A Home Alone Day...

Today was about having the house to myself (the mogs were in but asleep - no change there).  I was going to be a sloth but then got distracted by actually doing stuff - the best laid plans etc.  I started with 30 minutes of yoga, then my campaign to eat more healthily continued with me making Moroccan style sweet potato and chick peas (the smell of the garlic and spices was delicious), with cauliflower rice.  I was rather sceptical about the cauliflower rice, but not being a fan of actual rice decided to give it a go.  I loved it! For those of you who haven't come across it, the instructions I followed are here. Amazing!  Will definitely be using it again.

Later I decided to try some still-life shots although failed to get any with the bunting that I made, I just can't figure out how to combine it with other elements so it looks as if its meant to be there rather than just happened to be in the way.  I will not be beaten by the bunting though and my search for the elusive capture continues.

Garlic…

If only all food were this photogenic.

The healthy lunch…

The buntingless still-life.

And Breathe...

Am just stopping to catch my breath after a very busy few weeks.  I can't believe that it's over a month since I last posted.  What have I been doing? Photo shoots, yoga, trying to eat more healthily, trying to get the garden back to some semblance of order after the winter, work, getting a new camera, more photo shoots…

Anyway, enough of the excuses, here are some images from the last month or so.  I'll post more images from each of the shoots over the next few weeks.

Why You Should Shoot in Manual...

I know it's scary but really you should! Many people have a DSLR but you mainly shoot in Programme i.e. Auto) Mode or maybe Aperture Priority, but I'm here to tell you why you should finally take the training wheels off and go Manual.

Your DSLR is a very clever computer, but it's just that, a computer.  It doesn't 'see', it doesn't do artistic interpretation and it doesn't know what you want.  (In fact, did you know your camera effectively registers in black, white and shades of grey? But more of that another time).  

When you shoot in Manual you decide how you want things to look. You can slow down the shutter speed to catch motion blur, you can open up the aperture to get a shallow depth of field, you can under expose so that your highlights appear as mid-tones giving you wonderful moody shots. The thing is it's all up to you.  You just have to remember the exposure triangle: 

These three elements are how you control the exposure of your images, and there are untold ways of combining them so as to do this.  Just remember if you alter one of them, let's say you increase the shutter speed because you want to catch fast movement, you are letting less light into your camera so you have to compensate for this by either opening up the aperture, or increasing the ISO.  The choice is up to you depending on the effect you want.

So here's a quick image I took on my Canon 6D in Programme Mode.  My assistant Charlie was lying against the sofa, backlit by the french windows.  My camera has tried to come up with an average exposure that works for the whole scene but it's blown out the background, in fact it's lightened the whole scene way too much.

My camera chose 1/40sec at f1.4 with an ISO of 500.

What I wanted was something with a bit more mood, altogether a bit darker.  I also wanted to up the shutter speed as I try in general not to shoot with a speed less than the focal length of my lens to avoid movement (I was using a 50mm lens here so it wasn't a major issue, but still...).

My settings were 1/100 sec at f1.4, ISO 400 and I used bounced fill flash to

lift the shadow on Charlie. I also altered the WB to warm it up slightly.

This is much closer to how the scene

actually looked.

Another example: 

1/60 sec at f8, ISO 3200.

Note how everything is in focus from front to back

because of that aperture of f8.

1/200 sec, f1.4, ISO 320

I wanted a shallow depth of field to make the flowers

stand out from their surroundings so increased the shutter speed

and decreased the ISO to compensate accordingly.

… and finally, one where I did want
an aperture of f8 to get as much as possible in focus, so then
chose the other settings around that.
1/50sec, at f8, ISO 400, 35mm lens.

Easy peasy!

Busy, busy, busy!

Well last week was such a busy one! It started with a workshop on lighting by Kate Hopewell-Smith (www.katehopewellsmith.com) check out her work, she's a brilliant photographer and equally brilliant teacher), then it was bonfire night which meant some rather sedate sparklers for us.  Then on Friday I was lucky enough to have won a competition along with five other photographers to get the chance to shoot the cover shot for Advanced Photographer Magazine.  What a great experience! We had two brilliant models, amazing lighting equipment and a stunning location in Wrest Park.  I had so much fun and can't wait to see the pictures we took.  In between all that I set up my new website (which confusingly also has a blog attached), it's www.barbarajacksonphotography.co.uk, so please have a look as any feedback will be gratefully accepted.

Kate explaining the finer points of

bounced, fill-in flash to balance ambient light.

Celebrating 5th November.

The location we got to shoot in (plus some of the 

very expensive lighting toys) we used on Friday.

New week, new lens, same cats...

I have a new lens and I am LOVING it! Can you feel the excitement?  It's a Sigma 105mm Macro and is so sharp I almost cut myself on it.  Leaning how to focus for macro work is a steep learning curve but  great fun, and the lens is phenomenal for general photography too.  Did I mention the sharpness?  The contrast and colour saturation?  Oh my...

Matt Edit How To...

I thought it was time I did something constructive and posted a quick 'how-to'.  You see a lot of images with a matt edit on them - some people love them, some hate them.  I think it looks great on the right image.  Like most edits it's very quick and easy to achieve in LightRoom - so here goes.

So here's my original image of Pepper being a diva under a blanket,

and this is how the histogram looks.

NB You don't have to take any notice

of your histogram if you don't want to, I'm only

showing it to illustrate what I'm doing and why.

What we want to do is lessen the contrast and squash the tones together toward the centre of the histogram.

So here's the first edit. 

 On the Tone Curve in RGB mode I've brought the shadow point up (left side) 

and the highlight down (right side).  

Note what it's done to the histogram.

I used the contrast slider to add slightly more contrast than I had...

 The Tone Curve is great for working with different

colour channels too.  I wanted a more 'vintage' feel to the image so

I used the Red channel and took

the shadows very slightly up and the highlights down.

I then used the same technique with the Blue.

To show you can play around with the Tone Curve

to get the effect that best suits your image and the effect you want,

here I've taken the original photo and moved only the

shadows pointer, but also brought the curve down slightly.

The whole thing is now 'punchier' with brighter light tones. 

Here's the same image with the saturation

slider taken right down to the light.

I think the matt effect particularly 

suits black and white.

So play around with it and have fun.

Land-Girls, Planes, Ferrets and Hay Bales - Not Your Typical Weekend...

Sometimes you have such a great weekend that you want to be able to bottle it and then re-open it every now and then to remind yourself how great it was, and how thankful you are for days and opportunities like those.  It started on Friday when we went to do a land-girl photo shoot at a private air-strip in a stunning location.  Oh my it was fabulous!  A few friends of our host dropped by in their planes (landing in the garden as you do), and with the help of these magnificent men in their flying machines and two beautiful models we got the opportunity for some great shots.  Plus there was a cat living there called Clyde that I got to cuddle.  Wonderful day...

On Saturday we went to see friends of ours who wanted some pics of their three naughty baby ferrets.  Such fun and games!  They also have two cats who I've featured before (Elvis and Misty), and it was lovely to see everyone and catch up.  Then on the way home we finally saw a field of hay bales and a great sunset - so I did my 'STOP THE CAR!' thing and leaped out, camera in hand.  

So a big THANK YOU to all the people who made this such a great few days... It made me realise why I love being a photographer.

The location...

The land-girls...

The models - Lucy and Lizzie

The cat...
Clyde relaxes under his tree to watch the goings on in his garden

The gang...
It took a year of planning by David,
and the help of all these people to make the shoot happen.

The ferret...
The feet belong to our friend Nicole - the fab ferret is Freija.

The finale...

I have waited weeks to be in 

the right location at the right time

to get a shot like this.

I haven't got a shot of me doing my happy dance

so you'll just have to imagine it :-)

What have I been up to...?

Helloooo again!  No I have not deserted blogland.  Just been trying to regain some balance in my life away from the MAC.  I seemed to be either at work or on the computer, with not much time left for the things I like doing, and feeling so limp the other week put things into perspective for me.  Anyway, fear not, my camera has been to hand and so here's a brief run-down of what I've been doing.

I went to Bosworth Battlefield...

We had a little more snow...

We walked around Batsford Arboretum...

We enjoyed some sunshine...

... and had lunch with friends and met

their two rather spiffing cats.

This is Misty.

So there you have it.  I've been chilling, but still photographically industrious - oh yes, and we also got to see Lincoln at Warwick Arts Centre which was excellent.  A bit The West Wing in period costume :O)

Have a great weekend everyone x