My 'studio'

Well, I'm finally back, and yet again the pangs of guilt over my neglected blog overcome me. I'm quite excited about the following photos. They are of an mp3 player. And a Swiss Army Knife.

Why am I excited? Has the stress of two-essays-and-two-presentations-all-in-the-space-of-one-week-oh-dear-god-what-am-I-going-to-do caused my brain to melt into a pile of slush? Well possibly, but that's not why I'm excited about these. These mundane photos represent the future... The future, I tell you!

This is the first time I've ever attempted to use manipulate light to my advantage. It's something that I have been interested in for a while. Nearly all of the best photos you have ever seen contain two things: photoshoppery, and manipulation of light using flashes. Granted, these humble efforts are far from being included in such a list, but the important thing is that I tried. And the results? Far better than I could have expected.

This was the set-up. My studio, if you will... Stop sniggering - a man has to start somewhere! That unassuming piece of tinfoil in the lower right corner? That was held on front of my flash, so that the light would bounce off the piece of paper balanced precariously on the top and diffuse the harsh shadows and uneven lighting with a direct flash.

You're still laughing - or at least raising your eyebrows in bemusement. I asked you to stop, remember?

So, what happens if you pop up the flash, point the camera at the subject, and shoot? This hideousity:*

Or this:

Yeuch. Not much more to say about that.

And with my Super Advanced Super Studio SetUp TM?:

Prepare to bask in the glory of this:

and:

Okay, so they're not exactly Ansel Adams-esque. But I'm proud of them. And hopefully this is just the beginning - the next step is people. And then.... The World!





* Yes it's a word!!! Tsk!**

** No, no it's not...

Just one picture...

I took this in the same place as the photos in the last post were taken, but only realised I liked it after I had made that post. It needed quite a lot of 'photoshopping' (in inverted commas because I actually use The GIMP and Lightroom) to make everything black & white except for the red, and then I replaced the sky with another one because the original sky was completely white and very boring. I constantly look over my old pictures that I didn't see anything in the first time around. There's plenty of rough, but the occasional diamond.

Autumn in Adare Manor

I like autumn. All those hues of orange and red. Not having to get up so early to see the sun rise, and not having to stay out to late to watch it set. Cool, but sunny afternoons. The return to the cycle after hectic summers. I mostly like it because it has allowed me for the first time in while, to just post up some pictures with no whinging. I like when things are back to normal...

Click on the photo below for a slideshow.

The Evil Eyes

My cat is, by all accounts, a perfectly pleasant cat. It's not a scraggy, old, flea-ridden mog. She's got quite beautiful long black and white fur. She's got a normal cat face - free from blemishes or disfigurements. You could even go so far as to say that she's a rather cute looking cat.

The thing is though, I don't really like her. She's kind of annoying. She runs away every time you go anywhere near her, or god forbid, try to pet her or pick her up. She has an incredibly annoying habit of miaowing constantly if you go out into the back garden, even though there doesn't appear to be anything bothering her and she has plenty of food and whatever else cats need.

She's also quite an effective killer. Every couple of days, she presents us with a freshly killed mouse, or bird, and recently, an impressively large fish from our pond. Behind the façade of the cute face and gentle demeanour, there is a killer lurking, one with all the cold efficiency of a deadly assassin.

None of this was on my mind when I went into our back garden recently to take a few pictures of the cat. I was actually thinking the opposite: I just wanted to get a few cute pictures of the cat because I hadn't taken anything in a while and I had a free model who couldn't really object. I intended to take flattering pictures because I thought it would be good practise for taking pictures of other living things, namely humans.

But flattering pictures was not what I ended up with, at least, that's what I think of them. While taking them and particularly while post-processing them, I ended up with photos that look like the cat is plotting to take over a small country in South America, or perhaps point a giant gun from space and hold the world at ransom. In one picture, somebody commented that she looked like "Batman's cat", and Batman, while certainly not evil, definitely has a sinister, gothic look about him. I suppose it's all that black.

I think this says some really interesting things about photography, and how the person behind the lens can influence the picture and use it to create their own representation of something, rather than a faithful rendition of something in the world; be it a landscape or a portrait of a person, or as I've found out, even a cat. Clearly my less-than-flattering feelings shone through to the photos, and whether I wanted to or not made no difference. Honestly, I made no conscious decision to take sinister or dark photos, nor did I mean to post-process them to make them even darker. I just found myself doing it. One picture I converted to black and white, and using a layer mask I painted the eyes back into colour. I did it just because I thought it might look cool. The picture I chose just because her eyes were widest in it. This is what I ended up with:

Pretty evil, eh? Here are a couple of pictures that I posted earlier in the week of the cat, taken at the same time as this one:



So that's that. The next time somebody takes a photo of you, study the results very carefully. They might just think you're the next Bond villain. Or Batman.

God I wish I was Batman...

Reluctant model

I was going to shoot Declan O'Rourke tonight. Yes, I know what you're thinking: "that's a bit mean!" you exclaim. But hilariously, I didn't actually mean shoot him with a gun, but with a camera! At his gig! I know, I know, I should be a comedian and make lots of money...

Anyway, I checked everything. I was hoping to get some into the college paper or magazine. I checked my lens for dirt. My battery for charge. My ISO. My ISO again. My ISO yet again. Centre-weighted metering, AF-S, and any other acronym I could think of I checked. But then I got on the bus, got half way to the University just to find out that it was cancelled. Sigh. On the plus side, I did go the whole way around the bus route in a great big circle for the first time in my life. That was pretty amazing.

So instead of what hopefully would have been decent photos of Declan O'Rourke singing, I'm going to treat you to some photos of my cat taken earlier in the day. I've never really liked cats - our ones in particular. I don't know whether it's the air of superiority and disdain, or the fact that they spend every waking moment futilely trying to sneak into the house. I mean jeez, get a hobby! Go out and meet people, join a club or society! Gawd.

My reluctant model today was our aptly-named mog Fuzz, who gave me bemused, almost pitying looks as I took her photo. She stretched a bit, and then with all the enthusiasm of a potato, strolled away from me as one might casually leave a bad dinner party, or some other minor annoyance. Slight curiosity for a time, and then nothing.

As usual, click the photo below to be whisked to a Gallery of Earthly Delights.