1/320 sec @ f16, ISO 100, 32mm (zoom) Canon 20D.
When you visit Stonehenge there is quite often a sense of it being smaller than expected. This is often a comment from visitors when we take them. Something about its location and how the stones get swallowed up in the landscape. I wanted to try and give a sense of that. My approach was to take a portrait format shot that included a lot of the rather dynamic sky, which dominates the site, but leave enough of the stones to know what we were looking at. Some shots I took with the same idea made Stonehenge look completely insignificant, which it isn't really. Compositionally weighted to the bottom with the dark stones. I like the balance.
Edited it in Lightzone to turn it into a B&W version. I wanted to use Lightzone's tools to maximise the contrast in the sky.Spot on comments from the BP tutor here; reduce the foreground, watch the sky in terms of blowing the highlights, and resolve the stones one way or another, either silhouettes or something to see in the shadows.
1/60 sec @ f4, ISO 200, 48mm (zoom) Canon 20D. Flash.Mancha the cat, washing.
Wanted to try and capture the the texture of the fur here. Composition simple and sound I think, and relies on the attractiveness of the cat to make it work. She was sitting on a dark chair so quite easy to drive the chair to black in PS. She is white of course.
Might need to do a little more work to bring out some variation in the fur.
1/1250 sec @ f6.3, 5.8mm Canon A710.
A quick grab shot of a colleague while we were on a desert drive. I saw it and I liked it.
I liked the composition in that standing behind the person encourages us to enter the shot. The shot suffered from an aggressive sun, it was mid-afternoon in the desert, which resulted in some strong highlights on the main subject. Some loss of contrast resulting from my attempts to control the highlights in PS; you get a JPEG out of the A710 so less room for manoeuvre. I will need to work on this a bit.
BP tutor had pretty much the same view of things.
1/250 sec @ f5.6, 72mm (zoom) Canon 20D.The Empire State building is an impressive sight and I wanted to capture some sense of that. Originally a sunlit building against a clear blue sky. I liked the simple strong lines of the subject.
Quite a nice graphic image after the B&W conversion and the BP tutor agreed. B&W conversion was done in Lightroom using a preset I had downloaded from the web.
1/800 sec @ f8, ISO 100, 50mm (zoom), Canon 20D.
Here there was a sense of lightness to the Empire State building, less imposing and more soaring into the sky. A modern Camelot? Chose a B&W conversion, in Lightroom, that I felt emphasised this. Strong on the blues. Feedback from the BP tutor was quite a marked feeling that he did not like the colourisation of the shot, he would like to see some desaturation. I might take a look at the effect of his recommendation but overall I disagree with his assessment. Perhaps the buildings on the side are too dark, I might think of bringing them up a bit.
1/320 sec @ f11, ISO 200, 85mm (zoom), Canon 20D.The picture of a horse farm near Nashville, TN. I was originally taken with the colour version of this shot since there was depth to the image and a nice balance to the photo. A sense of space and peaceful farming. I took both landscape and portrait formats and felt this was the best as the lake, the barn and the house stack nicely together.
I converted it to B&W as an experiment, but sense there is some loss of punch and I feel that I have ended up with a weaker image. The barn is a reddish colour in the original for example and that is an obvious focus for the image.
Interestingly, the BP tutor seems happier with it than I was and suggested that this image was ok in terms of a printable version, just needed to add some contrast and some dodging and burning. Didn't say where the D&B should go. I think the whole thing is a bit weak but am happy to learn!
