Uploads from ~ Maree ~, with geodata

Idsworth Church

nobody@flickr.com (~ Maree ~) — Thu, 09 May 2013 15:55:59 -0700

~ Maree ~ posted a photo:

On the top of a hill nestled in amongst the tiny lanes of the south downs lies the most beautiful little church. Sometimes surrounded by Oilseed Rape, but this year in a sea of green...

Passion Fruit

nobody@flickr.com (~ Maree ~) — Sun, 26 Feb 2012 10:59:11 -0800

~ Maree ~ posted a photo:

A year in pictures ~ Week 7 of 52, Seasonal Fruit and Vegetables

Worth viewing on the lighbox - hit L to see if you agree ;-)

This was always scheduled for the week of Valentine's day, trying to keep with seasonal fruit and veg, but also where possible pop them into an appropriate calendar context. After the event I realised that this is the first image of the batch to be shot in landscape format, and this could cause issues for print consistency if I decide to go down that road. I may have to revisit it when I get a chance. In the meantime, I wanted to play with shaped bokeh, something that I've seen done a number of times, and I've been itching to try for myself. It is a lot of fun, but I went in guessing the size of the cutout, and I must have tried six or seven times before getting it the way I'd wanted!

As for the fruit - it is up there with my absolute favourites. I love the smell, the taste just screams tropics and is about as close to a natural sweet as it's possible to get. It's magical that a fruit that can appear to be wrinkled, dryed out and not very exciting can reveal such nectar once it's been broken open. The contents of the opened fruit lasted about 30 seconds after I thought I'd nailed the shot! I'm so enthused by the fruit in fact, that it would be easy to imagine that it had got its name from filling the eater with a fruity passion, but in reality it gets its name from the flower of the genus Passiflora or passion flower. The name is supposed to have originated from the symbolic association of various parts of the flower to the Passion of Christ before the Crucifixion. I find that kind of etymology quite fascinating. (If you're not familiar with it, the flower is extremely beautiful, we also have a non edible species that is grown in gardens here in the UK).

ISO100, f1.8 @ 1/125s. 50mm prime with heart shaped cutout on front of lens. I used a softbox with a purple gel to set the scene, a string of small LED lights for the bokeh, and a snooted flash on minimum power as the keylight on the fruits. The open aperture is great for creating lovely bokeh, but hard to get the point of focus spot on. I think viewed full size it works ok, but in the smaller version I'm not happy with the clarity of the seeds on the near fruit.

Parsnip

nobody@flickr.com (~ Maree ~) — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 16:01:33 -0800

~ Maree ~ posted a photo:

A year in pictures ~ Week 6 of 52, Seasonal Fruit and Vegetables

aka Panning the Parsnip

Another wonderful seasonal winter vegetable, parsnips abound through the coldest months of the year, and you just know that they're good and fresh because they look and feel great and you can store them for longer than at other times of the year. They speak earthyness to me, and it's not rare to see them in the most amazing convoluted and knobbly shapes. Whether you enjoy them roasted alongside other seasonal veg, or chopped into a warming casserole, they are one root crop that I associate very firmly with the hearty, wholesome fare of the season. Another favourite of mine is to team them with slightly tart cooking apples to make a memorable soup.

Apparently, the parsnip is even more laden with vitamins and minerals than its close relative the carrot - and has particularly high levels of potassium - so I'm guessing that it helps you see in all kinds of places :D

The colour of this vegetable is understated, and I wondered whether it might suit a soft image, with a pastel palette. I've been enjoying my experiments with photos that move away from the heavy dark backgrounds that I'd come to rely on, so I'm keen to keep pushing in that direction. Ever since the DSLR Skills course module on panning techniques, my great friend Sarah and I have often joked about panning various things, so I decided that I'd pay tribute to it by trying to 'pan the parsnip'. I created a background with pastel blue acrylic paints, interspersed with patches of darker blues and russets to pick out the browns in the parsnip, in the hope that as I panned, those colours would streak and soften in a pleasing manner. In the end I rather like the resulting hues, and the softness of the overall image, I can see it working as a printed image in the range, which ultimately is what I'm aiming to achieve.

ISO100 f3.2 @ 1/4s. The lighting for this one is relatively simple, a desk spot lamp lighting the background and parsnip body, an LED torch to highlight the top of subject (when I was setting it up I thought of it as a 'hair light' - I know that sounds crazy for a parsnip, but such is the way my mind works :P).

Kale

nobody@flickr.com (~ Maree ~) — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 16:56:06 -0800

~ Maree ~ posted a photo:

A year in pictures ~ Week 5 of 52, Seasonal Fruit and Vegetables

And so to the divisive veges. I know that kale isn't to everyone's taste, though my departed, beloved bunny Humphrey wouldn't have been able to understand that one little bit. Kale was his favourite by a long way, and he'd gobble it up as fast as he could, getting it securely into his belly before anyone had a chance to confiscate it. It is of course packed with healthy vitality, but I know that it wasn't my favourite to eat. That is, until I was out for lunch with a good friend, and we were served with the most delicious kale and horseradish soup. Ever since then I've been a convert - and I'm afraid that I love the soup so much that my kale doesn't get a look in elsewhere!

Photographically, I wanted to experiment with this vege and try to present it in an original way. It can be absolutely beautiful when it catches the light, and I thought it would be fun to play with it as though it really wasn't a veg at all. In my mind's eye I could visualise a necklace, or bracelet made out of the beautiful green leaves - like a natural sculpture or ruffle. I decided that it would be best teamed with purples and blues, so selected a ring for the mandatory nod to bokeh, and a deep purple Yves St Lauren nail varnish.

ISO100 f2.8 @ 1/50s. Softbox to camera top left, gelled speedlite onto white background through white brolly. Reflector camera right to fill shadows. Minor white balance adjustment to emphasise the blues, and unsharp mask on the parts of the image in sharp focus.

Orange {Explored}

nobody@flickr.com (~ Maree ~) — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 17:45:33 -0800

~ Maree ~ posted a photo:

A year in pictures ~ Week 4 of 52, Seasonal Fruit and Vegetables

Explore #350

My subject this week is such a colourful fruit, that I decided that it would have been unnecessary to subject it to any post processing warp, so instead I set out to capture its natural vibrance and energy. I had a concept based on the way we sometimes cut them open, and thought of the pieces flying apart in a kind of orange explosion. To simplify this and preserve the beauty of the cut surfaces, I opted for four large pieces and arranged them in a 3D scatter sculpture (I made that term up of course :D). I considered various backgrounds, but I kept coming back to blue, the complementary colour to orange. I also thought it would work to create a graduated backdrop, in my head at least it reminds me of the sky in the sunshine regions with which we associate these citrus fruits.

ISO100 f4 @1/50s. Flash on white background through blue gel & snoot, softbox camera left with reflector camera right to fill dark areas.

I've been aware in the last few weeks that the oranges that I've been getting have been absolutely at their best. They're one of those fruits that we get year-round these days, but the majority of times they are a little disappointing, either too dry or very tasteless. Those that are in the stores just now are juicy, sweet, tasty and best of all super-zangy (probably another made up word ;-). When you eat a good one, it's a blissful experience, and there's a relief associated with knowing that the memory of the last time you had one like it wasn't just a rose tinted nostalgia, but something to be repeated again and again at the right time of year. We all know the benefits of these wonderful fruits, so I'm not going to bore anyone with the list of vitamins, they're tasty enough in their own right to merit a place on everyone's fruit bowl, regardless of their healthy credentials.

The elements ~ Air

nobody@flickr.com (~ Maree ~) — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 16:02:27 -0800

~ Maree ~ posted a photo:

The Assignment ~ Module 5 ~ Movement in the elements

I'm stretching the brief a little here, but I figure that this heron wouldn't be taking flight without disturbing the air, so there is an implicit movement of one of the elements (rather like a flag blowing, or the blades of a windmill turning, though in this case it's the birds wings that are causing the movement and not the other way round).

I know it's very noisy and abstract - but that's also working for me here - the ghostly nature of the heron is almost ethereal and reminiscent of a misty airyness.

ISO 800, f5.6 @1/10s (70mm zoom) - It was almost dark when I got the opportunity to shoot this, so had to pull all the stops out to capture it!

Leek {Explored}

nobody@flickr.com (~ Maree ~) — Sun, 22 Jan 2012 17:13:07 -0800

~ Maree ~ posted a photo:

A year in pictures ~ Week 3 of 52, Seasonal Fruit and Vegetables

Explore #296

In keeping with my aims for the project, I've been trying to force myself out of my usual comfort zone, to explore different lighting and techniques. This week I selected my veg before I knew quite what I was going to do with it, which subtantially increased the challenge. Even though leeks are beautiful in their own way, they don't strike me as being the easiest shape to capture photographically, so I decided to opt for a cross section, with the stem leading away into the soft bokeh behind. I've started to use my notebook properly, and as well as scribbling down ideas for future weeks, I sketched out the image and the setup I would need to capture this week's victim. I found it amazingly rewarding to plan the shoot so carefully in advance, though some of the setup was easier to sketch on paper than achieve in reality!

For those interested, ISO 100, f2.0 @1/40s. I used my wonderful 58mm Helios 44M (the least expensive, but one of the most magical lenses in my arsenal - a heavy, old piece of glass from the former Soviet Union that is mounted with an adapter - well worth looking out for if you don't mind shooting in manual mode - it is renowned for the quality of bokeh that it produces). I slipped a 12mm extension tube in between the lens and the camera body to get nice and close with a full frame image. The leek was suspended with cotton thread, background is a black cloth, drapped with a necklace to create sparkles. Off camera flash aimed at backdrop on high power, flash on 1/32 from front camera right to light leek. Image cross processed following method in Martin Evening's bible on Photoshop CS3.

What can I say about leeks?! I always have at least one in my fridge - an essential ingredient in many soups and casseroles - they are the perfect winter vegetable, in season from September through to the end of March. I love that even when you buy them in a supermarket, they still show signs of the earth from whence they came. Though it's sometimes a chore, peeling back the outer layers of the stem reveals mud and soil that has been pushed deep between the layers as the plants emerged from the soil. There aren't too many vegetables these days that can survive the 'perfection' tests that are imposed by our big retailers while retaining signs of the earthy origins from which the sprung - and I admire leeks for that - a bastion of reality in a sea of gleaming polished fruit and veg.

Beetroot

nobody@flickr.com (~ Maree ~) — Sun, 15 Jan 2012 15:45:45 -0800

~ Maree ~ posted a photo:

A year in pictures ~ Week 2 of 52, Seasonal Fruit and Vegetables

After a lot of failed experiments, and a large amount of flaffing about, I stumbled rather by accident on this idea. Taken on my stove hob, lit from above by the hood lights which I thought created an interesting halo effect around the beetroots. I was originally working on an idea that it had been pouring with purple beetroot juice rain, but this is the slightly 'spotty' alternative.

Beetroot seems to divide opinion, some people love it, while others can't be doing with it. I fall firmly in the group that relishes it, though I'm less enthusiastic about it pickled than when it's been freshly cooked, or better still roasted. The young and tender leaves have become popular in recent years as colourful additions to mixed salads, often with some raw beetroot shredded in. Maybe I was destined to love it, I believe that Mum ate rather a lot of it when she was pregnant with me. I also know that I was apparently taken to a doctors at a young age, because my poor parents thought that I might have some gastro-intestinal bleeding. The culprit it turns out was harmless, the strong colours from the beet tend to dye anything they come into contact with ;-)

ISO100, f1.8, 1/20s on tripod. Lights from cooker hood and white balance adjusted. PP adjustments to curves, slight lightening vignette and unsharp mask on the beet portions that are in focus.

Pomegranates

nobody@flickr.com (~ Maree ~) — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 11:45:40 -0800

~ Maree ~ posted a photo:

Explored #19

A year in pictures ~ Week 1 of 52

I've deciced to concentrate my efforts for the View 52 project on taking a photograph each week of a fruit or vegetable that is at the peak of its season. I'm aiming to create either a calendar or year book with the images, though that depends a bit on how they turn out! I'm also going to be consciously pushing myself to explore new styles, as I feel that some of my images have become quite similar. I'm interested in different lighting - anyone familiar with my pics will know that I tend towards the dark end of the tonal spectrum! So this week at least I thought I'd push myself to take a 'brighter' image verging on high key.

ISO 100, f2.2 @1/60s Flash fired from softbox through window from outside, with large white reflector inside to lighten shadows.

Pomegranates are at their very best at the moment, as I pass the local grocers there've been big trays of the plump red fruits stealing the attention away from some of the less seasonal offerings. How could I resist starting the New Year with these wonderful treats, each one packed full of individual little jewels. They've become popular in the last few years as a 'super-food' and there's been particular interest in their anti-oxidant properties. Either way, they are beautiful and delicious, the seeds eaten straight from the fruit, or pressed to give a juice. As a child in France my favourite drink was Grenadine, the juice of the pomegranate.

Milking Time

nobody@flickr.com (~ Maree ~) — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 19:08:07 -0800

~ Maree ~ posted a photo:

L for Lightbox - try it, it's worth it :D

The Assignment Project 4 ~ Dereliction

An old derelict farmstead on the edges of Edinburgh provided the extremely muddy location for a fabulous dereliction shoot... One for the history archives as this place will eventually make way to new buildings.

The Steak Stand

nobody@flickr.com (~ Maree ~) — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 05:42:07 -0800

~ Maree ~ posted a photo:

L for Lightbox

I was lucky enough to get a follow up to last year's image at the Steak Stand at the Edinburgh German Christmas Market. As with my previous image, I've opted for the more gritty mono convertion as I think the colour is superfluous to this image, and the characters are better represented by the black and white medium.

As usual when I approach people who I don't know and ask them for a photograph, I'm very grateful to the guys for being so open to me taking their portrait - thank you =)

I've also used this as a demo of the impact of RAW convertion on an image - you'll find the original default convertion and a modified raw colour convertion below for comparison.

ISO 100, f5 1/6 sec with fill flash (Flash compensation -1.7). I used a relatively slow shutter speed to capture some of the background detail - handheld that worked remarkably well! The low level fill flash has given some crispness to the subjects.

RAW adjustments:
Slight crop and straightening
Recovery 100
Fill Light 40
Blacks 5
Brightness +60
Contrast +89
Clarity +100

Curves, Highlights -86, Lights +39, Darks +4, Shadows -25

Grayscale mix to maximise contrast and achieve a good histogram while emphasising the faces.

11/11/11 ~ Do this in Remembrance

nobody@flickr.com (~ Maree ~) — Fri, 11 Nov 2011 15:34:00 -0800

~ Maree ~ posted a photo:

Freshly baked poppy seed bread.

String of Garlic

nobody@flickr.com (~ Maree ~) — Sun, 06 Jan 2013 10:17:22 -0800

~ Maree ~ posted a photo:

Explored #235

View 52 1/52
No apologies for the honking breath - this stuff tastes as good as it looks. Every clove of this French garlic gives a taste bud ecstacy =)

Child's toy

nobody@flickr.com (~ Maree ~) — Mon, 05 Nov 2012 04:09:49 -0800

~ Maree ~ posted a photo:

I was revisiting some photographs that didn't make the selection last year when I came across this and I decided I should have another look at it.

It's hard to imagine how this could have been a child's toy - everything about this puppet is frightening to me! I opted for a mono convertion as I didn't really feel that the colour added a lot to the image.

Imagination is Even Better

nobody@flickr.com (~ Maree ~) — Wed, 24 Oct 2012 05:00:31 -0700

~ Maree ~ posted a photo:

The Wealth of Nations
Eduardo Paolozzi

A wonderful sculpture photographed at night in Edinburgh.

The inscription of Einstein's quote 'Knowledge is wonderful but imagination is even better' seems particularly apt to the vivid almost surreal colours that have resulted from the mixture of street lighting and reflections on the bronze sculpture.

Scissors that launched a thousand ships

nobody@flickr.com (~ Maree ~) — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 16:52:17 -0800

~ Maree ~ posted a photo:

Welll.. they are ceremonial scissors that cut the ribbon at the launch of more than 400 ships at Port Brown's Shipyard - including the Queen Mary, the Queen Elizabeth and the QE2. They are silver handled scissors used between 1899 and 1967.

Spent a fantastic day sheltering from the foul weather visiting the Glasgow Riverside Museum with the lovely Sarah and John - fun times indeed =) The place is packed with interest, but we were scuppered by the ban on tripods, so my ISO levels climbed to a nasty high, with resulting noise and low dof. In this case I wanted a shallow dof to throw the lights in the background into pools of bokeh, but I've lost some clarity on parts of the scissors.

Though it's hard to tell, the exhibit behind is a large model ship.

ISO400 f1.8 @1/100 sec. Handheld with available light.

Santas after the run

nobody@flickr.com (~ Maree ~) — Sun, 11 Dec 2011 17:19:20 -0800

~ Maree ~ posted a photo:

L for Lightbox

Much better viewed full size. Many thanks to the guys for letting me take their portraits =)

I think that the mono conversion works better as usual - but I've put a copy of the colour original beneath for comparison.

First Snow Edinburgh 2011 {Explored}

nobody@flickr.com (~ Maree ~) — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 17:58:38 -0800

~ Maree ~ posted a photo:

L for Lightbox

Explore #190

An early morning start with Sarah to try and capture a sunrise at the Cammo Estate in Edinburgh was almost foiled by a sudden and heavy blizzard. Our perseverance was rewarded with a beautiful landscape - half ice, half snow and with strong textures in the stuble of the cut fields.

A revelation to me in this photograph - I am really annoyed to find that the quality looks much worse on my monitor in Flickr. After some searching it turns out that it's Firefox that is messing with the image - I loaded the page in IE and it is much better. Certainly the original on my pc is pin sharp. I learn a new thing every day :D

Update.. Chrome is also rendering this much better. Does anyone know if there's a way of modifying the default image compression in Firefox?

December Morning

nobody@flickr.com (~ Maree ~) — Sun, 04 Dec 2011 16:38:57 -0800

~ Maree ~ posted a photo:

L for Lightbox - well worth it, honest!

Thanks to Sarah for sticking out the blizzard for long enough to let the sky clear and the beautiful winter landscape reveal itself.

I love the misty effect that you get shooting close to the low sun - this was a joy to witness, even if it was seriously cold!

The Three Musketeers

nobody@flickr.com (~ Maree ~) — Fri, 11 Nov 2011 11:00:43 -0800

~ Maree ~ posted a photo:

L for Lightbox.

Sarah asked me along to North Queensferry to see if we could capture another sunset. There is another oft photographed view, taken of an anchor in the foreground with the rail bridge in the background. On this occasion though, three wonderful local girls took to climbing it and I realised that this could work beautifully as a largely silhouetted image with the sunset and road bridge behind. Well done girls for staying so still for a whopping 15 seconds!

The Assignment 2011, Module 3 - shooting at dawn and sunset. The challenge is to capture an image of a silhouette against a sunset sky. In this case the subjects have been brushed with the light of a nearby street lamp.

26mm, manual, ISO 100, f16 @ 15 secs.