I'd like to be a bit better at street photography, it's a genre that produces some fascinating images.
One of my problems is, I think, something of a lack of confidence and not wanting to be challenged by anyone.
I've recently been inspired by @leanderhoefler's work, particularly in terms of looking for layers of interest in the scene. You should check his work out.
@philpenman is also massively worth a look, if you're not already familiar with his work.
I wanted to shoot something to mark the solstice today, and I'm quite happy with this as an answer to that.
Within a couple of minutes of taking this, the sun was lost to view behind a cloud bank, and set 24 minutes later, without returning to view.
The celestial pendulum starts its swing back again now.
This is a backup photo from yesterday's lovely post-sunset sky.
There was some beautiful light today, but I loved the look of this silhouetted fingerpost against the dusk sky.
I am most inconvenienced!
Well, not that inconvenienced, I suppose, all things considered.
By virtue of finishing work at lunchtime, I got to see some daylight for a change.
After a rather tiring day at work, followed by a request for some urgent 3D printing assistance from a friend, so it's a backup image again today, taken a couple of weeks ago.
I could have done with a longer lens here, but the longest I had on me was the 70-200mm.
I did take a load of photos at work today, but that's all technical secret squirrels stuff, so you can't see that!
I have just 4 hours of work left this year, and it can't be done soon enough.
It seems about half the people at work are quite ill again, and it's been horribly stressful being around them - and the stress doesn't go away after either, because I'm then worrying I've caught their bugs.
I'm evidently hugely in the minority caring about this, but I really struggle with it.
A macro look at a broken bit of my fence.
I thought it was rather interesting.
This is a 3x macro taken with the MP-E 65mm and the WeMacro focus rail. 60 shots stacked in Helicon Focus.
Some of the damage from the recent storm we had. Pretty minor in the grand scheme of things.
I thought the broken fence panel and torn-off leaf fitted quite well into this week's #52frames challenge, which is Wabi Sabi.
Wabi Sabi is a Japanese term loosely meaning beauty in imperfection.
As I understand it, it's rather more of a general philosophy than just that punchline, but the imperfection and impermanence of a fallen fence, rusted nail, and decaying leaf seemed fitting.
Click image to view a bigger version
A backup photo again today - I had a very busy day running sound for In Disguise (the band I've got involved with recently), so I ended up not having time or energy to attend to photos (beyond a couple of snapshots, which I've included after the jump).
The new mixer worked excellently, and the band were very well received.
Revisiting a subject I played with earlier in the year.
A few more after the jump.
Woohoo! A photo actually taken on the day for a change!
Yet another backup today.
I really liked the way that these pink rays shone out over the darkening sky. I don't think I've ever seen quite this effect before, but I enjoy it!
The technical demo to customers was, by a lot of very hard work, successful.
I got home and quickly fell asleep on the sofa.
Another backup today.
A flat-out day at work in a fog of last-minute panic to present something partially believable to customers tomorrow.
Hardly a sustainable approach; I just hope we actually learn something about planning and over-promising from this.
A busy day - my first day back at work after a week off today, followed by an evening of sound man duties, followed by doing a job for a friend, and finally wrapped up by preparing tools and running some 3D prints off for work tomorrow.
All this adds up to... you guessed it... another backup photo, shot on the first of December.
Incidentally, how on earth is it 1AM already? I guess that technically makes this late, but in my world, it's still tonight, not tomorrow, because I've not been to bed yet. Therefore, not late yet!
I shall cease my erratic blabbering now.
Good Night.
I went out for a drive, thinking I might get a walk in.
I ultimately decided against walking in the rain, so I ended up parked for a while, listening to music, watching the rain on the windows, and contemplating life in general.
It's been a while since I shared a photo of "my" tree, so here's a different angle of it from last week. This is therefore a backup photo (again).
I'm claiming storm Darragh is responsible for my lack of photograph today. A shameless get-out, I'm sure!
I have been re-acquainting myself with my old friend Lego over the last few days, so I thought I'd mark the occasion.
A backup photo today, from my walk yesterday morning.
When I first walked across this field, the water drops on the grass were all frozen.
By the time I came back and set up the macro lens to take this one, all but the largest drops were thawed.
As I zoomed in on the large drop to check my focus, I could see little bubbles and liquid moving along the channels inside the drop. I'm not sure what would cause this, as I'd have expected it to thaw from the outside in!
I spotted this reflection on a walk this morning, and was reminded of this.
I got rather muddy taking this one, but did fortuitously avoid dunking the camera in the muddy puddle!
52Frames set a really interesting challenge this week: "Roll of 24".
This means shoot whatever you like, but act as if you only have a single 24-exposure roll of film in your camera.
This forces you to be much slower and more considered in your shooting, which is a far cry from firing off a burst of shots of each composition to make sure you get the shot you wanted.
I enjoyed this challenge.
I've included a contact sheet of the rest of my shots from the exercise after the jump.
I am really surprised by how happy I am with all of these shots. While there are some that are less good, I'm not truly disappointed by any of them, which is unusual!
I went out in search of photos at what seems to count for late afternoon at this time of year - 3PM!
The sky was beautiful after sunset, so I was pleased to have caught this group of birds against the gradient.
Another late backup today.
When I finally got out of bed, it ended up being quite a busy one!
I wasn't sure whether this would be worth posting, because it was really just a quick snap I grabbed as I jumped into the car this morning.
I was actually quite pleased with the result when I looked at it later, so it's today's offering.
Also:
1) Ding Dong, The Witch Is Dead! We finally completed the last stage of the mammoth testing job I've been stuck on for weeks today, and the customers were even happy, so that's a very good result.
Hopefully, now that the test procedure is nailed down and debugged, I can hand the bulk of the work over to someone else in future.
2) A prototype of a device I designed a while ago arrived, and looks like it will work nicely, so I'm quite excited about that.
3) HOLIDAY! No more work for a week.
3/3 excellents.
(For further information).
I went for a late evening wander; I needed to clear my head.
I think it helped a bit.
A backup image today, posted late.
My head is spinning with the amount of work that's on at the moment, and the amount of firefighting that we are doing. I have booked the week off next week - I desperately need it!
My Fuchsia did not enjoy the snow we had last week. It's looking quite sorry for itself now.
This is an 8-shot stack taken with Helicon Remote controlling the focus of the EF100mm f/2.8L IS Macro, and stacked in Helicon Focus.
It's the first time I've tried this technique with this lens - it works much better on this ultrasonic focusing lens than it did on the older style motor-driven Sigma 105mm f/2.8 Macro and EF50mm f/3.5 Compact Macro lenses.
I was at the limit of magnification for the 100mm macro lens on the 6D MkII, so I switched back to the 80D for this one. Its 1.6x crop sensor effectively gives a "free" teleconversion effect compared to the full frame sensor, which was perfect for getting me in that little bit closer without losing light or depth of field.
I think this is the first time I've used the new-ish-to-me Canon 100mm f/2.8L IS macro lens on this camera - all my previous macro work with this body was done with my older lenses.
A late backup photo again today, taken last weekend.
Rather worse weather today, thanks to storm Bert.
... and I shall do so in a range of colours!
A 3D printed mini flowerpot, the MIOPS Splash, and some milky water went into this one.
The green was achieved by a green gel on one flash, and a black card was used to block most of the light from that flash hitting the pot.
A similar technique was used to confine most of the light from a second, unfiltered, diffused flash to the pot.
A backup photo today, posted late, to boot.
This was from my morning walk at the weekend. I was quite pleased with it.
Some more work with the MIOPS Splash this evening.
By forcing the camera to see the initial trigger (equivalent to a half-press on the shutter button), the timing scatter is reduced significantly. This is something I found was necessary with my earlier DIY setup, so it's no surprise it helps here too.
I've included a composite image that I quite liked, and a behind-the-scenes shot too, both after the jump.
This might be my entry for the 52Frames High Key challenge, but I'll see if I come up with anything better during the week before I commit to submitting it!
I ordered a MIOPS Splash water dropper a little while ago, which finally arrived today.
I still need to iron out some of the wrinkles in the setup (mostly down to too-short cables, and inconsistent timing for various reasons), but I was reasonably happy with this as a result from my first session.
I'm not much of a morning person, but I did manage to drag myself out of bed this morning to try and catch the morning sun.
My initial plan had been to try and capture a patch of mist that often forms in a field I pass on my way to work, but it was nowhere to be seen this morning.
Since I was up and doing, I went for a walk and enjoyed the best weather of the day - it's rained for much of the afternoon.
This is my first submission to 52frames, for the challenge "Perspective".
I was struggling with ideas to meet this challenge, and I drove round for ages looking for ideas.
I had got hung up on the thought of bridges or pylons, but failed to find anything that clicked. As I got home, I got to thinking about smaller subjects, and finally landed on the idea of boots.
This is what I ended up with.
I'm late posting this backup image, the second installment of the Stirling engine.
The first of what might be a series on my model Stirling engine.
I came across this rather incongruous single shoe while I was on a walk a couple of weeks ago, and thought it made for an interesting photo.
A backup image today, in case that wasn't implicit...
This started out as the original 3:2 aspect ratio, but as I was uploading it to Instagram, I saw the square crop, and decided I preferred this composition.
My christmas cactus is looking lovely with its first big flower properly out now.
I almost didn't shoot anything today; work is endlessly tedious now.
I'm feeling worn very thin, and getting almost no enjoyment from work at all, which is relatively unusual for me.
This has sapped my creativity enormously.
We had quite a nice day today, and I managed to grab this at lunch time.
I signed up to 52frames at the weekend, and was thinking about something for their challenge "Fill the frame".
I missed out on submitting this before the window closed, but I'm posting it here anyway.
My little Sony RX100 has been getting a workout over the last few days!
After a very grey few weeks, there were a few small windows this afternoon where we saw a little glimpse of the sun.
I've got Bailey for the weekend, so I thought I'd better pay the dog tax for all the doggy people out there!
The life of a boater seems a curious one.
It sounds fun and relaxing in some ways, but I don't think I'd do very well without space for all my gubbins!
This is a backup image taken a few weeks ago, but it felt appropriate for today.
The lady that runs the food van near work was recently bereaved, and on one of the rare occasions that there were no other customers waiting, we ended up chatting a bit about our respective experiences and beliefs.
We hold quite different views, but as long as everyone stays respectful, that's no bad thing.
This one's for Darren.
I have been very full-on at work, and pretty stressed over the last few days, so yet again, the photos have had something of a problem.
In other words, they haven't been taken!
Here's another autumnal backup shot from last weekend.
I was very tired after work today, and almost went to bed early without shooting or posting anything.
I eventually got a bit of a second wind, so here's a 5x macro of a diamond engraving tool.
A backup image from my walk yesterday.
I saw these two engines hanging on the fence and thought they looked quite interesting, and a little incongruous.
I wish I'd taken a few more of them in hindsight, as I think a few close-ups might have been there for the taking.
I took a walk near my in-laws' today.
It subsequently turns out that I walked straight past a friend's mum, and was so lost in my own little world, I completely missed her!
