Down on the Leeds/Liverpool canal near Shipley, between Saltaire Brewery and Dockfield Mills, live a family of swans. There is a pair of adults and three signets, which are growing up quite fast. I took Ted for a long ride in his pushchair this morning and we passed the swans. We stopped for a look and they all swam over, expecting bread which we did not have.
The adults were wary but let me creep quite close with my camera, hissing at me to let me know where the boundary was (I was about 1 metre away). With only 55mm of lens to play with, I had to get extremely close for this shot.
I have tried photographing swans so many times, yet have never achieved a shot that was any good, so I was really happy when I saw this one come out of the camera. Although I was crouched as low as I could get without actually lying prostrate on the grass, I was sufficiently high enough to ensure that the only background was the water of the canal. At f5.6 at this close, the water is nicely out of focus. The drip of water falling from the end of the swan’s beak was a complete accident of timing. I in no way attempted to capture it, and the first I knew of it was when it downloaded onto my computer.
I have sharpened the image a little to make the swan stand out even more from the background. My first attempt was way over the top though and I ended up with a black line around the neck that was very obvious at full size. I also had a bit of blue/yellow chromatic aberration around the beak and neck. This is the first image that I have really noticed it on, and that I have ever tried to remove it on. Using the sliders in Aperture, and not fully understanding the cause of it, I think I did OK. I am still not entirely happy with the top of the swan’s head though; it’s not quite right.
If you view the image at full size and look at the swan’s eye, you can see a reflection of the sky and the Dockfield Mills building that was behind me when I took the image. I’m really pleased with this!
This is the newest addition to our family – little Baby Daisy. Three weeks early and weighing less than 2kg (4lb 14oz), I cannot believe how tiny she is. She is a miniscule, fragile, delicate little thing. Her new parents Mandy and Stephen are very proud of her, and rightly so. Congratulations to them both, she’s gorgeous.
My boy Ted is now a hefty, chunky, mobile one year old, but he was twice the weight of Daisy when he was born. She fits into the palms of two hands and is the most delicate little thing I have ever had the pleasure of meeting. I have found it hard to comprehend how much a baby changes in the first year. In adult life, Daisy and Ted will be considered to be the same age, but right now they could not be any more different. It is a cliché that you hear time and again that “it all goes so quickly”, but looking at Daisy has made me realise for the first time that it’s true. I simply cannot remember a tiny Ted, despite the photographic evidence.
I took this photo at a recent family barbecue. I wasn’t particularly prepared for shooting a new born baby, especially one that does little other than sleep and feed, but I got a few snaps when the opportunity arose. I am happy with the set of photos I got, especially the black and white ones. This one here is the best example; I think I have captured her delicateness and the protective love of her mother.
I also love this one in landscape orientation, mother and child nose-to-nose. I chose not to use it though as Daisy’s yawning mouth makes it look like she was crying. It amused me that today’s release of the first photo of PM David Cameron and his new born is almost identical in composition!
With a little more time or preparation, I would do this shot a bit different as you can’t see much of Daisy’s face, but I think the emotion is there anyway. I tried several different black and white conversions at different levels of contrast. I found this one to be the best. Not too contrasty, but keeping enough contrast on Mandy’s face to enhance the delicate look of Daisy’s.
This is the first time I have tried to photograph someone else’s child, and I am happy with the results. Congratulations again Mandy and Stephen!
I’ve just been looking back through some old pictures from earlier in the year and this one caught my eye. Greg and I went to Baildon Moor in the fading light of a cold February evening to get some images of light trails on the road.
The moor is a great place for light trails, as the road is well used but not too busy and the open space gives chance for some good long shots or shots with vast amounts of sky.
Getting the white balance right can be a challenge in post processing, but there is a large scope for creativity. The sky is full of the orange reflections of the sodium vapour lamps of Leeds and Bradford, as well as the natural fading daylight. The car headlights are different again, and this gives a broad range of light to play with. On the image above I went with a natural-looking sky, which has given an otherworldly look to the grass at the side of the road, and an orange cast to the oncoming headlights. I went with something different on this image of Orion, where I chose a white balance adjusted for the car headlight, leaving the sky an orange purple colour.
This is one of my favourite images of the year so far, of one of my favourite places, and one of my favourite photographic techniques.
I received a Flickr Mail on Sunday saying that one of my images has been selected to be part of the exhibition, The Best of Leeds, Vol 1, as part of Leeds Photo Week run by ExposureLeeds. The image was titled A Cold Crossing 1, and I took it on 17 January 2009 on a shopping trip to Leeds to collect my wedding suit which was being altered.
I’d never heard of ExposureLeeds or Leeds Photo Week before, nor of the exhibition, and I still know precious little. However, the image that you see above will be part of the exhibition at the 42 New Briggate Gallery, Leeds, between 1 and 7 September. It will either be in printed form, or projected along with other images.
It is exciting to have some work selected to be part of an ego-boosting-titled exhibition, but I am kept in reality with two thoughts. How many images have been selected? I imagine the selection will be vast, and my image will be just a tiny part. And why pick this photo? I don’t think this is a particularly strong image, for the reasons below. I have many images of Leeds that I think are better.
It conveys some movement on the freezing cold street, but the composition, with the fence to the right and the chopped off roofs, could have been so much better. The movement in the left part of the image is blurred and confused. This was my intention, but at two seconds, I think the exposure was too long to have any real impact. I like the colouring of the image, but I was going through a ‘contrasty’ phase which has given it an unpleasant overall darkness.
I sound like I now hate the image, compared to my comments on the original (“I love this image”) which suggest that at the time I was more than happy with it. It shows how tastes evolve and the eye changes.
Regardless, I am proud to be part of the exhibition, no matter how small a part I play, and I will pop down between 1 and 7 September to see if I can spot my photo in amongst the probably countless others.
This is a close up of a lit energy saving lightbulb taken through 60mm of extension tubes with my 50mm lens on the end. The glass of the lens was about 3cm from the lightbulb.
I love the softness of this image. The front element’s glass looks shiny (and a little dusty) and smooth, lending a lovely soft edge. The rear two elements are lost in the incredibly shallow depth of field offered by the lens and extension tubes. The rotated angle makes it seem less formal than if it was straight up. I think the it looks almost organic – it could pass for a flower. It reminds me of the photo of the lilly I took under similar conditions earlier in the year.
I have not processed this image very much. The rotation was done in Aperture. I altered the levels a little to add a tiny bit of contrast down the glass reflections. I altered the white balance to make the light as white as possible. The image did look good with the white balance set differently so that it came out a rich, warm, yellow colour, but it was pure white that I was after on this occasion.
The one thing I learned through this exercise was not to look at the bulb through the viewfinder while the light was on. Switch the light off while setting up the shot or you will be blinded temporarily in your viewfinder eye.