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| Monday, 30-Apr-2007 19:28 |
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Sound of Music 2: Longford Park Last Weekend
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A continuation from the weekend pictures in Longford Park with our gang in Coventry.
Puan Mama Sarah pre-visualised and directed this group shot of most of the children. Goodness - it was difficult to shoot! They say, the more pairs of eyes there are in a group the higher the chances that at least one pair of eyes will be closed. Out of the 15 or more shot of the children, only one or two turned okay. Group shots, especially of children, are difficult! But, the end result is more than worth the trouble - I just wish that the adik at the top of the frame had looked at the camera for complete eye contact.
I'm also very happy with the above shot - featuring most of us present that day minus one or two individuals (minus yours truly for sure). At that time, the kids were running around in circles around the adults. I used a slow shutter speed with the hopes of showing the movement the kids were making. Although I have multiple versions which are sharper, my favourite is this one - as there's a strange symmetry - the 3 kids blurred at the edges and centre, as well as 3 balloons, what a lucky shot!
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| Sunday, 29-Apr-2007 21:20 |
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Sound of Music: Longford Park with the Gang
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I've had a rather busy weekend, paying back for the 4 days that I had to work nights. Anyway, today we went to Longford Park again for a picnic to celebrate D's birthday. What's different this time was that we went with our other Coventry friends - D and family as well as Dina. Arep's presence was very sorely missed - it'd be great to have Arep to shoot with. Another thing that's different today was my aim - as I said yesterday, it was all about capturing the "moments". All the elements converged to make the evening excellent for photography: beautiful weather, lovely friends, family, hyperactive children, food and a kite to fly. What more could one ask for (except for a Canon 1D Mark III)?
None of these images were staged per-se, they all sort-of just happened:
D's daughter - known here as Kakak Princess
Twin 1 (I can't tell them apart, sorry D!): Twin Daffodils
Daffodils in the wind
Twin 2: Chrysanthemum rain
Twins: Setting up the kite
Puan Mama Sarah's makeshift kite
Balloon wars
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| Saturday, 28-Apr-2007 17:58 |
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Stratford Upon Avon One Spring
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Goodness, I'm so tired! I'd just finished a set of night duty, but despite that today I still entertained Puan Mama Sarah's request for a day in Stratford-Upon-Avon. There are two fundamental things different about my pictures today:
1. Contrast
I recently read in kenrockwell.com that unlike Nikon cameras, Canon DSLRs do not feature auto-contrast. What this means is that in high contrast situations e.g. a harshly lit day you may loose highlight/shadow detail due to excessive contrast. A way against this is by dialling down the contrast under the picture settings. These pictures I gave it a try, and dialled contrast -3. I have to say, I am extremely happy with the results and will be sticking to a lower contrast setting from now on. Please note that contrast could always be added in Photoshop afterwards, but excessive contrast may lead to loss of detail.
2. Moments
In these series, instead of taking pictures of my family in front of various buildings as per usual, I took care to observe the various happenings around me and my objective were to capture these fleeting "moments" and thus, hopefully the essence of Stratford-Upon-Avon. In order to do this, I set the camera to AF Servo and burst so that the camera could fire in rapid succession at the same time as tracking moving objects. That's why some of these pictures are not pin-sharp but the essence of the moment is hopefully present.
3. Motion
This is the first time we're bringing the image stabilised 24-105mm L lens to Stratford-Upon-Avon. The coolest thing about image stabilisation is unlike before, I could hand-hold as slow as 1/15 but still have a high chance of getting a sharp picture. What this meant today was I could shoot at slow shutter speeds to show contrast against moving and still objects - apparent in pictures of the dancers and the merry-go-round.
PS
For these images:
1. A circular polariser was used
2. Most of the times I still used fill in flash in broad daylight
3. Edited only using Picasa2 - dammit, I wish I have time to Photoshop some of them - I bet some could be fine tuned even better.
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| Monday, 23-Apr-2007 17:19 |
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Flower Basket
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We had a cool, relaxing weekend. Picture above taken at the Coventry Memorial Park, which was in full bloom. Exif: 28mm, shutter speed 1/1000, F4, ISO 200, no flash.
In retrospect, I should have increased the depth of field slightly by using a smaller aperture, say F8 so that the flowers in the foreground would not be blurred.
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| Monday, 23-Apr-2007 10:57 |
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Strawberry Icecream in Spring
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Married to Puan Mama Sarah I get to eat stuff like this every weekend or so. What a treat! Tee hee hee.
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| Saturday, 21-Apr-2007 15:25 |
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Spine of a monster
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| Thursday, 19-Apr-2007 21:34 |
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Emyr
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The picture is of Emyr, Auntie & Uncle De's 2.5 year old son. I just enjoy taking pictures of Emyr for his elfin features, and very attractive eyes.
The picture was taken indoors, flash was bounced of the ceiling, ISO was 1600; hence the background noise, and the noise on Emyr's shirt. I think it was F4 at around 70mm. The catch-lights in the eyes are from the Vaio (look closely and you could see the keyboard).
My self-critique of the picture:
1. The background is too distracting, hence the extreme crop from the original picture
2. even after the crop, I find the white background on the top right corner very distracting
3. ISO was too high: 1600, noise is visible
4. The eyes are not pin sharp
This is the original:
The thing I was experimenting on today is a new kind of blurring effect for the skin using PS. Here's how it's done.
1. copy the original image twice
2. On the top most layer:
- change blend mode to lighten
- Gaussian blur Amount 60%
3. On the middle layer:
- change blend mode to darken
- Gaussian blur Amount 40%
- Change the layer opacity to 40%
4. Click the eye icon on the background layer to make the layer invisible.
5. Create a new layer. Move this new layer right to the top.
6.Press and hold Alt, then
- click on the new layer
- still holding Alt, Layer --> merge visible. Release Alt key.
- change the opacity of the new layer to around 40%
7. On the new layer - create a layer mask
8. Paint black on the layer mask on the hair, eyes, lips, ears
The result (hopefully) will be a soft glow effect on the skin, most suitable for portraits. What do you guys think?
PS
1. In retrospect, I shouldn't have experimented with this effect on a child's skin - the difference would be hard to spot as Emyr's skin is already very smooth. D'oh!
2. I hope you guys don't mind me using Emyr's picture again, Uncle & Auntie De.
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| Sunday, 15-Apr-2007 22:03 |
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Longford Park
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The fact that all of us are unwell today did not stop us from trying to enjoy the sunny weekend. Although we've been in Coventry for several years now - we were surprised to discover this new park, recommended by our friend & neighbour, D. Next time it would be wonderful to visit the park again - complete with a packed lunch, a flask of tea, and a good book to read. Hope everyone had a good weekend too.
I'm too unwell with a headache & high temperature to spend hours in PS, so I edited all the pictures above using Picasa2.
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| Saturday, 14-Apr-2007 09:43 |
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Sleepy Canal
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The Coventry Canal, one cold, sleepy morning.
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| Friday, 13-Apr-2007 21:45 |
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Heart of Stone
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My intention was to post something completely different - I've been literally working on PS for hours but right at the end I ditched the project(s), I'm stuck. Finally I decided to post just the picture I edited in Picasa 2, above.
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)
