Another month, another four weeks with only a couple of posts. This is not how I want things to be, but life seems to be full of lots of stupid little distractions lately. The struggle is trying to figure out how to get things back on track.

The two posts in April were two polar opposites. The first was a big project over a year in the making, the other the sort of ‘easy’ post that doesn’t take much to throw together.

Some More Portraits was technically started in April 2012 when I began to compile a new list of portrait images after being quite pleased with my first portraits post (and its  short follow-up). My portraits posts are a departure from my normal post format for this blog. Most of my posts are connected by virtue of them being taken on the same day; sometimes a single trip is spun out into two (or more) posts, but usually the theory is, single trip = single post. My portraits posts, however, are different. Their connection is purely thematic.

Although I started the post in April, it was slow going. Every time I contemplated actually writing the post, some more portraits would turn up, or I’d go out and shoot something more topical or interesting, and I’d get distracted. Eventually I had over 100 portrait images waiting, and then 200.

Once the portraits shortlist had grown pretty sizeable, I began contemplating the best ways of showcasing the amount of material. For quite some time I planned to split the post into groups of people, making it a little bit more manageable for you to read in one chunk. It was at about this time I quit working on the main Some More Portraits draft I’d been maintaining for a while.

The catalyst that finally prompted me to get the post was my Lastolite softbox. I was so happy with the results I wanted to share them, and yet by my own rules they were being held up by the ever-unfinished portraits post. I started writing them up in their own post, imaginatively titled Softbox Portraits, which was going to be the first of the ‘split’ posts. But then I had a bit of doubt: I’d be starting the series of portraits from the end, with what I felt was my strongest stuff. I didn’t really want to do that.

When I went and had a closer look at the original Some More Portraits draft, I realised I had originally begun it in early April 2012. At the time, it was a few days before the first anniversary of starting the post. The idea hit me: I could call it A Year of Portraits instead and publish it on the first anniversary of starting it. So, finally, I sat down to put in a concentrated effort on completing the portraits post I’d been talking about writing for a good year.

I soon missed my own self-imposed deadline, which I guess shouldn’t be all that surprising. Following the ‘year of portraits’ concept I ensured the images were ordered chronologically, but soon returned to calling it Some More Portraits – its original title from a year ago – after I realised some or the portraits were over a year old. That, and I preferred the original title. 

In the end, the post was published only a week after my original target. It wasn’t particularly well received, however – it only received eleven likes, and not a single comment – a mediocre reception at best. In fact, I’ve not had any comments on this blog at all since Fame in March. 

Some More Portraits snuck out mid-April. Five days later I posted Instagram #16. My Instagram posts are often quick and dirty, but I’m usually pleased with the content of the images I’m posting. My Instagram images are pretty backlogged, but I’m working my way through them. I like to avoid publishing Instagram posts too close to each other, however – on this occasion, I only posted Instagram #16 when I knew it would knock Instagram #15 off of my ten-post-strong ‘recent posts’ list.

Instagram #16 ended up more popular than Some More Portraits, with seventeen likes. This is a bit frustrating when I compare the amount of effort put into each post.

That was the last post in April. I only managed to complete two posts in the month, which was disappointing. As I eluded to at the opening of this post, life has been a bit distracting lately. I’ve been struggling to find the energy to work on posts, and when I do, it’s always been devoted to working on the Daily Photo in order to keep up with it’s ‘photo a day’ remit. `it doesn’t help that a lot of the sets that currently remain in my backlog are large ones that need a lot of work. I’ve been struggling with it for a little while now, but hopefully it’s just a case of getting my head back in the right gear.

The Daily Photo is continuing unabated, not missing a day so far. It’s also had some pretty positive feedback from its posts, including twenty likes on Signs of Spring, which I didn’t think was my best effort of the month, but there you go.

The Daily Photo also saw an increase in hits in April to 128, the first month-on-month increase since December. This was helped by a massive and unexplained spike of 49 hits on April 13th. It also now has 176 followers, having added 25 in the month, which seems remarkable given the number of hits. I’m not sure I’ll ever know how many of those follows are genuine but it’s still encouraging.

Creative Splurges, meanwhile, had 227 hits in April, continuing a decline that’s been happening since Christmas and the lowest number of hits for a single month since December 2011 (I’m pretty sure I said the same thing last month). I have, however, managed to add 14 followers to the fold. I guess at some point the Daily Photo will overtake Creative Splurges. The stats suggest only three people found their way to Creative Splurges from The Daily Photo in April, which doesn’t really bode well for the ‘drive traffic to Creative Splurges‘ task that it was originally created for.

I’m planning for better in May. My niece’s and dad’s birthdays which catalysed the new portraits post are happening again this year, as birthdays are wont to do; these might not take so long to post this time. I also intend, for what it’s worth, to stick my head into some of the more sizeable sets in my backlog. I also have a smaller set that has been edited and just needs to be written up.

May is a new month.

Thanks, as always, for reading.
Rob

That’s presumably because it is once again time for me to show off another small selection of my Instagram photographs.

The backlog I have for my Instagram shots is nowhere as voluminous as for the rest of my photography, but there’s still a few I feel the need to share with you. In this set we have a few shots from the snow that hit the UK a month or so ago, and some random shots of various bits of London, including a pub, an Ikea, and Waterloo Station.

If you like these, then check out my other Instagram posts, or check me out on Instagram directly.

My last portraits post contained only a handful of images, which I believed, at the time, to be the sum total of the portraits I had taken up to that point. That post contained a dozen images, all of which I was very proud of. Only a day or so after publishing that post, I discovered a few more images on my computer which were too good to leave be, so they got a quick followup post of their own. My thinking was, it had taken years to build up that many images that could be considered portraits, so it might be a while until I had enough to be able to publish another ‘portraits’ post; I’d better get them out whilst the proverbial iron was warm.

Since then, I’ve been sifting any portrait-like images from sets, holding them over and compiling another portrait set. As I procrastinated over writing the post, the shortlist of images got longer and longer. After building confidence photographing my niece and family (and to an extent, it becoming expected that I would occasionally photograph people as well as things) I began shooting more and more people. The shortlist continued to grow. Always writing more traditional posts, but quietly putting any portraits aside for later.

Eventually, the levees were going to break. So here we are, finally, finally looking at the portraits post I’ve been talking about for over a year. So let’s take a look at what I’ve got. I’m going to go through these in chronological order so that, hopefully, the learning curve can be apparent.

The first few images actually predate my first portraits post, images I overlooked or simply forgot whilst compiling the first compendium.

1/15sec, f/3.5, ISO 100, exposure bias -0.33, 18mm (cropped)

Although to be fair, this image of my friend Lewis was probably missed the first time round because the original in-camera image looked like this.

This next image is from just before the Bournemouth Air Festival in 2011; in fact, it’s a shot of my wife taken on the journey.

1/40sec, f/3.5, ISO 100, exposure bias -1.0, 18mm

Before we get too far, I feel obliged to point out that this is going to be an image-heavy, text-light sort of post. I’d be grateful if you stick with it, because I’m really proud of these images.

Here, my best mate James is surprised by the lack of Creme Eggs, them having all been used in the Creme Egg Omelette we were in the process of developing.

1/50sec, f/4, ISO 1250, exposure bias -1.0, 18mm

And then, in the snow, revelling in the aftermath of such a creation.

1/30sec, f/4.5, ISO 1250, exposure bias -1.0, 18mm

Maybe ‘revelling’ isn’t the right word.

We’re now past the point where I had published my original portraits post, and buoyed by the quality and reactions of the post, I had become a little more self-aware when taking photographs of people I knew.

At some point preceding that I had been declared my niece’s ‘official’ photographer, so there was also the expectation on me that I would be photographing her and her family whenever we were in the same place. Much like a trip to London we took in March 2012.

1/400sec, f/7.1, ISO 100, exposure bias -0.67, 64mm

This image actually currently serves as my sister-in-law’s Facebook cover photo, which is one of the main ways I measure the success of my portraits – if they’re prepared to use it to identify themselves on the world’s most popular social network, I think I’ve done okay (Catherine has, in fact, used two of my images as Facebook profile images in recent times – neither of which actually appear in this set, because they’ve already appeared in others).

You’ll notice I tend to prefer monochrome in portraits. This is partly because I find it does wonders for bringing out the details in people’s faces, but quite simply I find a lot of the images work better in black and white. That isn’t always the case, as this shot from later in the same day as the preceding image was taken shows.

1/60sec, f/5.6, ISO 500, exposure bias -0.67, 30mm (cropped)

It brings out the colours of the twilight setting. But I find monochrome works too.

1/50sec, f/5.6, ISO 500, exposure bias -0.67, 30mm

And every so often I get distracted by the background.

1/160sec, f/5.6, ISO 500, exposure bias -0.67, 29mm

As is often the case, when I’m experimenting with photography, my wife gets caught up in it. Here, she sits patiently whilst I played about portraiting with my macro lens.

1/1000sec, f/2.8, ISO 500, 100mm

As is often my way, when I take one picture I can’t help but take several more. Sometimes, more than one of them is keepable.

1/640sec, f/2.8, ISO 500, 100mm

1/1250sec, f/2.8, ISO 500, 100mm

Although often I don’t always catch her in the most flattering of poses.

1/250sec, f/5.6, ISO 1600, 62mm

(that last shot, obviously, is from a different time).

Last April I went along to a barbecue for my niece Alayna’s first birthday, again in my capacity as official photographer. Filled with many people, it gave several opportunities to get some interesting images, this next one being my favourite.

1/125sec, f/3.5, ISO 800, exposure bias -0.33, 18mm

That is another image that has become the Facebook Cover Photo of the person in it.

As it turned out to be a bit of a rainy day, however, most of the party took place inside, where, as ever, I struggled with available light, eventually pushing the ISO up to 5000 to get shots that were even approaching sharpness (but still not as sharp as I’d like).

1/30sec, f/4.5, ISO 5000, exposure bias -0.67, 36mm

1/30sec, f/5.6, ISO 5000, exposure bias -0.67, 106mm

A week later, I found myself at another birthday barbecue, this time for my dad. This meant that some of the people I photographed had more interesting faces.

1/30sec, f/9, ISO 400, 113mm

1/60sec, f/9, ISO 400, 135mm

This is my brother. I’ve not photographed him much in the past – the previous image of him I have dates back to 2006 – but it turns out he has really quite photogenic eyes.

1/40sec, f/9, ISO 400, exposure bias +0.33, 135mm

1/50sec, f/9, ISO 400, exposure bias +0.33, 85mm

I’m not sure why I was shooting at f/9. It was a year ago and everything from this day is at that aperture so it is entirely possible I forgot to change it. I do that less these days.

1/40sec, f/9, ISO 400, exposure bias +0.33, 135mm

Unfortunately once my brother got tired of me photographing him he started to pull faces.

1/50sec, f/9, ISO 400, exposure bias +0.33, 85mm

There were plenty of others at the barbecue to shoot, however. My aunt…

1/60sec, f/9, ISO 400, exposure bias +0.33, 135mm

A family friend…

1/15sec, f/9, ISO 400, exposure bias +0.33, 135mm

And my semi-cousin.

1/40sec, f/9, ISO 400, 135mm

1/25sec, f/9, ISO 500, exposure bias +0.33, 18mm

That was the barbecue. The next day, I had a visit from my niece, giving yet another opportunity to get some photos.

1/160sec, f/1.8, ISO 400, exposure bias -0.33, 50mm

1/125sec, f/1.8, ISO 400, exposure bias -0.33, 50mm

1/80sec, f/1.8, ISO 400, exposure bias -0.33, 50mm

Almost all of the portraits I take (and I should note, I use the phrase ‘portrait’ to mean ‘any image that is only of a person’, rather than any pre-existing technical definition) fall into two categories: those shot on family visits, in which I’m mainly shooting people, or shots grabbed quickly on trips elsewhere, which are often of my wife and usually only number a few per trip.

This next image was taken whilst we were on our short trip to Greenwich last year. My wife doesn’t like it that much, but I do (the image I mean, not Greenwich). Usually I’m wrong about these things but you’re more than welcome to pick a side in the comments.

1/200sec, f/5.6, ISO 640, exposure bias -0.33, 280mm

Later that same day we went for a meal, and found ourselves sitting by a nice bright window. At this point I was beginning to get used to using light to my advantage rather than work against it so whilst we were waiting for our food to arrive I couldn’t help but take my camera out. Fortunately my wife was cooperative.

1/25sec, f/5, ISO 640, exposure bias +1.0, 47mm

1/60sec, f/5, ISO 1250, exposure bias +0.33, 47mm

1/60sec, f/5.6, ISO 1250, exposure bias +0.33, 64mm

1/50sec, f/5, ISO 1250, exposure bias +0.33, 53mm

Step forward a few days to the Twickenham Jubilee Festival, which my wife and I visited along with her sister, brother-and-sister in law and our niece. I still struggle with explaining my familial relationships in these things, one day I’ll just straight up post a family tree and let you figure it all out.

With so much family about there was plenty of opportunity to grab some portrait shots. Primarily of my very photogenic niece.

1/25sec, f/5.6, ISO 640, exposure bias -0.67, 120mm

1/400sec, f/5, ISO 1000, 47mm

Still, it’s not all babies. Here is my brother-in-law, and his sister, who I surmise is my sister-in-law but I remain uncertain.

1/100sec, f/9, ISO 320, exposure bias -0.33, 45mm (cropped)

Here, meanwhile, is a far better shot of my brother-in-law, in which he’s actually looking at the camera.

1/200sec, f/9, ISO 320, exposure bias -0.67, 69mm

I was shooting at f/9 again. I’m not sure why, I think I was trying to ensure everything was in focus after a few instances of focussing on the wrong bit of someone’s face.

After attending the festival, we found ourselves relaxing in a park, giving me more chance to photograph people, including an escaping baby.

1/500sec, f/8, ISO 320, 18mm

1/1000sec, f/5.6, ISO 160, 62mm

Don’t worry though, she was soon caught.

1/640sec, f/5, ISO 160, 18mm

This is one of those images that will always bug me, because I took a shot just before it that is better framed, but in which the expressions aren’t quite as good.

1/800sec, f/5, ISO 160, 18mm

Shortly thereafter we went to a pub, and fortunately sat by a window giving me agreeable light again.

1/50sec, f/3.5, ISO 1250, 18mm

I even managed to get quite a few shots where my niece is looking down the camera, sometimes subdued…

1/100sec, f/5, ISO 1600, 48mm

But often quite content.

1/125sec, f/4, ISO 1600, 30mm (cropped)

1/400sec, f/5, ISO 1600, 44mm

It was experiences like this that finally encouraged me to get myself a flashgun. A couple of weeks after the Jubilee Festival I bought a Canon Speedlite 430EX II, and quickly began to experiment with it.

1.6sec, f/4.5, ISO 100, 37mm

In the early days it took a bit of fiddling about to get decent results – in the shot above the flash was bouncing off something white in order to diffuse the light effectively. I did a fair amount of playing about when I got the flash; most of the images ended up in a post called Getting Flashy, one of the few exceptions to my ‘portraits get their own post’ rule.

Whilst I was still getting used to the flash, I often found myself using natural light.

1/100sec, f/1.8, ISO 2000, exposure bias -1.0, 50mm

There was still plenty of occasions to photograph family ahead of me. In July we went to the Byfleet Parish Day with my nieces and nephews.

1/250sec, f/5.6, ISO 100, 135mm

And also my brother-in-law, who was waylaid by our niece and nephew.

1/200sec, f/5, ISO 100, 55mm

Meanwhile, my niece Alayna was not looking too cheery (although I’m sure she had a good time).

1/160sec, f/1.8, ISO 100, exposure bias +0.33, 135mm

Sheltering from a downpour during an Olympic event some weeks later, I once again found myself sitting across a table from my wife near a window (the same table at which we had this scone and cupcake). This time, I decided to give my macro lens a whirl.

1/200sec, f/2.8, ISO 2500, 100mm

This remains one of my favourite shots I’ve ever taken of my wife.

Jumping forward a couple of weeks – as chronologically ordered posts spread out over the course of a year are wont to do – to the family gathering that formed a second exception to the ‘portraits get their own post’ rule, the post Bubbles (which remains one of my favourite posts in the history of Creative Splurges). I admit, I held a few images from that post back for this one.

1/40sec, f/5.6, ISO 400, 64mm

The best thing about the restaurant we were in was the lighting. Oh man, the lighting! It was okay for Alayna in the image above, but for Lewis, sitting across from me at the table, I couldn’t have set the lighting up better if I was in a studio.

1/60sec, f/5.6, ISO 800, 126mm

You’ve got key light, backlight, fill light, and a neutral background. It would have taken hours of setting up in a studio for me to get anything close to this (not least because I’ve never spent any time in a studio), but here was nature, laying it all out for me.

Lewis, helpfully, was glad to pose a bit.

1/80sec, f/5.6, ISO 1000, 135mm

My other sister-in-law (who is professionally photographed enough for me to rarely bother) rather nicely described these as ‘funeral shots’ – the sort you’d find at a funeral, in a frame resting on a coffin. Macabre, but kind of accurate.

After this, I had a bit of a break from portrait-style images. I didn’t take any suitable photographs of people from this day in August right up to Christmas Day. On Christmas Day we were again with family – as you’d expect.

1/200sec, f/5.6, ISO 800, exposure bias -0.33, 47mm

As you can see, Alayna is getting bigger. My pictures of her start when she is still relatively factory fresh and I’m adding more all of the time. Since I pass all of these images along to her parents it sure is going to be fun for her when she brings her first boy- or girlfriend home.

1/125sec, f/5.6, ISO 800, exposure bias -0.33, 75mm

Especially as she can, like all toddlers, get monumentally snotty sometimes.

1/60sec, f/5, ISO 800, exposure bias -0.33, 18mm

It wasn’t just my wife’s family we saw over Christmas. My twin cousin had also relatively recently grown another child, one with amazing eyes.

1/60sec, f/5.6, ISO 5000, 60mm

He’s not one, however, to suffer fools, apparently.

1/100sec, f/5.6, ISO 5000, 62mm

And here’s his older sister, returning for a second time in this long post.

1/80sec, f/5.6, ISO 6400, exposure bias -1.33, 60mm

And my other twin cousin.

1/80sec, f/5.6, ISO 6400, 79mm

2013 was only a couple of weeks old before we had another visit from Alayna and her parents.

1/250sec, f/1.8, ISO 1000, exposure bias -1.0, 50mm

That’s not Alayna. She hasn’t grown that fast. This is her.

1/80sec, f/1.8, ISO 1000, 50mm

1/60sec, f/1.8, ISO 1000, 50mm

On this visit, I shot almost exclusively with my nifty fifty at f/1.8 to make the most of the light available. The downside was, as it was still deep into winter, was that even with natural light coming through the window, we needed to have the lights on inside, creating a bit of a clash of colour temperatures. I was able to fix it quite often, like in this next shot – one of my favourites, and one that’s been up on my wall next to my desk at work since the day after this was taken.

1/50sec, f/1.8, ISO 1000, 50mm

I would like for the Krispy Kreme company to give me money for this one. Or, I will take payments in doughnuts. I suspect, however, that promoting the feeding of high-sugar doughnuts to toddlers is something that would be frowned upon (especially for a product that declares on the underside of its box that it “may have an adverse effect on activity and attention in children”).

Speaking of small attention spans, my brother-in-law looks pretty excited by this crayon.

1/60sec, f/1.8, ISO 1600, 50mm

1/160sec, f/1.8, ISO 1600, 50mm

1/80sec, f/1.8, ISO 1600, 50mm

Buoyed by this fresh batch of portraits, I started looking at ways of softening the light coming from my flashgun to get better, more natural results with ideally less faffing about. Firstly I experimented with using kitchen roll to diffuse the light a little. It took several sheets to get a noticeable effect.

0.3sec, f/3.5, ISO 100, 18mm

You might recognise this as the image I’ve been using as my Twitter profile picture for a while.

It wasn’t good enough for me, so I started looking into alternatives.

In the meantime, I attended a meal with lots of family, so of course I took my camera. Being in a restaurant, however, I avoided using flash, forcing me to use higher ISOs or risk slower shutter speeds.

1/20sec, f/5.6, ISO 2000, 69mm

1/50sec, f/4, ISO 2000, 28mm

As you can see, I struggled a bit with getting the colour balance right, meaning a lot of times I ended up using monochrome, like in this photo of my mum.

1/50sec, f/4, ISO 2000, 28mm

After this, I returned to experimenting a bit more with my portrait photography in a more controlled environment, at home. 

I started out with some natural light stuff, using the decent-sized window in my living room.

1/80sec, f/1.8, ISO 100, exposure bias -0.33, 50mm

The week later, a got another new toy: a Lastolite soft box kit. Suddenly, all sorts of new portrait opportunities had opened up for me.

1/160sec, f/5, ISO 320, 38mm

With it, I can create much more soft light on subjects’ faces, instead of the harsh, directed light one usually gets with an unfiltered flash. The results I’ve gotten with this box have been really quite pleasing.

1/250sec, f/6.3, ISO 125, 24mm

Despite diffusing the light, I was still able to direct it effectively – behind me in the above shots is my living room, just unlit – and the flash was being directed such that it wasn’t lighting the background at all. It also has the added bonus of adding nice little squares of light reflected on my eyes.

Once I had the softbox, you couldn’t stop me from experimenting. Following my acquisition of it I took hundreds of self-portraits, experimenting with positioning of the light, with expressions on my face, and with post-processing techniques.

1/250sec, f/6.3, ISO 125, 36mm

1/250sec, f/6.3, ISO 125, 36mm

All of this shooting was done on manual, with the flash mounted on a grip and connected to the camera via a cable. I had the camera set up on a GorillaPod on a table, held the flash/softbox combination in one hand and fired the shutter using a cable remote in the other. I’d closed up the aperture to f/6.3 partly to increase the depth of field and keep more of me in focus, and partly to restrict the light coming in (the shutter tops out at 1/250th when a flash is attached, unless you switch to the high-speed setting).

I tried various different positions, and only came to really appreciate how each looked when editing the pictures later. This next one has become one of my favourites, a really lucky combination of lighting, framing and expression.

1/250sec, f/6.3, ISO 125, 36mm

I’m also quite glad I made the choice to wear a black t-shirt, which allowed the rest of me to disappear into the background.

1/250sec, f/6.3, ISO 125, 36mm

I also played about with fully side-on light. I quite like the end result.

1/250sec, f/6.3, ISO 125, 36mm

Another option I had a go at was lighting more from below. The results of that were a bit different.

1/250sec, f/6.3, ISO 125, 36mm

In many ways, portraits are like sex: something I really like doing, but usually no-one else is willing so I have to practise on myself. From time to time, however, my wife will participate.

1/250sec, f/6.3, ISO 125, 18mm

1/250sec, f/6.3, ISO 125, 18mm

I really like these images, but it does look a little like two floating disembodies heads having a fight.

Having got my wife to get involved, I shot her for a bit.

1/250sec, f/6.3, ISO 125, 64mm

Unlike most of my other softbox portraits, for this image I lowered the contrast a bit, to bring out the detail in the irises of my wife’s eyes. It has brought out the background a bit, but I don’t dislike that.

1/250sec, f/6.3, ISO 125, 64mm

As you can see, I’ve started playing about with sepia. It’s a little strong here, but in later images I’ve toned it down a bit. I find I very much like the hint of colour in an otherwise very grey picture.

1/250sec, f/6.3, ISO 125, 64mm

Something else I’ve played about with in these images is the saturation. A lot of the as-shot photos were a touch on the yellow side, but I found that by lowering the saturation a little it fixed the problem and made for a more interesting tone.

I also played about a little with airbrushing, just because I could. It was something my iMac didn’t like as it managed to crash it a couple of times. I’m not sure why.

1/250sec, f/6.3, ISO 125, 87mm

We also tried some dramatic uplighting.

1/250sec, f/11, ISO 320, 28mm

And slightly more ‘normal’ poses.

1/250sec, f/11, ISO 320, 28mm

Fortunately, my often-patient wife was happy to throw a few poses as I played about with lighting and compositions. Well, she says she was happy, but she manages to not look it in some of these images.

1/250sec, f/11, ISO 320, 38mm

1/250sec, f/11, ISO 320, 38mm

1/250sec, f/11, ISO 320, 38mm

1/250sec, f/11, ISO 320, 38mm

1/250sec, f/11, ISO 320, 38mm

I really loved playing about with the softbox. So much so, that not long after this round of playing about, I nabbed myself a cheap second flashgun off of the internet (a YN-560 II, not a knockout lens by any means but it only cost £50) and an equally cheap mini diffuser, the intention being to do some more creative, controlled portraits.

New kit in hand, I tried setting up another shot, this time with my back against a large, off-white wall. I set up the big softbox on my Speedlite on the grip as before, but this time I set up the YN-560 behind me to illuminate the background, and set both flashes to be wirelessly triggered by the camera.

For some reason, it didn’t work. Whatever I tried, the second flash fired too late and so it might as well have not been firing at all. However, being relatively close to the background meant that the primary flash in the softbox lit it up a little, giving me some backlighting.

1/250sec, f/7.1, ISO 100, 52mm

1/40sec, f/5, ISO 200, 52mm

One thing I really like about these images – apart from the presence of a background giving a bit more depth to the photos – is the extra little speck of light reflected in my eyes, from the camera’s trigger flash. If you can’t see it in the in-line image above, then you can click to embiggen.

1/40sec, f/5, ISO 200, 52mm

1/250sec, f/5, ISO 200, 52mm

If, at this point, you’re thinking, ‘this is all well and good Rob, but I want to see this softbox, and where you were positioning it’, well then you’re in luck. I actually really like this next image. I’m thinking I’ll put it as the image on my About page.

1/250sec, f/5, ISO 200, 18mm

This was the penultimate day of shooting the portraits that you’ll see in this post. Like many of the things I own, I play with them incessantly for the first few days, and then put it aside until I need it properly.

1/250sec, f/5, ISO 200, 29mm

1/250sec, f/5, ISO 200, 29mm

1/250sec, f/5, ISO 200, 33mm

This may all seem a bit narcissistic, but I much prefer to practice on myself in private so that when I need to do it in front of other people it looks like I know what I’m doing.

My final stop on this chronological tour of the portraits I’ve taken over the last year or so is another birthday party, this time for my five-year-old niece. I packed light this time, leaving the Lastolite softbox at home and bringing a smaller selection of lenses. I ended up shooting mostly with my nifty fifty.

As if often the case at a kid’s birthday party, the conditions weren’t exactly controlled. I didn’t use my flash at all, and had to deal with the noise from shooting at high ISOs. Still, I got some shots I liked.

1/80sec, f/5, ISO 2500, 47mm

I like this shot, a toddler’s eye view of mummy. Don’t worry about the fact she’s wearing fairy wings.

Speaking of Alayna, and this post’s inadvertent tracking of her growing up, on this day she was recovering from a pox.

1/60sec, f/5.6, ISO 3200, 92mm

Kids party that this was, Alayna was dressed as a fairy.

1/320sec, f/5, ISO 5000, 53mm

My nephew George, meanwhile, was dressed like Peter Pan.

1/320sec, f/1.8, ISO 1000, exposure bias +0.33, 50mm

And also, it being a party for five-year-olds, there was plenty of balloons about.

1/250sec, f/1.8, ISO 1000, 50mm

Once other children arrived, however, it felt very awkward to photograph strangers’ kids (even if I wasn’t going to post them publicly anywhere), so I concentrated on photographing the adults.

1/160sec, f/1.8, ISO 1000, 50mm

1/250sec, f/1.8, ISO 1000, 50mm

There’s my wife, playing up for the camera, more than any of the kids did. Thanks, wife. Here, as an antithesis, is her father, keeping a sense of decorum.

1/125sec, f/1.8, ISO 1000, 50mm (cropped)

This was another case of the natural light working in my favour, although the colour balance proved to be enough of a pain that it the image looks much better in monochrome.

We’ve now reached the final image in this set. It’s been a bit of a long slog, I know, but thank you for sticking with it. Once my portraits pool starts building up again I definitely need to publish them more often, and not let them amass in such numbers.

As is often the case, if you liked these, there are even more up on my Flickr – all 207 that made the shortlist, in fact.

All of the images of children in this post were published with the permission of their parents.

I should probably start off this month’s review with an apology. It’s not been a good month here, with only three posts of moderate quality, none of which were as popular as February’s monthly review, which is for reasons I will never be able to fathom one of the most popular posts ever on this site.

My head has not really been in the right gear for a lot of the month; I’ve found myself unable to concentrate for any length of time and given the massive pile of images I have to edit and post not much is getting achieved. Although I’ve only been on a few shoots this month one of them was another theatre show so that backlog is no shorter than it was a month ago (on the bright side, I achieved my goal of getting an image out quickly enough for the theatre to use it on a promo post).

Being unable to concentrate, it’s been difficult to pick out sets of images to start working on. As a result, this month’s posts have been a bit of an eclectic set, from a theatre show to a cloudy pre-Olympic London via a Christmas market, and… nothing in between, because those were the only three posts in the month.

Fame was posted only two months after I shot it; not a great turnaround but it could’ve been far worse. This was a set that I wasn’t feeling too confident about when I shot it, but once I’d been through them I was really quite pleased with the images. It was good to get a nice selection of behind-the-scenes imagery from the theatre too, which ended up being some of my favourites from the set. It was pretty warmly received by Catherine and the Greenwood; one of the shots is currently the cover photo on its Facebook page, which always feels good. I returned to the Greenwood Theatre in March for a dance show; those images will be along at some point.

The second post of the month was Winter Wonderland, a set of images a month older than those in Fame. This was one of those sets where the photographs I had taken were not very representative of the trip, so it was never that high up my priorities to work on what was quite a small set. But, in my current state of working on whatever I feel like at the time, sitting in a cold snap I felt inclined to write up a post about a winter market whilst the temperatures were still dropping below freezing. It’s not a bad set, but I can’t help but think of the things I didn’t photograph because of constraints of time or cold, like some incredible chocolate sculptures and various other food and craft stuffs. Perhaps I’ll have to  go back there next year and take a bit more time about it.

The final post of the month – posted on the last day of the month because I might as well use up all of the days – was Cloudy London, an even older set that predates the Olympics and was taken on the same day as London at Night (Part IV) and In the Skatepark at Midnight. Clearly, the latter two were better and finished far quicker than the comparatively mundane former post. Cloudy London also suffered from a similar problem as Winter Wonderland; this time a lot of the shots simply didn’t turn out, and I was disappointed that I only got a few workable ones from the steampunk fair when there was so much more to be seen. This was just before the Olympics, when I was mired in a creative funk that was affecting my photography pretty badly, so I can’t really blame it, and when the Olympics came along to get me back into things this post was swept out of the way a bit. I was still pleased with the finished images, and had always been intending to post it, but as the quality wasn’t quite up to much the post always seemed to get bumped back in favour of stronger material.

Despite my low post count on Creative Splurges, The Daily Photo has been keeping up with its remit superbly. It has proven to be a bit of a drain, however. I like to keep things shuffled and not release images before the corresponding post has been published on Creative Splurges, and keeping posts deliberately disorganised has been difficult with a rapidly shrinking pool of images to work from. As soon as I post something onto Creative Splurges then it frees up a bunch of images to the Daily Photo, but until then the backlog problem on the main blog is beginning to affect the spinoff blog.

Stats-wise, The Daily Photo only had 90 hits for the month, the lowest in recorded history and continuing a steady decline that’s been happening since Christmas. However, the blog now has over 150 followers so it’s growing pretty nicely, and I’d always set it up to make it easier to view images, and hopefully encourage people to Creative Splurges itself, rather than tout for hits of its own. ‘Like’-wise, which is a far better metric to measure response to blogs as WordPress have nicely made it easy to read people’s blogs – especially with posts as short as those on the Daily Photo – without actually visiting their sites and registering a hit, quite a few images have had a decent reaction; the least popular garnered three likes, the most eighteen.

Creative Splurges has continued on a similar decline, with 258 hits in March. That said, this is not a bad figure given the low post count, so I’m not too concerned about it just yet. Creative Splurges has also courted a few new followers this month; the total is now 320.

Looking forwards to next month, what do we see? I do have one trip planned, but it is right at the end of the month and so not likely to show up in April. I still have a lot of photographs to work my way through, but some of these sets are large and need a fair amount of editing before they’ll be ready. Even then, I am still struggling on the writing front, meaning it’s taking longer than it should to publish posts. Hopefully I’ll be able to combat my lack of concentration next month, but we’ll see. Any tips would be very welcome!

Thank you for reading.
Rob

f/3.5, ISO 500, 18mm (HDR)

Before we got there, however, we came across a weird steampunk show on the South Bank outside the National Theatre. It made for some interesting shots.

1/160sec, f/4.5, ISO 500, 33mm

8sec, f/4.5, ISO 500, exposure bias -0.33, 32mm

1/400sec, f/5.6, ISO 500, exposure bias -0.33, 135mm

After a quick stroll around the market, we headed up over Waterloo Bridge. From here it gave me a bird’s eye view of the bookstalls that can be seen on the South Bank.

1/200sec, f/3.5, ISO 400, 19mm

After that, we were on the Bridge. This was back in last July, when I was in the early stages of experimenting with HDR imagery. I had just discovered HDR Efex Pro, and wanted to experiment with how well it could handle what I threw at it.

f/5.6, ISO 500, 106mm (HDR)

With that in mind, I took a few bracketed exposures that included moving things to see how the processing software could cope with it. I had the camera in auto-bracket mode, meaning that the first time you fire the shutter, it shoots a normal exposure, and the next two are over- and under-exposed respectively (or vice-versa,but you get the idea).

At first glance, it seems to have worked, but then take a look at the slightly mutated people in the foreground.

f/3.5, ISO 100, 18mm (HDR)

You know when couples become so inseparable you can no longer differentiate them? This is what that looks like.

For bigger objects such as buses, it seemed to work better, although it didn’t do all that well at dealing with the colour red.

f/3.5, ISO 100, 18mm (HDR)

For reasons that I’m not sure of, a lot of these images are lacking in sharpness. My suggestion is that I was shooting handheld, but the HDR plugin should be countering that to an extent. I have a whole pile of HDR images to process so hopefully I’ll figure out where I’m going wrong.

This next image, however, looks a tad sharper than the others, because why not, apparently.

f/3.5, ISO 100, 18mm (HDR)

The HDR processing has done a pretty good job of bringing out the clouds, but ultimately these aren’t my best HDR images. Due to these sitting, processed, on my hard drive for many months (postponed, initially, by the Olympics, and then who knows what), they are annoyingly appearing out of context on my HDR learning curve. My last post, Winter Wonderland, contains my most recent HDR image, and it seems to have come out a lot better than many of these.

The last shot from this set, of the Embankment road taken from Waterloo Bridge, is actually a pretty basic shot, but for some reason I find I like it.

1/100 sec, f/5.6, ISO 320, 106mm

I can’t really explain why. It’s one of the many images that I find myself liking for completely intangible reasons that I know few others will actually like. But I’m okay with that.

1/1600sec, f/5, ISO 100, 48mm

As far as I’m aware, because I haven’t bothered to research this post, Winter Wonderland is a German-cum-Christmas market that happens every year in Hyde Park in London. There are craft stalls, food stalls, and rides, an ice rink and a Santa’s grotto.

I didn’t photograph a huge amount whilst we were there; it was absolutely freezing and I was with a small chunk of my extended family – including my five-year-old semi-cousin (I don’t understand all that eighth-cousin thrice-removed crap) – so I didn’t stop all that often to shoot. Still, I managed to get a few decent images.

1/125sec, f/5.6, ISO 100, 100mm

This is my dad. Perhaps not the most flattering image of him, I’ll admit, but I really like the lighting and bokeh of the background.

One of the first things we came across (other than a churro stall, which was brilliant) was a helter-skelter.

1/500sec, f/3.5, ISO 100, 18mm

We moved closer (I can’t remember if my five-year-old semi-cousin had a go on it, but that isn’t really relevant to the story) and I got a better view, with the sun behind the tower. I closed up the aperture to avoid blowing out the image.

1/100sec, f/20, ISO 100, 18mm

With the sun behind my subject, I decided to try a HDR shot. Fortunately, when I bought my new computer I got another 14 days free trial on my HDR processing software of choice, HDR Efex Pro. I really need to get round to buying the full version sometime.

f/20, ISO 100, 18mm (HDR)

I’m not sure which I prefer; the former of these two shots has kept a fair amount of detail in the foreground, which was the point of doing the HDR shot in the first place. The HDR shot doesn’t look quite as natural as I’d like. What do you think?

The helter-skelter wasn’t the only interesting structure at the fair. There was… this thing. I have absolutely no idea what it is.

1/1000sec, f/4.5, ISO 100, 37mm

I also came across a ride that had a sign that amused me greatly, because I have a very puerile sense of humour.

1/100sec, f/5.6, ISO 100, 135mm

The most visible ride, however, was the large ferris wheel in the opening image of this post. It wasn’t London Eye big by any means, but was pretty sizeable nonetheless.

1/2000sec, f/3.5, ISO 100, 18mm

1/1600sec, f/3.5, ISO 100, 18mm

The funniest thing I saw there was a big singing robot moose head. You read that right. It sang a lot, which was funny enough – it sounded like an off-key Willie Nelson and it sounded like he’d never heard the songs before – but he also was a bit confused as to his origins. Part way through his performance he turned from a Canadian to a German accent, and sounded like a different actor to boot. It was tremendously enjoyable to stand there listening to it, for all the wrong reasons.

1/400sec, f/5, ISO 100, 53mm

We soon came across a few other rides; first, a zipwire, which you will never ever get me to ride. Unless you gave me a lot of money.

1/1600sec, f/5.6, ISO 100, 135mm

For this shot, I converted to monochrome and upped the contrast to turn the rider into a silhouette.

The other ride was a hell of a lot more colourful.

1/1600sec, f/4.5, exposure bias +0.67, ISO 100, 32mm

By that point, which was about lunchtime, the market was becoming so crowded you could barely move, so we headed out. It was pretty fun, despite the cold. I didn’t buy anything – or photograph much food – but my semi-cousin seemed to like it.

1/60sec, f/4.5, ISO 100, 33mm

1/160sec, f/3.5, ISO 5000, exposure bias -1.0, 18mm

Shortly after I posted the images from my first trip to the Greenwood Theatre, Catherine invited me back to shoot another play. This time, a society of students were performing Fame, and unlike the production of All’s Well That Ends Well, there would be a big set and big musical numbers, hopefully meaning I’d get a different sort of picture for the project to decorate the wall of the theatre foyer with photos.

I arrived earlier at the Greenwood than I did for All’s Well, and things were still all being set up.

1/50sec, f/3.5, ISO 4000, exposure bias -0.33, 18mm

This was all part of the plan. After only shooting a dress rehearsal the last time, I was keen to get more behind-the-scenes shots of the theatre. I even took the concept to its literal extreme, and took some shots behind the scenery.

1/15sec, f/8, ISO 6400, exposure bias -0.33, 18mm

1/13sec, f/3.5, ISO 4000, exposure bias -0.33, 18mm

That last shot at first glance may seem a bit scary, but I loved its cluttered look. (A safety curtain, by the way, is ironically far more dangerous than a normal curtain if it were to fall on you)

Having the opportunity to shoot around the auditorium itself with the house lights up was also useful, although there was a little more hustle and bustle than I might have liked.

1/160sec, f/3.5, ISO 4000, exposure bias -1.0, 18mm

Of course, not everyone was rushing around.

1/60sec, f/5, ISO 4000, exposure bias -1.0, 57mm

Longtime readers (with eidetic memories) might recognise the guy at the back of the shot as Simon, who works at the theatre and was the tech on duty that day.

There was a host of shots to be had that I wouldn’t normally be able to get if I was shooting just purely a show.

1/640sec, f/5.6, ISO 4000, exposure bias -1.0, 64mm

Before long they began to set up the lights for the show, giving me an opportunity to take a few interesting images (and also allow me to shut up for a little bit and show you some photographs).

1/125sec, f/3.5, ISO 2000, exposure bias -1.0, 18mm

1/200sec, f/3.5, ISO 5000, exposure bias -2.33, 18mm

1/160sec, f/5.6, ISO 4000, exposure bias -2.0, 135mm

1/100sec, f/5.6, ISO 4000, exposure bias -1.33, 92mm

Soon things were all getting into place for a dress rehearsal. All that was left to do was for Simon to tape the bottom of this photograph back on.

1/40sec, f/5, ISO 4000, exposure bias -1.67, 41mm

And with that, the show started. This being a musical, there was a lot more musical numbers and a bit less acting compared to All’s Well That Ends Well.

1/100sec, f/5.6, ISO 5000, exposure bias -1.0, 135mm

Admittedly in that shot he could just as easily be talking as singing. Hang on, this next one is clearly a song and dance number.

1/80sec, f/5, ISO 5000, exposure bias -1.0, 55mm

And of course, it wouldn’t be a musical without the patented jazz hands.

1/200sec, f/5.6, ISO 5000, exposure bias -1.0, 133mm

Now, this is where fans of Fame will have to forgive me, because much like last time I wasn’t really following the story and have no idea who these characters were or what they were doing. These two, for instance, seemed to be some sort of inadvertently platonic couple (it is important at this point to stress that I really don’t care).

1/100sec, f/5.6, ISO 6400, exposure bias -1.67, 113mm

This being a story about school, there was obviously some angst in there too.

1/80sec, f/5, ISO 5000, exposure bias -2.0, 57mm

1/40sec, f/5.6, ISO 5000, exposure bias -1.33, 135mm

I took a slightly different approach to white balancing this time round. I once again shot on auto white balance, but I didn’t put as much effort into correcting the colour to more natural tones; as it was a musical and more creatively lit it didn’t look so jarring to have more tungsten hues in the images.

1/100sec, f/5, ISO 6400, exposure bias -2.0, 41mm

1/160sec, f/4, ISO 6400, exposure bias -1.0, 70mm

Even as the rehearsal continued I was keen to get more technical behind-the-scenes shots, so I snuck off to the control room to see what was going on.

1/125sec, f/3.5, ISO 6400, exposure bias -1.33, 18mm

1/60sec, f/4, ISO 6400, 25mm

Meanwhile, on stage, some sort of narrative was happening.

1/125sec, f/5, ISO 5000, exposure bias -1.67, 52mm

But don’t worry, it wasn’t long before it all returned to signing.

1/30sec, f/5, ISO 3200, exposure bias -1.67, 44mm

I used monochrome relatively often in this set of images. A lot of the shots seemed to lend themselves to black and white, and it sometimes did a good job of disguising otherwise distracting colour tones. This next image, for instance, was originally lit almost purely red, and I didn’t like how it looked; it looked like something out of a brothel. In black and white, it looks a lot simpler.

1/30sec, f/5.6, ISO 3200, exposure bias -1.0, 135mm

I still often find that I need to correct the red hues when shooting colour. By default, the 60D seems to capture reds marginally too violet. Much like the chromatic aberration I encounter with the 18-135mm, however, it is a simple fix in Aperture.

1/30sec, f/4.5, ISO 3200, exposure bias -2.0, 39mm

Much like the rehearsal of All’s Well, they had to skip to the end a bit. Unlike the Shakespearean play, however, this one ended with a full-cast jazz hander, as is, I believe, traditional (Macbeth, however, also ends this way, I’m told).

1/100sec, f/3.5, ISO 5000, exposure bias -1.0, 18mm

This has ended up a very different batch of images compared to the ones I got at All’s Well That Ends Well. Being there for the technical setup led to an interesting set up more generic theatre-based shots, and the downtime I had waiting for the rehearsal to start proper allowed me to get photographs of the theatre itself. When it comes to choosing images for the foyer – the main point of me being there taking photos – having ones that are clearly from the theatre in question should count for something (right? I genuinely don’t know the answer to that one).

My third and final trip to the Greenwood will be tomorrow, to shoot a dance show, which should give me yet another sort of image capture. This is one I’m a little prepared for, as Catherine took some pictures of the same show last year, and the images she has are a great mixture of colour and motion, something I’ve hitherto not really captured that well.

I’m very much treating this like a job, not least because it’s the closest I’ve yet come to one. I have ‘clients’ – in the form of Catherine, who has given me a brief, and the students putting on the show, who get a free bunch of images from their production. One thing I’m very keen to work on, however, is my turnaround time. It took a month to complete the images from All’s Well and post them, and these images have taken almost two from shooting to page. Not a good return if I want to do this sort of thing professionally. I aim to improve that for the dance show – indeed, I currently plan to take a single image from the rehearsal and have it ready to be used on the Greenwood’s social media pages the following day ahead of the paid performances.

Let’s see how that goes.

Much like last time, you can see a shortlist of my favourite images from the show below, or if you want to see them all, you can check out the full set on Flickr.

I often seem to start these monthly reflectives with some sort of faux exclamation of surprise that another whole month has passed by. Usually with February, however, the surprise is genuine. It’s amazing how much difference having three fewer days makes to the length of a month. I suppose it also helped that I spent the last day of the month conked out under the influence of a potent sedative, which I’ve talked about a bit on social networking sites since it happened as it scrambled my brain. I don’t actually remember most of the posts I made, one of the side effects of the sedative.

February wasn’t a bad month here on Creative Splurges. January was a bit admin-heavy, with only a few content posts; February, meanwhile, has been much more about new things. For me, it felt like I found my stride again in February. In January everything seemed a bit arbitrary, posting more out of obligation than anything else. In February, I was enjoying myself again, having drawn a line under my backlog and deciding again to approach it in the order that felt most inspiring, rather than clinging to any notions of chronology.

February was also an atypical month in terms of content as well, which proved to be both pleasing and stimulating.

The month started with a comparatively new set of images, from a trip to Somerset House last November. This was the result of a quick trip with friend and colleague Catherine of CJ Trigg Photography. I’m pretty pleased with the images I got; it was quite a challenging environment to shoot in, what with the darkness and the colour of the lighting and the security guards. I particularly liked the moodily-lit shots I achieved in the basement levels (which still might have a technical name but I remain unaware of what that might be). I released the images under the London at Night banner, branching out the series into more specific trips (along with my trip to Covent Garden, which also posted earlier was actually shot later). I haven’t actually seen Catherine’s images yet for any comparison, she is suffering from a similarly hefty backlog to mine. It’ll be interesting to see what she got (it is quite difficult to phrase that without sounding like I’m trying to guilt her into posting her shots).

My second post of the month was another Instagram set. I’m up to fifteen Instagram instalments now, and am still snapping plenty of content to keep going for a while. I have a completely separate Instagram backlog that I’m working through (although I don’t regard every image as worthy of posting), so I’m now attacking it in the same way as my normal backlog, and picking and choosing images in whatever order appeals to me the most. You can always follow me on Instagram if you don’t want to wait. I’m pleased with the quality of this set, ranging from earlier in winter (the image of my wife to the right) to the recent bout of snow we’ve had in the UK which led to a resurgence in me using Instagram.

The next post is one of my favourites, and for me a very pleasing return to the old style of this blog. One Small Step in Astrophotography saw me finally using the telescope I got for Christmas. I set it up in my garden one clear evening, spent maybe an hour or so outside experimenting in shooting in a way I’d not done before,  and then came back inside to get it all posted the same day. It’s been a while since I posted such a true ‘creative splurge’ and it felt good. On top of that, seeing Jupiter and the Galilean moons was a truly amazing experience, the first time I’ve seen such a thing with my own eyes. 

One Step was followed by a very similar post, Snowflakes. Admittedly posted the day after the images were taken, it was otherwise quite similar to the preceding post: a handful of shots of something I’ve not photographed before, packaged together quickly and posted without too much pointless waffling. One thing I’ve realised with posts I’ve been gradually working on or planning over several months is I start to talk them up a bit, and inevitably they end up being comparatively poorly received.

I’m still astonished at the quality of the snowflakes that landed on me. I was also glad I as able to grab a shot of one of them before it melted or my train arrived. Slightly surprisingly, Snowflakes proved to be more popular than One Step; the former courted 21 likes compared to the latter’s 17.

My final post of the month was a rare departure from photography to showcase some of the doodles I’ve been doing recently. By my count it had been over six months since I last posted some doodles, when I posted the two images I drew of Mr Supremo for a short story my wife wrote. Throughout the history of Creative Splurges, I’ve only posted four doodle posts, and each has used a completely different technique. The first was just over a year ago when I posted a handful of scribbles I’d drawn on my iPad with a stylus, using the Sketchbook Express app from the good people at AutoDesk. They were basic scribbles from a free app with few brushes, but more drawing than I had done in a long time. My next drawing post came in April when I released a scan of a traditionally hand-drawn comic I had drawn some twenty years earlier and completed entirely in pencil. And so, in July last year when my wife asked me to draw a character to accompany a short story she was working on for her blog, I combined the two and hand-drew Mr Supremo on paper, before scanning him into the computer and digitally inking and colouring. In More Doodles I came back around to the start, and did drawing on my iPad again in a new app called Paper.

One of the doodles in More Doodles was Feltosaurus, above. It’s become quite an important image; it’s ended up on a mug that my wife loves, as well as stickers and a tote bag. More about that will likely follow later in March.

Feltosaurus also inspired my wife into a creative splurge of her own, making a felt version of him with not but a few sheets of felt, some stuffing and thread.

I should really license it or something – every time someone does a creative splurge of their own, they’ll owe me a quid or something. Sounds enforceable and entirely above board, right?

Doodles was the last post in February. February had an assortment of posts, a lot of which had a decent number of likes. Despite this, stats for the month were down – Creative Splurges only had 279 hits, the lowest for a single month since December 2010. I suspect that may be due to the lack of any gallery-based posts in the month.

The Daily Photo has, like most months, been continuing as ever, and has now posted every day since January 1st 2011 – 427 posts and counting. Stats-wise, however, it continues its downward trend, even as it pulls in a decent number of likes. It only had 104 hits in February, continuing its decline and the lowest month in its history. I’ve talked on occasion about shutting it down, but as long as it keeps attracting new followers it’s not something I’m likely to do. The lack of hits doesn’t concern me too much; the blog is designed to not need to visit it to see each day’s photo.

Speaking of followers, The Daily Photo now has 139, and Creative Splurges has finally passed the 300 follower mark and has 301.

So what do I have planned for March? Shooting-wise, my third trip to the Greenwood Theatre will take place in a little over a week. My second trip there, meanwhile, just needs to be written up. I also had a few very interesting trips in February which I’m looking forward to sharing.

The most important thing is I feel I’m back in my groove a little, although I do find myself struggling at the writing stage of posts sometimes. Hopefully as I continue to write more and clear that backlog of mine the words will free up a little more.

Thanks, as always, for reading.
Rob

By default, the app only gives you a pen to play with, but you can unlock paint, pencils and markers to improve your artwork.

I’ve always been more of a cartoonist than an illustrator. These days I’m far more of a doodler, drawing whatever the hell takes my fancy. Sometimes, however, that will lead to me drawing something more ‘traditional’.

Of course, when that happens it’s only a matter of time before things start getting silly.

Once I’d found my stride, I started trying more technical doodles, starting with a simple cube.

I also tried to draw Jedi Master Yoda, but it didn’t turn out great, so I tried to pretend it was always supposed to be that way, which is my usual technique.

Some attempts, however, weren’t even this successful.

For the most part, however, I drew characters. I like to just draw characters, and being able to colour them in added a great amount of depth to the pictures.

After a while, I began to get a bit creative, and draw characters with a little more of a purpose. This guy was the bloke hypnotised by the Hypnotist Yoda.

This was just an angry ginger person.

This, in turn, led me to draw the ‘ginger ninja’, with the idea that he’d have a shock of red hair undermining his attempts at disappearing into the background.

This was followed by another completely random idea.

And I’m not adverse to a small amount of shameless self-promotion.

If there’s one complaint I have about this app, it’s that there isn’t an easy way of erasing pencil sketches without removing the ink on top, which is why the drawing above (as well as the black hole image and perhaps a couple others) both have visible pencil lines.

Ultimately, however, I just love drawing comic faces – especially the eyes. When just doodling for no purpose, I’ll often just draw a set of eyes and a nose and leave it at that. So I took that theory and expanded it a little.

I did, however, often finish the faces.

After seeing what I was drawing, my wife made a request of me. Could I, she asked, draw a dinosaur for her?

I gave it a go.

It wasn’t very good. So after regrouping, I had another go, with far better results.

This is by far the most successful drawing in this batch. My wife already has had it printed on a mug which she cherishes, and made a felt version the this dinosaur from scratch, hence his name: Feltosaurus. I’m pretty pleased with it too. It actually looks a lot like a stuffed animal I had growing up, which I think I’m going to have to see if I can find.

As quickly as my bout of doodling began, it has since stopped again. For a couple of weekends you couldn’t stop me drawing, but I’ve now not drawn much in over a week, making it very much a creative splurge (groan). Perhaps I should buy my own stylus so I can doodle at will again.

The ground might have been too warm for the snow to not melt the second it made contact, but once I’d been outside for a little while my black coat was cold enough. Whilst waiting for a train in the snow yesterday, I realised the snowflakes settling on my coat were perfectly formed. Despite being out in a light snow flurry, I couldn’t help grabbing my camera and switching to my macro lens to grab a shot of some that had landed on me.

1/80sec, f/3.5, ISO 400, exposure bias -1.0, 100mm (cropped)

1/125sec, f/3.5, ISO 400, exposure bias -1.0, 100mm (cropped)

I’ve never seen such perfectly formed snowflakes. They always seem to fall in such a haphazard shape most of the time.