Update

I had a bit of a thought this morning as I was pondering the photo for the day. I set up two bloggs, I know madness, the idea was to do my own proper one using wordpress and the web site I actually have and for some reason a blogspot one, well as usual I'm a bit lazy so the blogspot one was simple to set up. Now part of this challenge is to do things properly and blogspot is ok but not really what I want. So it's migration time!

I've moved all my posts to chippy1402.co.uk and all have to ask is that from now on you look there for my blogging!

 

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Day 67

Busy at work today but in the interest of keeping up with the photo a day I thought about it and took a photo early on. For me this project is really about taking that photo each day and because of that I'm starting to find my style. I'm loving the black and white I'm doing at the moment. Even being restricted on lens and EV is not really causing too much hassle. I think that's because I started out many years ago with my trusty Canon FTB shooting black and white with only a 50mm lens on it so it's almost a comfort for me to be back in that position. The beauty of the digital age is the flexibility of RAW back in the days you could push the processing in the dark room but the digital stuff gives so much flexibility in contrast and brightness.

 

 

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Day 66

Day off in sunny Ireland. Now normally I'd be out with my camera with my collection of lenses snapping hundreds of shots of mountains trees green stuff and the like, but thanks to this lent thing I'm stuck with my 35mm lens.
I did go out for a walk though and snapped a couple of nice pictures of the local church and a fairly nice one of a bit of railing but nothing special.
It was a close run thing to me putting in a filler when as I was walking back up the stairs I saw the chandelier. I held the camera at arms length and snapped this photo.
Having a limited choice is a most astounding thing sometimes as it really makes you look around!!

Day 65

Day 3 of my doing without for lent.
To be honest I'm really enjoying it! It's fun not worrying about EV and lens choice. I'm just looking about and thinking hmmm nice texture, or nice lead lines etc.
So today it was a work day and as I was waiting for some stuff to turn up I started looking about and saw this old valve. I moved in close enough to fill the frame but leave some context in. Converted in Lightroom.

Day 64

It's day 2 of the minimum kit lent fest for me and it was interesting that I took very few pictures. I stopped at this bay on my way to the ferry today and wandered up the beach and because I had limited options I had to have a firm idea as to what I was going for.

I did look at cropping the image but only after I had posted it on the other site. I think I could have done a bit more with the right crop but that's another lesson learnt!

 

 

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A bit of clarification.

I was reading a magazine and it had an article about a photographer called Giacomo Brunelli. He has been taking photos in London for the last two years all in black and white. Not unusual so far but the really cool thing is he uses an old camera set at f1.8 and 1/1000 of a second with a 50mm lens.

This got me to thinking I have so much choice when taking a photo may be I should get back to basics. And as it's lent for the next 40 days I'm going to give it a go I've left all my gear at home and have travelled with my D7000 body and my 35mm f1.8 lens. Put my camera on to manual set the F stop to 1.8 and shutter to 1/1000.

I've found it quite liberating not worrying about what lens etc. and having to think about the limits of the exposure is quite a challenge but allows for interesting processing of the photos.

Well here's to the next 40 days it's going to be a blast!

 

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Day 63

So it's the beginning of lent tomorrow so I thought I should give up something for 40 days to push the photography a bit further and push the creative in me. I was reading a B&W photo magazine about a photographer called Giacomo Brunelli he is in London and takes photos with a 50mm lens at 1/1000 and f1.8 in black and white. Well that's giving up a whole lot so here goes the next 40 days are going to be interesting to say the least!!

Here's the first effort I'm actually happy with the way it's turned out and really like the lack of focus on the hound.

Day 62

After a chilly day out yesterday my thoughts where firmly fixed on indoors today. The one subject that always appeals the the flower. I really enjoy doing these and setting up the lighting is a large part of this subject.
I used my home made light box, although it's too small and then made up a couple of reflectors to bounce light from below and sides to light the petals and reduce shadows.
A quick process job in Photoshop for the levels curves and a tweak of saturation and the hint of blur to soften it a touch.

Day 61

Something different for me today. Part of the idea of doing this challenge was doing new things and this happened today. We where invited to a 4X4 event this Sunday and usually I would have made my excuses and stayed at home but with needing a photo we said yes. Over the course of the day I got closer to the action and a better understanding of what was going to happen.
So I'm going to put two photos on today the first was taken about half way through the event and I'm very happy with the result the second was taken towards the end of the event and I think I captured the event!!

 

Day 60

Bit of a trial today as it's a really clear night tonight I gave star photography a go. Ok so it's white dots but these are a long way away!!
I think the smudge in the middle is a galaxy of some sorts? I'm happy enough with the results but will give it another go with a longer lens and more shots or a shorter lens to get more stars in. Something to work at I guess.

Day 59

Wow I'm tired today! I read an article in a photo magazine on arty kind of shots using old electrical stuff and so thought why the heck not.
Lighting was awkward in the extreme I ended up using a high powered LED torch to light from the back. I was using deodorant as a fog type thing but ended up sneezing far too much and so ended up Photoshopping a fair amount to add atmosphere the the photo and hints of light beams through the photo.
It was an interesting experiment and one which i will tackle again I need a bit more experimentation as to which lens to use, I think my 50mm would have been ideal but will see another day.

Day 58

Bright colours for a dull day, during the usual walk with the dogs it struck me that the fence at the local school is really bright and interesting. I moved to such an angle to hide the individual bars to give a block colour effect. A few tweaks of levels to give a quite powerful photo.

Day 57

It's just an observational photo today nothing much to say just it's a lovely moment.

Day 56

In my quest for things to do macro seems to be fun. I found a small feather on the ground today and thought it would be cool to do a bit of a macro job on it.
I reversed a 105mm on to a 75-150 mm zoom, I would have liked to use the 50mm but it is out on loan at the moment. I then took 14 shots using my macro rail and then stacked them in Photoshop. If you look at this at 100% you can see the focus stack so I think I need to work on this a bit more!!

Day 55

I love having a small light box as there's not mushroom it it!! Oh the joy it's a good job I'm a Fun Guy!!!
On a serious note though I really like macro work and you really need to control the light. So my DIY light box is coming into it's own and opening up a whole avenue of photographs to take. I think in the next week or do I might build a bigger one for slightly larger items.
The ability to set the lighting up to create a feel is so much better than "Fixing in Post".

Day 54

After yesterdays master thought 7300 photos is really too many to fulfill my 365 day challenge! I thought a bit about the photo for today.
Now I really enjoy macro work and love a nice flower so I built a nice Light-box out of a cereal box, using white card and silver foil as reflectors and backgrounds. I'm thinking about building a kind of mini studio thing out of cardboard with slot in backgrounds etc. I think that might be quite cool.
I digress I built this light-box so I could control the lighting for this photo. I did consider cleaning up the dust and other bits but life isn't perfect!

Day 53

Wow I almost cracked today and posted a photo from yesterday!! I managed to take some photos and looked at them but some of yesterdays were better to be honest but as this is a photo a day challenge I'm going to stick with it.
I think the moral of this story is I'm actually taking too many photos in one day and then forgetting what I'm posting. For example yesterday I took 75 pictures around Norwich of which I'd be happy to use 15-20 pictures!! Great hit rate but when you think I have to post one a day that's going to be 7300 photos at that rate!! I need to slow this down and concentrate on one shot!!

Here's the photo from yesterday I like this enough to post it too!!

Day 52

Had a really nice afternoon walking around Norwich with my son and the Grandchildren ( not his! ) We went into Norwich Cathedral which was lovely. I took loads of nice photos of ceilings, windows and the like but the one that struck me as meaning something and capturing a moment was this one.

It's a candid moment as a couple of friends look at the candles just prior to lighting one themselves. I hope it leaves you wondering what they where reflecting upon at this moment in time.

Day 51

Spooning is Fun!!
I was really stuck today for inspiration but then remembered a magazine I had read in the last few days and there was a really cool shot of a spoon on a textured surface. So this is my homage to that photo.

I actually had a fair bit to think about with the lighting and positioning of the spoon and camera. I think I'll probably go back to this set up again to see what I can do with it.

Day 50

Well it's the first if the desperate shots today not too bad considering it's day 50! Still it's a well taken abstract of a fan heater in my hotel room.

I've had a long day at work and did go out and about after work but the grave yard I had eyed up was closing just as I arrived and they were fairly adamant not letting me in to take a couple of low light moody shots of graves and snow drops. Never mind there is always next time.

I suppose the good thing about this is no matter how yuck I felt I still took the shot. I almost talked myself out of it but I just had to post something for the day.

On the website I also post to a fair amount of the contributors seem to put in fillers. I suppose it's ok as it's not my project. For me though it's about doing this everyday.

 

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Day 49

The thing about this project is it's getting me out and about after work. Now I've stayed in West Didsbury a fair few times and only today found out that there is a lake and river only a short walk away!

Ok so it's not the nicest weather for landscapes but as there was loads of birds I thought I'd do the Swan shot!

 

Thought about the composition on this and tried to get a nice balance with the two swans and the little bird.

 

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Day 48

Well at least I think it is! Wow it's been a difficult one today not much to look at when you're driving for 5 hours and getting stuck in traffic!

Still managed to take a photo though. I'm sorry it's not up to much but it's what is out there at the moment converted to black and white for effect!

 

 

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Day 47

Interesting point of view for today got myself laying on the floor and close up. Wesley was laying flat out in front of the fire. Put on the 35mm f1.8 to give a nice perspective and shallow depth of field then waited until he gave me his best "What?" look.
I wanted the happy comfortable look and I'm happy with this result. Just warmed up the white balance to add to the feeling of the picture.

Day 46

So it's the day after the big day of love and there's only one thing to photograph, yup the humble red rose.
Always a pleasure taking photos of flowers and the hint of water always adds a little something i think.

It's a quick blog post for me today as there's a lot going on but suffice to say I'm really enjoying this project and thanks to a new book from Ben I've got loads more ideas of things to try out!!

Day 45

Sometimes the world has a funny way of rewarding you! For some reason I was awake at 4:30 this morning and as the night turned to day Pam nudged me ans said look at that sky, Well thanks darling firstly for waking me up and secondly for the sky!!

I'm certainly getting into the groove at the moment despite the rubbish weather I seem to be coping well with the challenge. There's still a long way to go and I'm fairly sure there's going to be some tough times but I'm still looking forward to completing something!!

Day 44

This time the gods of nice sky was looking down upon me as I walked the hounds. I was actually going to try and get a good flat out running shot of the Wesley with motion blur and all that stuff, but it turns out that even if you have an idea of what you want to take, you can change your mind!

See this is something else this challenge is doing to me, it's making me more flexible in my decision making. Yup that's another plus and it's only day 44!!

I've sorted out how to remember what day I need to put on this blog now, it was quite simple really set up the Lightroom export as a custom name and number to increment automatically now why did that take me 44 days to work out?

Day 43

ah the rain it keeps a falling, Not stuck for a photo today wanted to capture the feeling of the weather and waited until the heavens opened. Which they did very nicely too and at the same time the sun made an appearance which gave a nice back light to the scene.

I converted to Black and White to add to the feel of the photo.

Day 42

At least the rain has stopped for the moment allowing for a blue sky photo!! This is Pakenham Windmill on the road to Bury St Edmunds, I grabbed this on the way back from Manchester today. I'm thinking I could do this from various angles over the course of the year as I go past this many many times!

Day 41

Busy old day at work leading to a distinct lack of enthusiasm for photography! Well I was about to make myself a nice relaxing cup of tea when I thought I might as well try to take a good photo of something dull. Well here it is I think it's about as good as one could do with a bowl of beverages and a piece of white paper!

Hopefully tomorrow will bring something more thoughtful although the good thin about this is the fact that I could find a way of making this photo look ok. By being careful with the placing of the individual items to find a balance in the photo it becomes almost a pleasing arrangement. See all this work is paying off!

 

 

 

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Day 40

After a busy day yesterday I have a long drive in front of me today so it's a quick set up of a simple subject. The difficult thing is to light it nicely and reduce the reflections so this was put in front of a window which gave the shadow but was diffused enough not to cause too many problems with reflections.
Converted to B&W in Photoshop and a tweak of curves with a hint of sharpening.

Day 39

Norwich a Fine City,

Thanks to Ben for the loan of the balcony once again. This time the tripod was available which made the process a lot better. Used a longer focal length as I wanted more of the feel of the city rather than loads of detail.

So hows the project going? Well I'm finding it challenging and enjoyable at the same time, I'm doing a fair bit of reading and viewing others work getting ideas and gathering information all the time. This sort of project has been called the Iron Man of Photography and I'm beginning to see why. The longer the project goes on the more you start to look at the disciplines of photography.

Oh and for the animal lovers here's the photo Ben took of Harvey.

Day 38

The rain finally stopped and I took the camera out for a walk ( with the dogs of course! ) There is plenty of water around but the sun kind of struggled out and gave a hint of a rainbow, the first one of the year for me so I thought that it would be nice to get one in!

I'll be honest with you I cloned out the electricity lines and poles going straight across the middle of this as it made it look not very nice. Is it right to do that, well I'm happy enough to do that sort of editing as if I were a painter I'd miss them out?

Day 37

I wouldn't have thought a new camera body would change the way I look at taking photographs, however the generation step between the D90 and the D7000 is a fairly big one. Usually if I'm looking at taking a photo of James indoors I would grab the flash and maybe my 50mm f1.8 and make do with the ISO at around 200. Well this one was with my Sigma 70-300mm no flash and an ISO of 2500 yup that's right 2500! The D90 was OK at this but would loose detail and need a fair amount of noise reduction but the D7000 blew me away to be honest.
This opens up a huge amount of fun!!

Day 36

Well thank you Centrax for the gift of a nice new camera body, welcome to the age of the D7000!! Spent the afternoon messing about with the shiny new camera body and as it was getting rather dull thought I'll try out the higher ISO settings. This was shot at ISO 1250 with my lovely 50 f1.8 lens not a great deal of tweaking and noise reduction.

It was a nice surprise  getting a new body but it does mean a bit of a challenge to learn the subtle differences but it's something to look forward to!

As for the photo Wesley hurt his paw somehow and refused to move from this spot on the sofa and ignored any attempts to get him to look at me so i took the picture anyway!

Day 35

Had a hell of a drive home today managed to get back despite the weather and major hold ups on the M4! Thank The Lord for the roses that Pam had otherwise I have no idea what I would have taken!

Done a couple of photos this one is my favourite and just has a quick edit on my iPad I will do more to these later in Lightroom and Photoshop and put them on to DeviantArt.

 

 

 

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Day 34

Now I know what the big problem of doing this challenge is. Remembering what day it is! I guess I should rename the files as I go to remind me!

Today I had a drive down the Shannon Estuary as it was midday the light wasn't brilliant but I hopped out of the car and had a walk down to the beach bit took some OK photos. This one I picked as it's different. What caught my eye was the the pattern the lines made on the stones and the way they kind of linked up.

 

More good news because of this project I have started posting back on to my deviant art account! There are loads of photos on there and I will post a few of the others that didn't make it on to this blog. That's the hard thing at the moment taking a few good pictures and only posing one!

Oh I best put a link to it!

Chippy1965.deviantart.com

 

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Day 33

A few years ago when I was in Ireland I had a few days and went to Torc Falls in Kerry back then I didn't have the camera gear I do now so had an idea how I wanted the photo to look but just couldn't get the shot I wanted.

Well this time I have a ND filter and there had been a lot of rain so the falls I where fairly active.

The greatest compliment today was a fellow photographer was watching where I was taking shots from and as I moved he dropped in after me! I chatted to home later about slow shutter speed and actually gave him advice on how to achieve this kind of shot!

 

 

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