The Author – Bart Busschots
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Nov
2
Photo of the Week 37 – Laraghbryan Church
Filed Under Photography on November 2, 2008 | 1 Comment
The ruins of Laraghbryan Church are set amidst an old graveyard and next to a modern grave yard. The whole lot is surrounded by high trees so although the church is only a few hundred yards from the road, many people drive by every day without ever realising the wonders hidden behind those trees. Because of the trees though it’s very hard to get a good shot of these ruins so I’ve had to resort to HDR to even have a chance. I’ve taken a lot of shots of these ruins and I’ve settled on this one as my favourite because of the nice shadows being cast across the church.
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)
- Focal Length: 18mm
- Focal Ratio: F5.0
- ISO: 400
- Camera Mode: Aperture Priority
- Three Brackets:
- Exposure Bias: 0.0 (Exposure: 1/800 sec)
- Exposure Bias: -1.0 (Exposure: 1/1600 sec)
- Exposure Bias: 1.0 (Exposure: 1/400 sec)
Nov
1
Photo of the Week 8 (Revisited)
Filed Under Photography on November 1, 2008 | Leave a Comment
When you’re starting out in digital photography you learn a lot in a year. When I originally processed “Where Dark & Light Collide” I processed it very conservatively. I didn’t crop it, and I tried to remove all dark shadows from the image. This had the effect of washing it out so that it never really showed the drama of the sky that day. Having learned a lot over the last year I re-processed it this week and produced an image that I’m much happier with. At first glance the new version is only subtly different, but for me those subtleties make all the difference. All I did was remove the artificial brightening of the shadows, bump the saturation up a little, warm the white balance slightly, and re-crop the image so that your eye is drawn to the sky more. Here’s the result of my tweaking:
You can see the original version along with all the technical details of the shot in the original post.
Oct
27
Photo of the Week 36
Filed Under Photography on October 27, 2008 | Leave a Comment
I really have no idea why but since I was a young kid this tiny little flower fascinated me. It just seemed too pretty to be genuinely natural and I always thought they mush have just escaped from someone’s garden or something. However, the Common Dog-violet (Viola Riviniana) is a native Irish wild flower. These things are very small, and only really stand a chance in areas where grass won’t over-whelm them. As such they tend to very well in hedgerows and woods. I love this shot because it shows up both the wonderful colour and subtle details of these diminutive beauties.
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: 1/320 sec
- Focal Length: 55mm
- Focal Ratio: F5.6
- ISO: 400
- Camera Mode: Aperture Priority
Oct
18
Photo of the Week 34 & 35
Filed Under Photography on October 18, 2008 | Leave a Comment
With this double-post I’m finally back on schedule with my photo of the week. Since this is a double-bill I decided to pick a theme, these are my two of my favourite pics shot in my native village of Duffel in Belgium.
The first is a fantastic winter scene that greeted me on the first day of my Christmas holiday in December 2007. When you combine a very thick fog with a very heavy frost followed by a clearance in the morning you get an almost fairy-tale-like scene. I took quite a few shots but this is the one I think worked best.
The second shot is of a Thalys express train passing through Duffel with an international express train from Brussels to Amsterdam. These trains are actually French TGVs in a different coat of paint and are part-owned by the national rail companies of France, Belgium, The Netherlands, and Germany. There are very few places where you can get photos of electric trains without pylons in the way, the rail bridge in Duffel is one of those rare places.
For those of you interested in such things, here are the technical details of the first shot:
- Camera: Nikon D40
- Lens: Nikon DX AFS 18-55mm (D40 kit lens)
- Exposure: 1/320 sec
- Focal Length: 18mm
- Focal Ratio: F5.6
- ISO: 200
- Camera Mode: Aperture Priority
- Exposure Compensation: 0.33
And of the second shot:
- Camera: Nikon D40
- Lens: Nikon DX AFS 18-55mm (D40 kit lens)
- Exposure: 1/250 sec
- Focal Length: 30mm
- Focal Ratio: F8
- ISO: 200
- Camera Mode: Auto
Oct
9
Photo of the Week 32 & 33 – Irish Butterflies
Filed Under Photography on October 9, 2008 | 1 Comment
Since I’ve missed two weekends due to server troubles I thought I’d do a double post today. But rather than post two un-related photos I figured it would make more sense to pick two that are related. I’ve taken a lot of butterfly shots this year, and these two have come out as my favourites. It was a hard call to pick just two, but you can see the whole set in my Irish Butterflies Set on Flickr.
The first shot I chose is my best one of the most spectacular butterfly we have in Ireland, the Peacock Butterfly (Inachis io in Latin). We have no other butterflies with such striking colours or such impressive ‘eyes’ on their wings. I got this shot in my Grandmother’s garden near Cavan, Ireland.
The second shot is one of our most bland species, the Small White (Pieris rapae in Latin). Not as interesting as the Green-Veined White, and very small. But I still think this is a beautiful shot. I love the way the zoom lens has completely blackened the background. You’d never guess there was a hedge behind this guy! I took this shot in the Junior Gardens on the St. Patrick’s College Campus (AKA NUI Maynooth South Campus) in Maynooth, Ireland.
For those of you interested in such things, here are the technical details of the first shot:
- Camera: Nikon D40
- Lens: Nikon DX AFS 55-200mm
- Exposure: 1/640 sec
- Focal Length: 200mm
- Focal Ratio: F11
- ISO: 400
- Camera Mode: Aperture Priority
- Exposure Compensation: -1.0
And of the second shot:
- Camera: Nikon D40
- Lens: Nikon DX AFS 55-200mm
- Exposure: 1/1250 sec
- Focal Length: 200mm
- Focal Ratio: F8
- ISO: 200
- Camera Mode: Aperture Priority
- Exposure Compensation: -0.67
Sep
21
Photo of the Week 31 – The Approaching Storm
Filed Under Photography on September 21, 2008 | 1 Comment
I was very lucky not to get very wet while shooting this shot. I should probably have run straight for shelter but it was just too spectacular shot not to take the time capture it. This is a stitching together of five over-lapping shots at 18mm. As soon as I took the shot I bundled the camera into my bag and cycled home as quick as I could, I made it in the door with about ten seconds to spare before the heavens opened!
This shot was taken from Mullen Bridge (the bridge on the Straffan road at the entrance to the train station) looking East towards Dublin. The track you see is the Dublin to Sligo railway line and the canal is the Royal Canal which connects Dublin to the river Shannon.
[tags]panorama, photography, storm, clouds, Maynooth, Ireland, Kildare, Royal Canal[/tags]
Sep
14
Photo of the Week 30 – Vintage Power
Filed Under Photography on September 14, 2008 | 2 Comments
This is an old photo which I recently scanned. It was taken in early January 2000 in my home town of Duffel in Belgium with my trusty old Olympus OM/1. The reason the shot is to grainy is that I used to have a bit of a thing for fast films, in particular Kodak Gold 800 Zoom. As seems to be the norm for this series, I’m not really sure why I like this shot, I just do and have since the first time I saw it when I got my photos back from my local One Hour Photo (remember those?).
This is Belgian electric locomotive number 2334 which rather un-imaginatively belongs to NMBS/SNCB Class 23. These locomotives are still in service today despite now being over 50 years old (having been built between 1955 and 1957).
[tags]NMBS, SNCB, Belgium, Locomotive, Duffel, train, photography[/tags]
Sep
8
Photo of the Week 29 – St. Mary’s By Night
Filed Under Photography on September 8, 2008 | 4 Comments
St. Mary’s Square is the second quadrangle on the St. Patrick’s College campus. It’s smaller and less well known than St. Joseph’s square. The square was rather controversially re-designed with a very modern water garden a decade or two ago. Personally I love it. I think it’s a great melding of the old with the new. This shot was taken on the central island within the water garden with the largest stone fountain in the left foreground.
In many ways this shot is one of the most extreme I’ve ever taken. The only source of light in the scene is the windows around the square. this lead to a gigantic dynamic range with the interior of the windows needing an exposure of a fraction of a second and the interior of the square requiring an exposure of a few minutes. Bridging this range required combining ten exposures over a range of 9 f stops (1 EV steps from -4 to +5) totalling about 8 minutes into a single HDR image.
[tags]Maynooth, Kildare, Ireland, SPCM, HDR, night, photography[/tags]
Aug
31
Photo of the Week 28 – Hawthorn Blossoms
Filed Under Photography on August 31, 2008 | Leave a Comment
Each year in May Irish hedgerows get painted white by Hawthorn blossoms. Each flower is tiny, but a few million of them soon add up! This is a close-up shot of a small bunch of blossoms near the start of the season.
For those of you interested in such things here are some of the technical details of this 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: -0.33
[tags]Maynooth, Kildare, Ireland, Hawthorn, flower, blossom, white, photography[/tags]
Aug
24
Photo of the Week 27 – St. Mary’s Church
Filed Under Photography on August 24, 2008 | Leave a Comment
This shot shows the tower at the back of St. Mary’s protestant church in Maynooth as seen from the St. Patrick’s College/NUI Maynooth South Campus. In some ways this almost a cliché in Maynooth. Very few photographers pass through the arch outside Callan Hall without thinking “wow, this arch frames that church tower perfectly”. For that reason I can take no credit what-so-ever for the concept of this shot, just for the implementation. It’s amazing how many different shots you can get from the identical spot by changing your height above the ground and your focal length. I must have taken about 50 shots before choosing this one as my favourite.
For those of you interested in such things here are some of 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: F11
- ISO: 200
- Camera Mode: Aperture Priority
- Exposure Compensation: 0.0
[tags]Maynooth, Kildare, Ireland, NUIM, SPCM, church, tower, arch, photography[/tags]