The Author – Bart Busschots
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Nov
15
Photo of the Week 91 – Comma Butterfly
Filed Under Photography on November 15, 2009 | 1 Comment
This is a shot I took back in April of this year while I was on holidays in Belgium. Common wisdom is that centred subjects are a bad thing in photography, and that they lead to boring photos. Because of that I spent a lot of time trying different crops on this image to come up with a shot where the composition is not centred, but in the end, I didn’t like any of the crops and decided to just ignore common wisdom for this shot. I like how the orange butterfly is surrounded by a see of green, and I think the diagonal orientation of the butterfly makes the composition work despite being centred.
The Comma Butterfly (Polygonia c-album) is exceptionally rare in Ireland. I does show up here from time to time in the very extreme south east in Wexford, but those are individuals who migrate over from the the UK if the summer is very good. In Belgium however, these wonderful butterflies are quite common.
- Camera: Nikon D40
- Lens: Nikon DX AFS 55-200mm
- Exposure: 1/500 sec
- Focal Length: 200mm
- Focal Ratio: f/8
- ISO: 400
- Camera Mode: Aperture Priority
- Processing: the exposure, saturation & contrast were selectively tweaked in the butterfly using Aperture’s Dodge & Burn plugin
Nov
8
Photo of the Week 89 & 90 – Steam Loco No. 186
Filed Under Photography on November 8, 2009 | 4 Comments
Since I was ill last weekend I’m doing a double-post this weekend. In this case, it’s actually the same shot post-processed in two different ways.
Both shots are of the steam locomotive No. 186 which started it’s life as a mainline locomotive for Ireland’s Great Southern & Western Railway (GS&WR or just GSWR). No. 186 is now lovingly maintained by the Railway Preservation Society of Ireland (RPSI), and gets to stretch it’s legs on various Irish Rail mainlines on steam specials. This shot was taken when No. 186 was pulling the Ghost Train steam special from Dublin Connolly to Mullingar and back to Dublin Connolly. Here we see No. 186 crossing the Leixlip Viaduct on her way out to Mullingar in the morning. You can read more about No. 186 on the RPSI’s Website.
Normally when I tone-map shots I like to keep them looking natural, but in this case I really liked the result of pushing things a little further. The result is still quite natural, but yet also somewhat hyper-real.
The second version uses the first as the base for the conversion to monochrome. Because black and white shots tend to pick up a lot of texture anyway, the hyper-real look of the first version is completely lost in the second. We’re used to Sepia tone shots having this level of texture and detail in them.
You can see all my photos from this steam special in this Flickr Set.
- Camera: Nikon D40
- Lens: Nikon DX AFS 55-200mm
- Exposure: 1/320 sec
- Focal Length: 55mm
- Focal Ratio: f/4.5
- ISO: 400
- Camera Mode: Aperture Priority
- Processing (Version 1): Started by tonemapping a single RAW image in Photomatix Pro, then selectively tweaked the exposure, contrast, and saturation using the Dodge & Burn plugin in Aperture.
- Processing (Version 2): Took the veresion described above as the starting point, then converted to monochrome using the Channel Mixer brick in Apeture, then added a subtle Sepia Tone using the Colour Monochrome brick.
Oct
26
Photo of the Week 88 – A Common Spotted Orchid
Filed Under Photography on October 26, 2009 | 2 Comments
A few weeks ago I chose my favourite butterfly shot of the year, this week I’m choosing my favourite wild flower shot of the year. This was a really hard choice because I really got to grips with my Nikkor 55-200mm zoom lens this year, so there were a lot of decent flower shots to choose from. However, in the end, this shot won, in no small part because of how pretty a flower it is! I just love wild Orchids, and always have. When you stumble across one you feel like you’ve found a little treasure! In this case the Orchid is a Common Spotted-orchid (Dactylorhiza fuchsii). I’m not sure the name really suits the flower, ‘common’ implies abundant to me, and that doesn’t seem to tally with reality.
I managed to find a marshy field with quite a few of these beauties near Leixlip Louisa Bridge train station, and after much searching I found one that was blemish-free and standing out on its own enough to get a nice soft un-cluttered bokeh. The light was also pretty much perfect as I shot it in the early evening.
What I really love about this shot is that I had almost noting to do in post – it came out of the camera almost exactly like this! I Just did a few very minor tweaks in Aperture to get the crop just as I wanted it, and to pop the colour and the contrast just a little bit.
- Camera: Nikon D40
- Lens: Nikon DX AFS 55-200mm
- Exposure: 1/640 sec
- Focal Length: 200mm
- Focal Ratio: f/11
- ISO: 400
- Camera Mode: Aperture Priority
- Exposure Bias: -0.3ev
Oct
18
Photo of the Week 87 – Ennis Friary
Filed Under Photography on October 18, 2009 | 1 Comment
I don’t do many black & white conversions, but for some reason Ennis Friary seemed to lend itself to them very well. I guess old church buildings just work in monochrome! This week’s Photo of the Week is one from a set taken on the 1st of August this year when I was in Ennis for a friend’s wedding.
Wide angle lenses cause distortion which makes parallel lines not look parallel, this generally takes away from images of buildings. However, in this image the distortion actually adds to the shot because of the angle of the camera relative to the building. We’re not looking at the building face-on, but instead corner-on. The building is still distorted, but rather than being off-putting the distortion works to make the building look more imposing.
The easiest way to make a colour image black & white is to simply desaturate it. This almost never gives a nice image. The output tends to be bland, flat, and boring. If you want to get a better conversion you need to use a channel mixer. This allows you to control the levels of each colour that are used to create the final monochrome image. You can spend hours tweaking with the mixer, but when it works, it can give very striking images. In this case I used the mixer to take out the blue channel entirely, this turned the blue sky the dramatic black colour you see here. I also turned the green channel down a bit to darken the grass a little. Finally, the red channel was boosted to make up for the reduction in light from reducing both the blue and green channels. This had the effect of brightening the building relative to the grass and sky so it stands out.
- Camera: Nikon D40
- Lens: Nikon DX AFS 18-55mm (D40 kit lens)
- Exposure: 1/1250 sec
- Focal Length: 18mm
- Focal Ratio: f/8
- ISO: 400
- Camera Mode: Aperture Priority
- Exposure Bias: -0.3ev
- Processing: The image was converted to monochrome using the Channel Mixer, and then the contrast in the building was selectively increased using the Dodge & burn plugin in Aperture.
Oct
14
Photo of the Week 86 – The Royal Canal
Filed Under Photography on October 14, 2009 | 2 Comments
A lot my macro shots that make it into this series are shot along the Royal Canal, so this week I thought I’d share a picture of the canal itself! For me it’s a little oasis of accessible nature. I love spending time along towpath with my camera. You meet fellow nature lovers as well as fitness types, and obviously plenty of flora and fauna too.
I love this shot because is captures that combination of nature as well as people enjoying nature. I also love the sense of depth in this shot. I took this shot ages ago, but was reluctant to use it for Photo of the Week because it really only works when you view it large – and I prefer to choose shots that work well even at small sizes. Still – I really like this shot so I decided to share it regardless.
- Camera: Nikon D40
- Lens: Nikon DX AFS 55-200mm
- Exposure: 1/320 sec
- Focal Length: 200mm
- Focal Ratio: f/5.6
- ISO: 400
- Camera Mode: Aperture Priority
- Exposure Bias: -0.7ev
Oct
6
Photo of the Week 85 – Small Tortoiseshell Butterfly
Filed Under Photography on October 6, 2009 | 3 Comments
This is one of my favourite butterfly shots of the year. The season’s pretty much over now, so the changes are this will remain my favourite form the year. For a start, I think the Small Tortoiseshell (Aglais urticae) is one of the nicest species we have in Ireland, but this shot also illustrates why I love my Nikkor 55-200mm F3.5-5.6 zoom lens very well. When you’re shooting flowers or butterflies, you want the subject to be in sharp focus, and the background to be out of focus so that it doesn’t distract from the subject. You don’t want a busy complex background competing for the viewer’s eye. It’s that blurry background that gives shots that pro feel, sometimes called ‘the magazine look’.
This lens allows for a really shallow depth of field right in the sweet spot of the lens (around f8), and gives a wonderfully smooth and creamy bokeh (the out of focus areas). As lenses go, this is a cheap lens, I paid less than €300 for it a few years ago, and it’s come down in price since. A great value lens of you’re a Nikon DX shooter. There’s a new fancy VR (vibration reduction) version of this lens too, but TBH, I think VR is over-kill on this lens. If you can afford it, great, but I certainly don’t miss it. This is my work-horse lens, and I love it to bits.
- Camera: Nikon D40
- Lens: Nikon DX AFS 55-200mm
- Exposure: 1/800 sec
- Focal Length: 200mm
- Focal Ratio: f/11
- ISO: 400
- Camera Mode: Aperture Priority
- Exposure Bias: -0.7ev
- Processing: This shot is pretty much as it came out of the camera. It has been cropped to improve the composition, and subtly tweaked in Aperture’s Dodge & Burn plugin to selectively improve the contrast on the butterfly.
Sep
27
Photo of the Week 84 – Evening Amsterdammer
Filed Under Photography on September 27, 2009 | 1 Comment
This week I’ve chosen quite and old photo, from Christmas Eve 2007 in fact. I guess it shows where my priorities lie, of all the things I could be doing on Christmas eve, I’m out with my camera shooting trains during the golden hour!
This shot shows Belgian NMBS/SNCB Class 11 electric locomotive number 1185 charging through the village of Duffel in Belgium with an international express train from Amsterdam to Brussels. Locally these trains are known as ‘Amsterdammers’. The entire train used to have the lovely yellow and burgundy livery you see on this locomotive, but a few years ago the Dutch railway company (NS) started to use a new red, white and pink livery on their international carriages. The NMBS Class 11s are now also becoming a thing of the past, as more and more Amsterdammers are now being worked by red and white NS locomotives from Trax. Call me nostalgic, but I’ll be sad to see the days when Class 11s don’t come racing through Duffel on their way to and from Amsterdam.
- Camera: Nikon D40
- Lens: Nikon DX AFS 55-200mm
- Exposure: 1/400 sec
- Focal Length: 200mm
- Focal Ratio: f/5.6
- ISO: 800
- Camera Mode: Aperture Priority
Sep
20
Photo of the Week 83 – Grey Willow in Spring
Filed Under Photography on September 20, 2009 | Leave a Comment
This is one of my favourite photos of the whole year so far. To me it says Spring better than anything else I’ve ever shot. It’s the first leaves starting to sprout on a Grey Willow (Salix cinerea) tree growing along the banks of the Royal Canal at Deey Bridge between Maynooth and Leixlip.
- Camera: Nikon D40
- Lens: Nikon DX AFS 55-200mm
- Exposure: 1/250 sec
- Focal Length: 80mm
- Focal Ratio: f/5
- ISO: 400
- Camera Mode: Aperture Priority
Sep
14
Photo of the Week 82 – Lunar Cross (Colour)
Filed Under Photography on September 14, 2009 | Leave a Comment
This week’s Photo of the Week is a re-visiting of the same original image that formed the starting point for the mono-chrome conversion that was Photo of the Week 48. Although I really like the black & white version, the only reason it exists is that I was never happy with the original colour shot. It was lacking that ever so hard to define something that makes photos ‘pop’. The initial photo was taken on St. Patrick’s Day 2008 – so about a year and a half ago. Since then I’ve become a hell of a lot more practised at post-processing, so, this evening I had another go at processing this shot, this time keeping it in colour.
After some tweaking of the blue channel and some selective contrast adjustments with Aperture’s Dodge & Burn plugin I’m now happy enough with the shot to use it as a Photo of the week. I guess the lesson here is never to be afraid to go back and re-edit your old images.
- Camera: Nikon D40
- Lens: Nikon DX AFS 55-200mm
- Exposure: 1/250 sec
- Focal Length: 200mm
- Focal Ratio: f/22
- ISO: 800
- Camera Mode: Aperture Priority
Sep
6
Photo of the Week 81 – Autumn Shadows
Filed Under Photography on September 6, 2009 | Leave a Comment
I’ve taken a lot of shots all around the wonderful grounds of St. Patrick’s College in Maynooth. However, out of those hundreds of shots, this is one of my absolute favourites. Maynooth is always beautiful in autumn, but the light was extra nice when I got this shot, so it really sings.
This is also a very important shot in my development as a photographer. The very first lesson I learned when I started shooting with a DSLR was that the dynamic range is SMALL. This meant that I was constantly being surprised by how much darker shadows are in photographs than they seem while you’re there. After having loads of shots ruined by deep shadows I started to fear and avoid them. It was while I was trying to line up this shot that I had a brain-wave – maybe the key wasn’t to avoid shadows, but to be aware of them. Sure they can destroy a shot, but, if used carefully, they can add to a shot too! In this case, the shadows add interest to what would otherwise be a very bland foreground, as well as providing leading-lines to pull the viewers eye into the shot. This image will always have a place in my heart because it represents a real Eureka moment for me.
- Camera: Nikon D40
- Lens: Nikon DX AFS 18-55mm (D40 kit lens)
- Exposure: 1/500 sec
- Focal Length: 18mm
- Focal Ratio: f/11
- ISO: 400
- Camera Mode: Aperture Priority