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

Continuing the (brief) leaf theme...
I'm not quite sure if the sense of movement I've captured in today's image distracts too much from the subject itself - what do you think? - but as with yesterday's shot, I found the end effect pleasing enough.


Hertfordshire, UK. October 2005
Panasonic FZ20, ISO 200, spot metered
1/13th @ f2.8, handheld

Autumn waterfall
I'm an early riser, often getting up before the sun, but I've seldom gone out with my camera to make use of the sweet light of dawn. I planned to do just that this morning but I ended up staying up way too late on the computer. I missed dawn by about 30 mins but the light was good so I made the most of my time out.

This autumnal leaf trapped under a small waterfall was taken handheld with a 1/3sec exposure. I crouched down, remaining as still as possible and held my breath whilst I squeezed the shutter release. Although image stablisation was on, the sense of movement I wanted to capture in the image disguises the movement it couldn't correct for. I wasn't sure it would come out at all, but I was quite pleased with the end result.


Cassiobury Park, Hertfordshire. October 30, 2005
Panasonic FZ20, ISO 100, spot metered
1/3rd @ f8, 70mm, handheld

The sky is a landscape
John Constable once wrote:

"The landscape painter who does not make skies a very material part of his composition, neglects to avail himself to one of his greatest aids. It will be difficult to name a class of landscape in which the sky is not the key note, the standard of scale and the chief organ of sentiment"

This shot is noteworthy to me because it was taken on a weekend when I was trying to "master" the spot metering capabilities of the camera. I made a lot of bad exposures but, of course, you don't learn without the mistakes! This one was pleasing to me because I felt it began to explore and convey some of the emotion that Constable was refering to.


Skies over the south coast, UK. April 2005
Panasonic FZ20, ISO 80, spot metered
1/1300th @ f8, 12.3mm

Winter Frost
I shot this last last year on one of my initial outings with the Panasonic. It was one of the first pictures where I was finally getting used to the camera's image stablisation - it takes a little practise to get the best out of it.


Stockers Lake Nature Reserve, UK. December 2004
Panasonic FZ20, ISO 200
1/30th @ f2.8, 72mm, handheld

I've realised the resizing of today's image is obscuring the shallow depth of field effect, so I'm reposting a larger version. You can get to it by clicking on the image in the original post.

Brighton Seafront miniaturised
I saw this effect being used on an image in another blog recently and thought it was so neat, I really wanted to figure out how it was done in Photoshop. It emulates a property of expensive tilt lenses providing very short depths of field, which can give the overall visual effect of miniaturisation to the scene. I shot this Brighton seafront image in spring this year and thought would make a good candidate to experiment with. It's not perfect, but this is not a portfolio blog - I intend it to record my learning experiences. So there! :)


Brighton Beach, looking west from the pier, April 10, 2005
Panasonic FZ20, ISO 80
1/1000th @ f5.6

Trumped
A vertical perspective of Trump Tower taken on a trip to the city in July this year. I darkened the sky with a graduated filter and converted to b&w using Photoshop channel mixer control.


Trump Tower from 5th Ave, New York, July 2005
Panasonic FZ20, ISO 80
1/250th @ f4, 6mm

Stockers Lake Nature Reserve
I'm really lucky to live so close to this beautiful Hertfordshire nature reserve. It's home to the second largest heronry in the UK and is always a tranquil and calming place to walk around. It's a shame I'm not more into ornithology - there are many rare species living amongst the trees surrounding the lake.

I'm concerned over how much noise is in this picture (particularly the original) - probably caused by the Panasonic sensor's inherent noise problems at low light/high ISO. My settings seem a bit odd to me - can't remember why I set ISO 200 and a +0.7EV compensation, when the camera was well supported! I probably forgot to reset it from an earlier exposure.


Stockers Lake, Hertfordshire, UK. September 25, 2005
Panasonic FZ20, ISO 200, +0.7EV exposure compensation
1/200 @ f4, 6mm, beanbag support

{Ed} It's time for a change of style! I was beginning to find the green a little heavy and the round edged graphics made it a pain to widen. So welcome to the new look, "Mr Moto Rising", courtesy of Jeff Zeldman (plus a little tweaking of my own of course :)

Oxford Street Festival
I was shopping in central London when I happened across a festival to encourage shoppers back after the July terror attacks. Thankfully I had my camera in my rucksack, so I abandoned my shopping plans and spent the rest of the morning walking up and down the street looking for opportunities. As things started to get really crowded, I spotted this guy stood in the middle of Oxford Circus, clearly looking for his companion, occasionally talking on his phone.

The image was processed using channel controls in "Convert To B&W Pro" in PhotoShop CS2 and an effect filter applied to give the grain texture.


Oxford Circus, London, UK. October 1, 2005
Panasonic FZ20, ISO 80
1/100 @ f3.2, 33mm

Autumn contrasts
I love the colours of autumn. It's my favourite season by far. Everything seems to become so photogenic.


Bayhurst Wood, September 2005
Panasonic FZ20, ISO 200
1/13th @ f2.8, handheld

Back to New York
My latest work trip to New York. It poured with rain solidly all week long, so it was a fairly unsuccessful trip in terms of adding to my photographic portfolio of the city. I took this very hurridly from the deck of a Statten Island ferry. The wind was gusting quite strongly and the dramatic cloud formation was blown away almost as quickly as it appeared. This was taken without the aid of a polariser - I was quite surprised how well the camera handled the exposure.


New York Harbour, October 16, 2005
Panasonic FZ20, ISO 80
1/1300th @ f8

Police Line
Sunday October 9th was the Hispanic parade in Manhattan. I walked up 5th watching each ethinic group flow out from the streets on either side to join the back of the main procession. I was looking for something slightly different than capturing the parade itself. I noticed how efficient the sanitation dept and the police dept were clearing up at the back of the procession, opening up block after block as the mass of people edged their way uptown. I stopped on the sidewalk as two burly cops stacked these barriers up, ready for collection. I like the strong diagonals, emphasised by the longer focal length I chose.


5th Avenue, New York. October 9, 2005
Panasonic FZ20, ISO 200
1/100th @ f2.8

Here's an interesting article on Luminous Landscape discussing the significance of the new Canon EOS 5D and Sony R1.