The Author – Bart Busschots
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Apr
13
Photo of the Week 8 – Where Dark & Light Collide
Filed Under Photography on April 13, 2008 | 3 Comments
I shot this photo a few weeks ago near Maynooth when the sky was particularly dramatic looking. On the one hand you have lovely fluffy white clouds and on the other you had huge and threatening looking black clouds. I took quite a few shots that day which you can see in my gallery but this is my favourite one. It shows the interface between the dark and the light clouds and I really like the way the curve in the road is mirrored by the curve in the dark cloud.
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: 1/125 Sec
- Focal Length: 18mm
- Focal Ratio: F14
- ISO: 400
- Camera Mode: Aperture Priority
- Exposure Compensation: 0.0
[tags]Ireland, Maynooth, Clouds, Road[/tags]
Apr
10
HDR at Night
Filed Under Photography on April 10, 2008 | 5 Comments
Continuing my experimentation with HDR photography I had a go shooting night-scenes in HDR. Since buildings at night tend to have a very high dynamic range I figured I should get better results with HDR than without. I certainly wasn’t wrong. What you do have to bear in mind is that exposures will be long and you’ll need a lot of them. I actually pushed the camera as far as it would go in both directions of exposure compensation to get some of these shots. The sample below is composed of 7 exposures, the longest being 10 seconds, but for a few of the shots some component exposures went as high as 30 seconds.
What I do really need to learn though is to check that my tripod is level before shooting! What should have been my favourite image from the night was spoiled a little by a sloping horizon. I’ve included it below regardless because it still shows the potential pretty well.
You can see all my shots from Tuesday night in my gallery (not all are HDRs but all HDRs are tagged and labelled as such).
[tags]HDR photography, nigth-time photography[/tags]
Apr
8
HDR Revisited
Filed Under Photography on April 8, 2008 | 5 Comments
Since I wrote my article on HDR a few weeks ago myself and Allison also discussed it on our Chit-Chat Across The Pond segment on the NosillaCast. When just talking about it left quite a few listeners a little confused Allison asked me to screen cast my workflow for creating an HDR image. I made it clear in my original article and on the NosillaCast that I was just describing my way of doing HDR, and that I wasn’t claiming it was the best way, or the right way. I also included quite a few examples of images produced with my workflow in my original article so people could clearly see the kind of results my workflow can generate. Since writing that original article two new and interesting pieces of information have come my way so I thought I’d re-vist the topic to expand on it a little.
[tags]HDR, Photography[/tags]
Apr
6
Photo of the Week 6 and 7 – The Last Gate
Filed Under Photography on April 6, 2008 | 2 Comments
Having missed last week I’ve decided to release a double photo of the week this week. Both of these images are tone mapped HDR shots and both are of the entrance to the College grave yard in St. Patrick’s College Maynooth in Ireland. The entrance is simply breath-taking. There is a long and very high avenue created by two rows of Yew trees that have been meshed together to form a high and wide tunnel that leads up to the gate to the cemetery. The gate itself is made of beautiful carved stone with a statue of the Virgin Mary above the entrance. There is also a large high-cross directly in line with the gate in the very centre of the cemetery.
The first image was taken from the start of the avenue of Yew trees looking down towards the gate to the cemetery. The second image shows the gate with the high cross framed in the entrance.
Apr
4
A Picture Says a Thousand Words
Filed Under Photography, Polemics & Politics on April 4, 2008 | 1 Comment
John Gruber linked to the image below on Twitter today (it’s from Der Spiegel). This one picture sums up the effect of US foreign policy under the Bush administration better than even the best polemic. I’ll stop talking and just leave you with the picture
Mar
24
If You Want Something Done Right ….
Filed Under Photography on March 24, 2008 | 2 Comments
You may have noticed that at long last there’s a picture of me on my blog. I always prefer blogs where the author is not anonymous and I think having your picture there on every page is about as un-anonymous as you can get. The reason my picture wasn’t added sooner is that I simply didn’t have a picture of myself that I didn’t hate. Yesterday I finally decided to take matters into my own hands and keep taking pictures of myself till I got one I didn’t hate. I took a fair few goes (about 40 shots as it happens), some serious cropping, and the removal of all colour, but in the end I finally got a shot I don’t hate. In fact, I actually kinda like it.
Mar
23
Photo of the Week 5 – Nightfall at Taghadoe
Filed Under Photography on March 23, 2008 | 1 Comment
This photo was taken on the evening of the 26th of July 2007 at Taghadoe Round Tower just outside Maynooth. One of the things I really love about living in Ireland is that there is history all around you if you just go out and look. What disappoints me a little is how few people who live in Maynooth realise that this little treasure is hidden just a mile or so from the edge of the village on one of the smaller back-roads.
Click to View Full-Size (1.2MB)
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: 1/10 Sec
- Focal Length: 22mm
- Focal Ratio: F5.6
- ISO: 1600
- Camera Mode: Aperture Priority
- Exposure Compensation: -2.0
[tags]Ireland, Maynooth, Sunset, Taghadoe, Round Tower, History[/tags]
Mar
21
Tips for Shooting the Moon
Filed Under Photography, Science & Astronomy on March 21, 2008 | 1 Comment
It can be very nice to include the Moon in your shots of buildings or landscapes but it’s not easy. The reality is that the Moon is very small in the sky and that it’s hard to pick up detail on the Moon while also properly exposing your subject. That’s why so many people cheat and get the Moon into their shots using PhotoShop. They stick on a massive zoom lens, shoot the Moon, then stick on a normal lens to shoot their subject and finally combine the two shots into one. If that’s the way you want to do things that’s your call, personally I look at it as cheating and would prefer to do it the hard way and actually capture the Moon and my subject in a single shot.
[tags]photography, DSLR, the Moon[/tags]
Mar
18
HDR with a Nikon D40, Bracketeer & iPhoto
Filed Under Photography, Computers & Tech on March 18, 2008 | 23 Comments
I’m no expert on HDR but since I spent most of my weekend playing with it now seems like a good time to write about it, while it’s all nice and fresh in my mind and all that. One of the first things I noticed when I started shooting DSLR is that the dynamic range of the camera was a lot narrower than the dynamic range of my eyes. I didn’t know it was called dynamic range back then but that’s not really the point. When a scene has a big range in brightness between the brightest parts and the darkest parts then it’s said to have a high dynamic range. Our eyes are quite good in those situations, DSLRs on the other hand are terrible at capturing them. On a sunny evening when the sun is low in the sky casting shadows all over the place you can still see just fine but a DSLR gets into all sorts of trouble.
[tags]HDR, Nikon, Bracketeer, iPhoto[/tags]
Mar
15
Photo of the Week 4 – Venus with a Crescent Moon
Filed Under Photography on March 15, 2008 | 1 Comment
This photo was taken on the evening of the 18th of June 2007 on the playing fields on the South Campus of NUI Maynooth. The playing fields are large open grass areas for sport surrounded by wonderful old trees. This photo was taken just as twilight was ending when the Moon and Venus were very close together in the sky.
Click to View Full-Size (1.6MB)
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: 1/30 Sec
- Focal Length: 34mm
- Focal Ratio: F5.6
- ISO: 1600
- Camera Mode: Aperture Priority
- Exposure Compensation: -1
[tags]Ireland, Maynooth, NUI Maynooth, Venus, Moon[/tags]