The Author – Bart Busschots
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Aug
9
Photo of the Week 129 – No. 186 Steaming West
Filed Under Photography on August 9, 2010 | 1 Comment
Since it’s been a while since I posted a railway shot in this Photo of the Week series, I thought I’d treat myself by posting my favourite steam shot of the year (so far). I chose this location precisely because it’s free from modern distractions. There are no modern houses, no electricity pylons, no modern signals, no modern electronics cabinets, in short, nothing to break the illusion of timelessness. OK – that’s not entirely true. Those of you with a very keen eye will notice the one unavoidable piece of modernity in this shot – the track itself – it’s continuous welded rail on concrete sleepers. You can rest assured that when No.186 was earning it’s keep for the Great Southern & Western Railway it wasn’t running on anything nearly as fancy, smooth, or comfortable! Still – very few people will find the modern track-work a distraction from the timeless beauty of a steam engine hard at work.
For those of you interested in such details, this is RPSI preserved steam loco number 186. She’s a class J15 0-6-0 former GS&WR loco, manufactured in Manchester in 1879, and retained in service until 1964. Here we see her on a cold, windy, and rather damp Easter Monday morning near Kilcock Co. Kildare, working the Easter Egg-spress from Dublin to Mullingar.
- Camera: Nikon D40
- Lens: Nikon DX AFS 55-200mm
- Exposure: 1/640 sec
- Focal Length: 55mm
- Focal Ratio: f/5.6
- ISO: 800
- Camera Mode: Full Manual
- Processing: This shot was first tweaked using the Topaz Adjust plugin in Photoshop Elements 8, then converted to monochrome using the Monochrome Mixer in aperture, and then give a subtle sepia tone using the Colour Monochrome brick in Aperture.
Aug
2
Photo of the Week 127 & 128 – Big Summer Skies
Filed Under Photography on August 2, 2010 | Leave a Comment
I’ve been on a bit of a break from Photography – a combination of injury and crap-tacular weather, so I have yet another catch-up post to do! As always when I do multiple posts, the two images are related, in this case, very related, being two different treatments of the same RAW image. This shot was taken on the same day as the last monochrome-colour combo I posted (Photo of the Week 111 & 112 – Summer in Rathcoffey), and from a spot only a few hundred feet from where that last shot was taken.
Yesterday I posted some of my thoughts on Photographic composition, and used that post as the basis for a conversation with Allison on episode 271 of the Nosillacast podcast. In that discussion we talked about the importance of getting layers into photographs of places to give a sense of depth, and in particular we talked about the importance of the foreground layer. As part of that discussion I drew attention to the fact that there are a huge amount of possible foregrounds for every background. You can usually move hundreds of feet without making much, if any, change to the background when you’ve shooting landscapes. This gives you a wide menu of foregrounds to choose from.
If you compare and contrast these photos with those from my Photo of the Week 111 & 112 post, you’ll get a good example of just how different a shot you can get by just changing the foreground. Both sets of photos have Rathcoffey Castle as the background, both have the field of flowering Rape Seed flowers as the mid-ground, and both have the same dramatic sky at the top of the frame, but both have very different foregrounds, framings, and compositions, resulting very different photographs.
These shots have a far simpler composition, with far fewer elements in the frame. It really is just the field, the castle, and the sky. The previous shot was about showing the many interesting things around the edges of the field, the beautiful old tree, the ancient Ring Fort, and of course the castle, so it was composed in such a way as to show all these things without cluttering the frame. The filed and the sky were in that shot too, but they were almost incidental. Here, we have much less in the frame, so both the sky and the big sweeping field are the stars of the show, with the castle adding some nice interest to the background, but not being the star of the show.
These two sets of shots were taken very close to each other. The first a little to the left of the Ring Fort, with the Ring Fort included, the other a little to the right of the Ring Fort with it excluded. The Ring Fort is literally just a few pixels off to the right of this shot, but because you don’t see it, you assume it’s not there, and that the field goes on for ever. As it happens it really is a very big field, but doesn’t come across half as well in the shot if you include it’s edges.
As with the previous photos, this pair was generated using the workflow I described on the Typical Shutterbug Podcast.
- Camera: Nikon D40
- Lens: Nikon DX AFS 18-55mm (D40 kit lens)
- Exposure: 1/1250 sec
- Focal Length: 18mm
- Focal Ratio: f/8
- ISO: 200
- Camera Mode: Aperture Priority
- Processing: single RAW image first tonemapped with Photomatix Pro, then tweaked with the Topaz Adjust 4 plugin in Photoshop Elements
- Camera: Nikon D40
- Lens: Nikon DX AFS 18-55mm (D40 kit lens)
- Exposure: 1/1250 sec
- Focal Length: 18mm
- Focal Ratio: f/8
- ISO: 200
- Camera Mode: Aperture Priority
- Processing: single RAW image first tonemapped with Photomatix Pro, then tweaked with the Topaz Adjust 4 plugin in Photoshop Elements, and finally converted to monochrome using the Channel Mixer in Apeture
Jul
31
Some Thoughts on Composition
Filed Under Photography on July 31, 2010 | 8 Comments
Initially I’d started writing these thoughts up as bullet points to use as show-notes for this weekend’s Chit Chat Across the Pond segment on the NosillaCast, but as I worked on them I realised they were worth developing into a full blog post. The aim here is to share some of my thoughts on composing photos. A lot of people think that the difference between a snapshot and a professional looking photo is the camera, which is true to some extent, but a much more important factor is the composition. I believe that the single most important thing you can do to improve your photography is to work on your composition. Thankfully, a little effort goes a long way, so it’s time very well spent.
Jul
18
Photo of the Week 126 – Female Common Blue Butterfly
Filed Under Photography on July 18, 2010 | 2 Comments
I have quite a few good butterfly shots in reserve for future Photo of the Week posts, but I want to keep things nice and varied, so I’m only going to be posting one every few weeks. Since it’s been over a month since I shared a butterfly shot, I figure it might be time to share another.
This is a shot that I had been chasing for over a year when I finally managed to captured it last month. The Common Blue butterfly (Polyommatus icarus) is very small, and very camera shy, but also very beautiful. The male’s back is plain electric blue, which is pretty spectacular, but the female takes things to a whole new level, having a beautiful mix of browns, blues, and oranges on her back. The patterns at the tips of her wings are both intricate and beautiful. Many people consider this the most colourful Irish butterfly, though I disagree, I think that honour should go to the Peacock Butterfly. Regardless of whether or not it’s the most colourful butterfly, it’s certainly one of the most beautiful.
The best chance you’ll get to capture the back of these fine lady’s wings is in the evening time. As the wind falls and the sun gets low in the sky, you’ll sometimes find them sun-bathing on top of tall stalks of grass or wild flowers like thistles with their wings open. If you approach very slowly and very carefully with a long enough lens you have a chance of getting off a good shot. I took this one on a beautiful still and clear summer evening along the banks of the Royal Canal near Deey Bridge and the 13th lock with my 55-200mm zoom zoomed in all the way to 200mm.
- Camera: Nikon D40
- Lens: Nikon DX AFS 55-200mm
- Exposure: 1/400 sec
- Focal Length: 200mm
- Focal Ratio: f/8
- ISO: 400
- Camera Mode: Aperture Priority
- Exposure Bias: -0.7ev
- Processing: This shot was tweaked a little using Aperture’s Dodge & Burn plugin to selectively add brightness, contrast, and saturation to the butterly
Jul
11
Photo of the Week 125 – Soccer on the Playing Fields
Filed Under Photography on July 11, 2010 | Leave a Comment
I’m not even the smallest bit of a football fan, but given that it’s World Cup final weekend, I figured this would be a good time to share one of my few football photos. As well as being beautiful, the grounds of St. Patrick’s College provide a great amenity for the people of Maynooth. Here we see some local lads enjoying a kick-around on one of the pitches on the so-called Playing Fields a fantastic summer afternoon. In the background you can see the spire of the Gunne Chapel (the college chapel).
- Camera: Nikon D40
- Lens: Nikon DX AFS 18-55mm (D40 kit lens)
- Exposure: 1/1000 sec
- Focal Length: 18mm
- Focal Ratio: f/8
- ISO: 400
- Camera Mode: Aperture Priority
- Exposure Bias: -0.7ev
- Processing: This shot was edit using both the Topaz Adjust and Topaz Detail Photoshop plugins.
Jul
4
Photo of the Week 124 – Grey Heron
Filed Under Photography on July 4, 2010 | 2 Comments
In my mind the most beautiful bird we have in Ireland is the Grey Heron (Ardea cinerea). Others may disagree, but I’ve always loved these big, elegant, but rather skittish birds. Because they’re so easily frightened even a 200mm zoom often isn’t enough to get a great shot, but sometimes you get lucky, and you run into one that’s a little braver than most, and you can get a good shot without the cannon-sized lenses the Scott Bournes of this world use.
In Leixlip there’s a massive viaduct that takes the Royal Canal, its towpath and the Dublin to Sligo railway line across the river Rye and its rather large valley. This heron was sitting on the wall separating the railway from the canal on the viaduct, and he didn’t fly away even when I got right to the edge of the canal on the towpath. I was still a good 5 meters away, but I don’t usually manage to get even nearly this close.
- Camera: Nikon D40
- Lens: Nikon DX AFS 55-200mm
- Exposure: 1/800 sec
- Focal Length: 200mm
- Focal Ratio: f/5.6
- ISO: 200
- Camera Mode: Aperture Priority
Jun
27
Photo of the Week 122 & 123 – Summer in Rathcoffey
Filed Under Photography on June 27, 2010 | 5 Comments
Last weekend the weather was just too good to sit inside working on a computer, so I didn’t find the time to post a photo of the week. This means we’re playing catch-up today with a double posting. As usual for a multiple post, I’ve chosen a theme to link the shots, in this case, both were generated from the same original RAW image from the camera!
Both shots show a wonderful view taken from a back road near Maynooth in Co. Kildare Ireland. The road is at the bottom of a sweeping hill at the top of which stand the ruins of Rathcoffey Castle. The farmer grows Rape Seed on the hill, so when that crop is in bloom, you get this amazing scene where the whole field is bright yellow, truly spectacular!
The fist shot I’m posting is the colour version, this is a panoramic crop, and was generated from a single RAW file by first tonemapping it with Photomatix Pro, and then tweaking the resulting image a little using the Topaz Adjust 4 plugin in Photoshop Elements. You might ask why the image needed to be tonemapped? The simple answer is that the difference in brightness between the land and sky were just too great to properly expose both in a single traditional exposure. Exposing either correctly would result in the other being badly under or over exposed. Tonemapping allows both to be properly exposed at the same time.
- Camera: Nikon D40
- Lens: Nikon DX AFS 18-55mm (D40 kit lens)
- Exposure: 1/800 sec
- Focal Length: 18mm
- Focal Ratio: f/8
- ISO: 200
- Camera Mode: Aperture Priority
The second shot was generating by using the first as a starting point, and then using the channel mixer to generate a monochrome version. The channel mixer allows you to choose how much of each colour goes into the black & white version of the image. By turning down the blue channel you can get stunning black skies which make for really dramatic photos.
- Camera: Nikon D40
- Lens: Nikon DX AFS 18-55mm (D40 kit lens)
- Exposure: 1/800 sec
- Focal Length: 18mm
- Focal Ratio: f/8
- ISO: 200
- Camera Mode: Aperture Priority
Jun
13
Photo of the Week 121 – Speeding to Dublin
Filed Under Photography on June 13, 2010 | 2 Comments
For some strange reason I got an urge to post one of my winter shots today, even if it is June. In photography there are only ever guidelines, there are no hard and fast rules. Every guideline can be broken if you do it right.
A guideline I always follow is never to shoot trains as they move away from you, but to catch them coming towards you. I simply hate seeing a shot perfectly composed to imply motion towards you, only to notice the red tail lights on the ‘front’ of the train. Perhaps I’m being a bit too much of a perfectionist, but it really bothers me. This shot however proves that rule are made to be broken. Here we see an Irish Rail InterCity service making it’s way from Sligo to Dublin moving away from up in the frame towards the bridge in the background. To try to imply the motion even for those not pedantic to notice the tail lights, I composed the shot with the back of the train deliberately close to the right edge of the frame.
- Camera: Nikon D40
- Lens: Nikon DX AFS 55-200mm
- Exposure: 1/500 sec
- Focal Length: 200mm
- Focal Ratio: f/5.6
- ISO: 400
- Camera Mode: Aperture Priority
Jun
7
Photo of the Week 120 – Inside Magnolia
Filed Under Photography on June 7, 2010 | 2 Comments
I’ve always loved the great photographer Imogen Cunningham’s take on Magnolia flowers, particularly this shot. So, earlier this year, when I noticed that the Magnolia trees in St. Patrick’s College were in bloom, I set out to have a go myself. Obviously I’m no Imogen Cunningham, but I’m quite pleased with this shot all the same.
- Camera: Nikon D40
- Lens: Nikon DX AFS 55-200mm
- Exposure: 1/320 sec
- Focal Length: 200mm
- Focal Ratio: f/8
- ISO: 200
- Camera Mode: Aperture Priority
May
30
Photo of the Week 119 – The Sliabh Beagh Way
Filed Under Photography on May 30, 2010 | Leave a Comment
A few weeks ago I went for a hike with my parents along a stretch of the Sliabh Beagh Way in Co. Monaghan. This route runs through a range of rolling mountains on the border with Northern Ireland. I got a few shots along the way, but this one is my favourite.
- Camera: Nikon D40
- Lens: Nikon DX AFS 18-55mm (D40 kit lens)
- Exposure: 1/640 sec
- Focal Length: 18mm
- Focal Ratio: f/8
- ISO: 400
- Camera Mode: Aperture Priority
- Processing: This shot was generated by tonemapping the original RAW file with Photomatix Pro