London 2012: Men’s Triathlon

7 August 2012

Greenwich

19 July 2012

I’ve been trying for a while to think of a way to start this post that isn’t ‘My wife and I decided to visit Greenwich last month’, since that is how I always start posts these days. I’m still not doing great at the picking of the words and the putting of the words in an appealing order, so for now I’m stuck with it, for that I apologise.

My wife and I decided to visit Greenwich last month.

Cough.

We’d not been before, and had been talking about exploring the area for ages, and we finally got round to it when we had some time off around the Jubilee weekend.

Somewhat ironically, the first thing we did when we arrived was descend into the Greenwich foot tunnel and head away from the area.

1/4sec, f/3.5, ISO 1000, exposure bias +0.33, 18mm

Hard Rock Calling

17 July 2012

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Hard Rock Calling is probably one of my favourite festivals – not that I go to many. Of the festivals in the UK it’s the one that is a closer match to my musical taste (as eclectic as that taste is), with the added bonus that it’s in Hyde Park in the middle of London so its easy to get to and doesn’t require camping in a muddy field.

I attended Hard Rock Calling in 2009 when Bruce Springsteen was headlining and it was without exception the greatest concert I’ve ever been to and probably one of the greatest events of my life, musical or otherwise. Hell, I have Bruce’s performance on Blu-ray and break it out every now and then when I feel like exercising my sound system.

Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band are hands down the best live performers in the world today. I’ve not seen to a concert with half the energy and passion that those guys put out for three hours straight, barely even stopping for a breath between songs. It’s exhausting enough watching it at home on disc, I don’t know how they do it, especially since Bruce is a ripe 63 years old.

Last weekend, Bruce was back at Hard Rock playing the Saturday. As an added bonus, Paul Simon was playing the Sunday, on his Graceland reunion tour. How could we turn that down?

Scenes from the Plantation

14 June 2012

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Our final visit to the Waterhouse Plantation in Bushy Park features some of the more scenic and abstract imagery from the parkland. We’ve already looked at the Waterhouse itself, some of the wildlife of the Plantation, and explored my creative-fog-induced obsession with recreating a photograph I took in April. Let’s get back to some post-processed scenes, such as this one.

a bench in front of some partially desaturated flowers

1/250sec, f/9, ISO 160, exposure bias -1.0, 18mm

With this image I’ve returned to an old technique I call selective chromatic removal. In other words, I’ve desaturated the red, yellow, green, cyan and blue hues and left only magenta, which has also left a hint of colour in the ground.

There are various streams and water channels (I’m stopping short of calling them rivers, since they are relatively small, but possibly too big to be considered streams; I’m not too ‘up’ on the technical classification of waterways) criss-crossing the plantation. Where these meet the pathways there are bridges of various types; in some places these were wooden structures, in others low-lying brick constructs.

A Bridge Too Far

10 June 2012

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One of the more popular images from my most recent trip to Richmond Park was this one, which I loved for the perspective of the shot and the textures of the wood. Because I was in a creative rut, when I found bridges in the Waterhouse Plantation that looked a bit like the one in the image I couldn’t help but attempt to recreate it and play about with the concept.

1/640sec, f/7.1, ISO 250, exposure bias -1.67 (+0.47), 18mm

The Creatures of the Waterhouse

9 June 2012

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1/30sec, f/5.6, ISO 100, exposure bias -1.0, 135mm

There are two main types of image I tend to take in environments like the Waterhouse Plantation, especially when I’m going through a creative dry spell. The first are ones like those I posted yesterday: landscapes or still lives made interesting by image composition or post-processing. The second is of things happening, such as wildlife flitting past.

The squirrel above actually posed for this shot. He stopped and held this position until I took a picture, and then he ran off.

In another part of the plantation, there was a large bush which was, and there is only one way to describe this, COVERED IN BEEEES.

Return to the Waterhouse Plantation

8 June 2012

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I‘ve not been posting a huge amount over the last couple of weeks. The reasons are good: I’ve been busy shooting and editing photos; actually doing what a photographer should be doing, I’d say. We’ve just had a bumper weekend in the UK, expanded by me having a couple of days off before the weekend, giving me plenty of time to go out shooting, but not much time to sit down and process the photos.

I’m finally catching up with myself. Over the weekend I shot over 1,100 frames, which I’ve now edited down to less than 200. Those will come later, however, because this batch of images are from the weekend before.

As I mentioned in my last monthly review, I’m trying to keep my posts shorter with less images, so I’m breaking up this trip into several posts. This is the first.

As I also noted in the review, I’m suffering from a bit of creative block at the moment. It’s a bit tricky to explain; I’m not ‘feeling’ the images as I take them, I’m not in what is often referred to as the ‘zone’. Practically, it means I’m not finding the interesting angles on subjects, I’m not thinking outside the box, I’m not being creative with use of lenses, I’m even forgetting to check and use my camera settings (on Monday I found myself wondering why I was needing to shoot at an ISO of 2000 outside in daylight, it took a while to notice the aperture was set at f/22). I’m struggling through, however, forcing myself to take images to try to get the creative juices flowing, like priming the pump. My wife is actually doing something very similar on her new blog, which you should go check out, although she is purely a writer. It’s a little worrying we’re both suffering from creative block at the same time, perhaps it’s something they’re putting in the water to subdue the population.

Although the weather has now turned back into the chilly grey blandness for which the UK is internationally renowned, for a couple of weeks we had really rather warm, bright, sunny weather. To make the most of it, I headed out to the Waterhouse Plantation in Bushy Park. I’ve been there before, just over a year ago, so I knew it was home to plenty of flowers, insects, and idyllic landscapes.

One of the reasons I enjoy doing the “Return to…” posts I post here from time to time is it is always interesting to return to familiar locations with a new perspective. For me, that new perspective can be new equipment (such as a macro lens or the f/1.8 ‘nifty-fifty’), or just new techniques or ways of thinking about taking or processing images. Looking back at my last trip to the Plantation only thirteen months ago, it’s amazing to see the difference in the quality and variety of the photographs.

The first thing I came across was the waterhouse that gives the plantation its name. And almost immediately found myself in a situation I often seem to find myself in: a post-processing quandary. Several, in fact.

Richmond Park in Spring

22 April 2012

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Last weekend featured some pretty decent weather. Since I’d not been out for any serious shooting trips for a while I figured hey, when in doubt, Richmond Park. I’ve been there numerous times before, and usually gotten some interesting results. In fact, it was the subject of my first real photo trip for this blog, almost fifteen months ago.

It was sunny, if not all that warm; perfect weather for bike riding, our usual way of enjoying the park.

Despite once again returning to a very familiar location, there was still plenty of scope for new images. Over the last year I’ve grown as a photographer, learning new ways to process images and different ways of looking at things. That, and the presence of wildlife is always a bit of a wild card as far as photography is concerned.

My first image was an example of the former; this is simply not an image I would have taken before this year.

1/80sec, f/10, ISO 100, 18mm

Return to the Royal Parks

15 January 2012

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Almost two years ago, in a trip that would be one of the last ones before I realised that Facebook wasn’t really all that good for sharing photos, my wife and I (although this is long enough ago that she wasn’t my wife at the time) took a stroll into Kingston, which ended up being a full-day, seven mile round trip along the Thames and through Hampton Court Gardens and Bushy Park (I mentioned this trip briefly in the opening preamble for Richmond Park in Autumn).

On the Friday before last, I decided to run a similar route, but in reverse; starting in Teddington I headed out through Bushy Park before crossing into the grounds of Hampton Court Palace on my way towards the Thames and Kingston.

The original motivation for this trip was yet another new toy I had received the evening prior: a Canon EF 100mm f/2.8 Macro USM lens (oh how I love writing down accurate model numbers). This is a lens I’ve been wanting to buy since I got my 60D back in July, so when I got some cash at Xmas I used it toward buying it for myself. You can read a little more on the lens on my kit page.

The original inspiration of the trip was some shots of flowers I’d taken the last time; I figured having another attempt at them with a macro lens would generate some interesting photos on such a sunny day. What I failed to take into account is that it is still winter, whereas the previous trip was in late spring.

I also failed to take into account the photo opportunities I would encounter before I even got to where I expected the flowers to be.

Sights and Sounds of London Town

8 January 2012

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This post is one I’ve been planning for quite a while. In fact, this post was originally created back in July, when the idea came to me and the best way I could think of to remember it was to start a new post with the title so I wouldn’t forget it – that and, it has a hint of an obligation to actually do it.

And thus, I have done it – or rather, I have started it. I see this project as an ongoing one, one I will return to in the future.

The Sights and Sounds of London Town - named for the Richard Thompson song – is a project documenting London in pictures. The idea is to try to capture not just the obvious bits of the city, but some of the sights that aren’t always seen by the tourists (on a pedantic note, this entry is only photographs, so there won’t be any sounds in this one, but I haven’t ruled out the possibility of video elements down the road).

For my first trip out, I didn’t head too far off the beaten path, although I did still cover over six miles on foot in a single day, wandering around not really caring where I ended up. Having not spent much time photographing London I felt I needed to get some of the ‘touristy’ stuff out of my system, but I’ve still yielded some results that I’m quite proud of. I’ve done quite a lot more post-processing of my images this time (there is a both a photo-stitched panorama and a HDR image in this set), and experimented with some different sorts of photography than I usually do.

Creative Splurges

“Creativity is a natural extension of our enthusiasm.” – Earl Nightingale

Category Archives: Royal Parks

London 2012: Men’s Triathlon

Greenwich

Hard Rock Calling

Scenes from the Plantation

A Bridge Too Far

The Creatures of the Waterhouse

Return to the Waterhouse Plantation

Richmond Park in Spring

Return to the Royal Parks

Sights and Sounds of London Town

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