Chopsticks
Another shot from the make-shift studio (lol - I'll have to post a shot of this "studio" one day :) This one was experimenting with light and depth of field in the camera's macro mode. I took several shots moving one of the fixed spotlights into different positions around the scene. I like the way this one disappears into darkness. The shadows in the foreground are a bit undesirable. Maybe I should have cropped them out...thought it better to have the whole chopstick in view.

I know I said I was only going to post older images for the next week or so before changing things around, but I was having fun with this last night :)


Location: Home, November 29 2005
Camera: Panasonic FZ20, Manfrotto 190 tripod
Metering: Matrix
Exposure Mode: Shutter Priority, -1/3 EV (auto-bracketed)
Sensitivity: ISO 80
Shutter Speed: 1/320th
Aperture: f2.8
Focal Length: 9mm

Homeward bound
This was taken with my little K750 mobile phone through my car windshield whilst driving home from work a few weeks back. OK, I know I shouldn't have been taking photos whilst operating a vehicle (!), but the sunset was beautiful and the traffic was - as always - flowing like treacle!


Location: A40 (westbound), London. September 2005
Camera: Sony Ericsson K750i
Shutter Speed: 1/1000th
Aperture: f2.8

New York sunset
I've decided to change direction and make some changes to this blog, all of which will happen in a week or two. In the meantime, I'm going to post a few older images - pictures I've been reviewing and want to include here before I switch things around.

The first is this rather classic lower Manhattan skyline shot from last summer. For anyone who knows NY well, I was staying in the New Jersey Hyatt, which is build on a jetty out into the Hudson River. This was taken from the ballroom balcony during a gala dinner.


Location: New Jersey Hyatt, USA. July 2004
Camera: Canon IXUS II
Sensitivity: ISO 100
Shutter Speed: 1/100th
Aperture: f3.2

Also, I've added skinnybuzzard to my "regular reads". Great photos - do visit his site.

Under a blood red sky
Sorry U2, but I thought of that lyric when taking this one. It was shot at the same time as the HDR image from a couple of days ago, this one framed at full telephoto (around 430mm in 35mm equivilent).


Location: Mount Pleasant, Middlesex. November 21, 2005
Camera: Panasonic FZ20
Sensitivity: ISO 80
Shutter Speed: 1/500th
Aperture: f5.2

High Dynamic Range sunset
This scene was shot on Sunday evening from Mount Pleasant. It was a fabulous sunset, helped by the clear skies and frosty temperatures throughout the day. I took around 80 frames over a 4-5 minute period with various exposure settings and auto-bracketing everything.

If you don't know what HDR is, here's a quick summary. Adobe Photoshop has a very simple to use tool for merging multiple exposures to create a HDR image. The practice comes in how you control contrast, saturation and hue after down-sampling the image to 16 or 8 bit. The HDR merge process works better combining 5 or 6 exposures, but the following example was created with just 3 from the auto-bracket function. I have a few more of these to post in the coming weeks.


Location: Mount Pleasant, Middlesex. November 21, 2005
Camera: Panasonic FZ20
Sensitivity: ISO 80
Shutter Speed: 1/25th
Aperture: f2.8
Exposure Compensation: +/- 1/3 EV (auto-bracketed)

Mistakes that work...kinda!?
This weekend brought great opportunities for some early winter photography (at least, in the London area) with fairly heavy frosts and bright clear skies both days. I felt the start of flu symptoms on Saturday morning (boo hoo), so missed out on making the most of the favourable conditions. However, I did venture into my garden for a short time on Sunday afternoon and captured this.

Stupidly, I had left the camera on "incandescent" white balance, which left this shot with it's heavy blue/green hue. I corrected this out in Photoshop but, on comparing the two, I decided I liked the atmosphere the hue gave the scene, so I left it in it's original form for today's post. Not everyone would agree, I'm sure but - hey - it's my blog! :)


Location: Garden, November 2005
Camera: Panasonic FZ20, tripod mounted
Sensitivity: ISO 80
White Balance: incandescant
Shutter Speed: 1/4th
Aperture: f2.8
Focal Length: 6mm

Autumn in the park
Another autumnal shot from a local park. This was taken a couple of weeks ago on a bright and sunny Sunday morning.


Location: Cassiobury Park, UK. November 2005
Camera: Panasonic FZ20
Metering: Spot metered
Sensitivity: ISO 200
Shutter Speed: 1/50th
Aperture: f2.8
Focal Length: 14mm

Sunlight on long grass
Another scene from the nature reserve close to me. This one taken last December on one of my first outings with the FZ20.


Location: Stockers Lake Nature Reserve, UK. December 2004
Camera: Panasonic FZ20
Exposure Mode: Shutter Priority
Sensitivity: ISO 80
Shutter Speed: 1/125th
Aperture: f4
Focal Length: 22mm

Another leaf close-up
This one was taken along with the previous post - different leaf, slightly different angle.


Location: Home, UK. November 15, 2005
Camera: Panasonic FZ20, Manfrotto 190 tripod
Metering: Spot
Exposure Mode: Aperture Priority, -1/3 EV (auto-bracketed)
White Balance: Incandescent
Sensitivity: ISO 80
Shutter Speed: 1/5th
Aperture: f2.8
Focal Length: 6mm

Close up work
I picked a few leaves up off the ground whilst wondering around a garden centre at the weekend. I decided that I would try some closeup work using my make-shift studio area at home. I have no studio lighting equipment (yet) and there was insufficient daylight left to adequately light the scene, so I used a couple of halogen spot lamps with home-made diffusers attached. I knocked the camera out of auto white balance mode and played around with the setting until I was happy with the colour reproduction under the halogen light, then rolled off several auto-bracketed frames at various exposures.

I have a few variations on this theme that I will post later this week.


Location: Home, UK. November 15, 2005
Camera: Panasonic FZ20, Manfrotto 190 tripod
Metering: Spot metered
Exposure Mode: Aperture Priority
Sensitivity: ISO 80
Shutter Speed: 1/13th
Aperture: f2.8
Focal Length: 15mm

Bench talk
Taken in a small square that overlooked the keep in the old town of Carcassonne.


Location: Carcassonne, France. May 2005
Camera: Panasonic FZ20
Metering: Matrix
Exposure Mode: Shutter Priority
Sensitivity: ISO 80
Shutter Speed: 1/100th
Aperture: f4
Focal Length: 13.4mm

Serenity
This is a 5 minute walk from the front door of my house! I love walking the circuit around the lake in the early evenings. As the day visitors draw away the place exudes a wonderful sense of peace. This one was taken about 6 weeks ago.


Stockers Lake Nature Reserve, UK. September 2005
Panasonic FZ20, ISO 200
1/125th @ f4, spot metered, tripod

Venitian canal
I felt like posting something a little different today, so here's something from my pre-digital days. This was taken during a week long break in Venice a few years ago. I remember the holiday as much for the amount of pain I was in (I had 2 prolapsed discs in my lower back) as I do for appreciating the dilapidated architectural beauty of the city.


Venice, Italy. Summer 2003
No exposure details
Scanned from 35mm negative using Canoscan 4200F

Flora close-up
I posted an image a few weeks ago which was taken at the same time as this one which had a bee collecting pollen from the same group of flowers. On reflection, I prefer this image as it has better composition and a more interesting depth of field.


Garden Flora, August 2004
Canon IXUS II
1/1250th @ f7 (AE)

Carcassonne rooftops
Anyone who's visited this medieval fortress town will undoubtedly take away lasting memories of it's imposing looks and fascinating history. I flew in to the regional airport here with Ryanair earlier this year, scouting for properties in the Languedoc-Roussillon and Midi-Pyrénées regions. This was taken from the top of the old city fortifications, looking westwards towards the new town.


Carcassonne, France. April 2005
Panasonic FZ20, ISO 80
1/500 @ f4, 72mm

Waterfall
Another IXUS shot. I don't have many waterfall scenes in my digital photo portfolio. Maybe I will make time to dig out some of my old transparencies and scan them to post here. There's nothing terribly special about this one, I know.


County Donegal, Ireland. September 2004
Canon IXUS II, ISO 100, 37mm
1/250th @ f2.8 (AE), beanbag support

Morning sun on winter leaves
This was one of my first photos taken with the Panasonic last winter. I took it out one bright, sunny morning in December and enthusiastically fired off around a hundred frames around some local lakes. I loved the rich colours that were illuminated as the sunlight fell on this tree.


Near Batchworth Lake, Hertfordshire, UK. December 2004
Panasonic FZ20, ISO 80
1/125th @ f3, handheld

Remember, remember...
Here's a long exposure shot, taken at a Round Table organised charity firework display last night.


Cassiobury Park, Hertfordshire, UK. November 5th 2005
Panasonic FZ20, ISO 100
8 seconds @ f2.8, tripod

Sunset over Brighton West Pier
In March 2003, the West Pier was victim to fire that tore through the concert hall. Then, 14 months later, the main structure collapsed into the sea as a freak storm savaged the south coast. The ruins remain photogenic, particularly around sunset.


Brighton West Pier, April 2005
Panasonic FZ20, ISO 80
1/320th @ f4, handheld

Eau Non Contrôleé
Came very close to buying a second house (a mountain retreat) in this lovely Pyrenian village earlier this year. For those readers who are fans of the amazing Google Earth, you can fly to the location, resplendant in high resolution imagery (Lat: 42°46'53.40"N; Long: 1°30'32.89"E).


Orus, Midi Pyrénées, France. April 2005
Panasonic FZ20, ISO 80
1/100th @ f4, handheld

Dune Landscape
This was taken last fall with my trusty 3.2MP Canon IXUS II on the coast of County Donegal. As there is obviously no mount for filters on the IXUS, I applied a light grey graduated filter to the sky to bring out the cloud formation a little better.

I think this goes to prove that you don't need a very fancy camera to take appealing landscape shots - not that I would turn down the oportunity to revist Donegal with a medium format camera and my tripod (thanks Mr Waite for increasing my proposed camera kit expenditure even further into the stratosphere!)


Either Glen Bay or Malin Bay, County Donegal, Ireland. September 23, 2004
Canon IXUS II, ISO 100
1/500th @ f3.2 (AE), 74mm

Sunlight on windfallen leaves
Walking around just after dawn last weekend, I was struck by the many beautiful ways the sunlight played off the foliage, both in the trees and on the ground.


Cassiobury Park, Hertfordshire, UK. October 2005
Panasonic FZ20, ISO 200, spot metered
1/15th @ f2.8, 72mm, handheld

Grand Union Canal
A nice autumnal scene along the canal. Although I've lived within 10 miles of Watford for the last 5 years, I'm pleasantly surprised to still discover spots like this, tucked away from the more concrete urban landscape one tends to associate more readily with the town.


Grand Union Canal near Watford, UK. October 30, 2005
Panasonic FZ20, ISO 150
1/60th @ f2.8, 13.6mm