setting after work. This shot was taken as a very special time of the day, when you can expose both the landscape and the Moon correctly in a single exposure.
The shot shows the Moon over the Gunne Chapel (AKA the College Chapel) on the campus of St. Patrick’s College in Maynooth, Ireland. This campus is also shared with NUI Maynooth.
For those of you interested in such things here are some of the technical details of the shot:
- Camera: Nikon D40
- Lens: Nikon DX AFS 18-55mm (D40 kit lens)
- Exposure: 1/200 sec
- Focal Length: 45mm
- Focal Ratio: F5.6
- ISO: 200
- Camera Mode: Aperture Priority
- Exposure Compensation: 0.0
[tags]Photography, Maynooth, Ireland, Moon, church, spire[/tags]
May
23
Perhaps I was a Bit Hard on Scott
Filed Under Photography on May 23, 2008 | 2 Comments
When I wrote my review of Photography podcasts I was not entirely complimentary about a certain Scott Bourne. He still annoys me every time he brags about his expensive this or his expensive that but he does write some very good posts on the TWIP blog and indeed contributes very well to the TWIP show – despite the occasional slip into bragging. On-balance I think I’ve been converted to a Scott Bourne fan … mostly.
Anyhow, it was reading the third part of Scott’s three-part article on choosing a camera that finally prompted me write this post. Have a read for yourself here.
[tags]TWIP, Scott Bourne[/tags]
May
19
Photo of the Week 13 – A Horse Chestnut Blossom
Filed Under Photography on May 19, 2008 | 1 Comment
This week’s photo of the week is a little special in that it co-incides with my camera’s first birthday. Well, rather with the first anniversary of the day it arrived.
Anyhow, last week’s photo of the week served as an example of how some of your best shots come from pure chance. You see an opportunity and you shoot, no planning, no preparation just a spur of the moment capture. This week’s photo of the week is pretty much the complete opposite. This is the culmination of an extended effort to capture the beauty of the flower spikes of the Horse Chestnut tree.
These flowers proved hard to capture well because of their subtle detail and dazzling white colour. They are mostly white but the centre of each flower is either pink or yellow and you get both colours within the one flowering stalk. There is also a veritable sea of stamens sticking out at all angles which must be captured too.
I tried quite a few different approaches until I finally got this shot last Thursday. It captures all the details of the flowers as well as the wonderfully majestic leaves. You should look at the larger version to really see the detail in the flowers.
If at first you don’t succeed, try, try, and try again!
For those of you interested in such things here are some of the technical details of the shot:
- Camera: Nikon D40
- Lens: Nikon DX AFS 55-200mm
- Exposure: 1/1250 sec
- Focal Length: 200mm
- Focal Ratio: F8
- ISO: 400
- Camera Mode: Aperture Priority
- Exposure Compensation: -0.67
[tags]Photography, Maynooth, Ireland, Horse Chestnut, tree, flower[/tags]
May
10
Photo of the Week 12 – Autumn in Maynooth Castle
Filed Under Photography on May 10, 2008 | 1 Comment
This is a shot I came across by complete accident when having my lunch outside with a friend. I’m not even sure why I had my camera with me but I did. This shot was taken with a zoom lens from the back of The Mill Shopping Centre in Maynooth and looks through the grounds of Maynooth Castle up towards the front gate.
For those of you interested in such things here are some of the technical details of the shot:
- Camera: Nikon D40
- Lens: Nikon DX AFS 18-55mm (D40 kit lens)
- Exposure: 1/50 sec
- Focal Length: 55mm
- Focal Ratio: F8
- ISO: 400
- Camera Mode: Auto
- Exposure Compensation: 0.0
[tags]Photography, Maynooth, Ireland, Castle, Autumn[/tags]