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Thank you for visiting. Also, please get in touching you want to ask me anything.

Steven.

Neutral Density Filters

These are a landscape photographer's best friend. Being able to control natural daylight to create the image you want is a wonderful thing. 

One of my favourite bits of kit is the B+W 10 stop ND filter. This has helped me to create some stunning, prize winning images. However, I have adopted the Lee Filter system as my process for taking most of my landscape shots and the B+W Filter no longer fits into this family. 

The Lee system consists of a holder to accommodate multiple rectangular and square slot in filters and the B+W filter is a screw in filter. With the 10-Stop filter being so dark, by the time you have screwed it onto the front you can no longer see anything through the viewfinder. So if you need to make any adjustments you have to take everything off again. 

Lee now make a 10 stop slot-in square filter for the system I use which makes things a whole lot easier. However, their back order is so long I have been waiting since June 6th 2011 for mine to arrive. Finally it arrived with Monday morning's post! Yay!

So, if anyone requires a fantastic quality 10 stop Neutral Density filter with a 77mm thread I am selling mine on eBay here. I look after all my kit so you will find it in mint condition. 

 

 

Competition success

Having not attended my camera club for a few weeks due to personal circumstances I finally had the time to go this week. This week's entertainment was the 3rd Projected Digital Image (PDI) competition. This is one of the best things for me about being in a camera club. Seeing what other photographers have been shooting and competing against them.
There were 57 images in the general section and about 27 images in the Nature section. The nature section always seems to be a lot more fierce that the general section and the quality is far superior. This sounds a bit mean but it is completely true.
The judge for the night was someone we have seen before in previous seasons. We only invite them back if they are any good so we knew we were in for an entertaining evening. It is not often the photographers agree with the judges comments but I think last night was one of those rare occasions where I felt he was spot on. I suppose I would say that because I won the Nature section! Yay!

Night Photography

Winter is now setting in and the early nights are upon us. So what do we do when us enthusiasts get home from work of an evening? Do we wait all week for the weekend or are there other ways to get enjoyment from our beloved black boxes?

Photography has always been and will always be about working with light. Whether that be sunlight, flashlight, street lamps, torches, whatever.. It is about capturing what you see or creating something you see in your mind using light.

A couple of years ago I was introduced to the idea of 'painting with light'. This idea opened up a whole new strand of photography for me. Bulb mode was no longer a mystery. Shooting at night more often than not requires long exposures, sometimes minutes. It also involves waiting around, wrapping up warm and the anticipation of what will appear on the camera's display when the shutter finally closes. I love it.

Painting with light can involve many different light sources. I like to use my flash gun and a mag light along with some coloured acetate or 'gels'. The gels add that extra touch to the image by giving the light source different colours. Light shining through the coloured gels projects light of that colour.

There are hundreds of examples of this kind of night photography online. Here is an image of mine that I am particularly proud of :-

Knock Out Wonderboy!

Knockout competitions seem to be becoming somewhat of a speciality for me!

At the end of each season at camera club we have a knockout competition whereby each member is allowed to enter up to 6 images to be projected digitally. The images are all entered into a piece of software on the computer and randomised. The images will then appear in a random order to be voted against the image next to it. Members vote for the image out of the two they like the best and it goes through to the next round, knocking the losing image out.

Long story short, I won! Here is the winning image...

I call it "Sticks and Stones"