A new beginning...

Happy New Year to everyone who's been reading this blog for the past while! Towards the end of last year, I mentioned introducing some changes and I've finally launched them! Introducing my new site - photovernacular.net.



This new site allows me to do much more with my photographs than Blogger current supports. Each image will be presented in a clearer, larger format and will be indexed and categorised for archival searching. I can auto-publish months in advance, so that a new image will appear daily, even when I'm not able to get to a computer.

I have a new camera and a passion to improve. I hope you will join me at my new home and let me know how you think I'm getting along from time to time! :o)

Giraffe(s)

Taken at Woburn Safari Park this summer whilst on a day out with the family.


Location: Woburn Safari Park. July 2005
Camera: Panasonic FZ20
Sensitivity: ISO 80
Shutter Speed: 1/800th
Aperture: f5.2

Borough Market food

Something a bit different. Here's a tile of 4 images I took at Borough Market in London a few months ago. I was disappointed with the most of the images I took - I arrived a lot later than I planned and the place was crammed with people. I'll revisit it some day and get there at dawn ti capture the scenes I was really after.


Location: Borough Market, London. August 2005
Camera: Panasonic FZ20
Exposure: Various

Stockers Lake
Yet another shot from the series I took in the nature reserve a couple of weeks ago. It's all a bit samey I know, but I'm a bit low on new material at the moment and it was a beautiful evening! :)


Location: Stockers Lake, Hertforshire. December 2005
Camera: Panasonic FZ20
Sensitivity: ISO 80
Shutter Speed: 1/800th
Aperture: f5.2

Another sunset
Another from the series of shots I took a couple of weekends ago. I have one or two others to post from this outing and then I'll move onto something different.

I plan to start the new year by launching the big changes that I mentioned a couple of weeks ago. I've finished all the development preparation work - just need to gather some compelling imagery and I'll be good to go!


Location: Stockers Lake, Hertforshire. December 2005
Camera: Panasonic FZ20
Sensitivity: ISO 80
Shutter Speed: 1/500th
Aperture: f4

Setting Sun
I was at the lake shooting the swans taking off and landing on the water (without much success unfortunately) as this lovely sunset began to take place.


Location: Stockers Lake, Hertforshire. December 2005
Camera: Panasonic FZ20
Sensitivity: ISO 80
Shutter Speed: 1/1300th
Aperture: f7

Birds on water
Shot at dusk last weekend in the nearby wildfowl reserve.


Location: Stockers Lake, Hertforshire. December 2005
Camera: Panasonic FZ20
Sensitivity: ISO 80
Shutter Speed: 1/1000th
Aperture: f4.6

Lower Manhattan skyline
Another one - this time taken somewhere inbetween Hoboken and Jersey City as I was walking back from the office to my hotel. I've desaturated the image a bit and applied some contrast correction. I like the way the colouring in the buildings came out - it has a urban tonal quality to me.

I'm still surprised how decent some of IXUS images look. It was a great little compact!


Location: New Jersey, USA. July 2004
Camera: Canon IXUS II
Sensitivity: ISO 100
Shutter Speed: 1/500th
Aperture: f3.9

The big freeze
This was taken on Boxing Day last year. It was just cold enough for the lake to freeze over. If the meterologists are on the money this year, I guess we'll be skating on it soon! :-/


Location: Stockers Nature Reserve, Hertforshire. December 2004
Camera: Panasonic FZ20
Sensitivity: ISO 150
Shutter Speed: 1/125th
Aperture: f4

Cornish rowing boat
Taken in Port Isaac harbour a few years ago. I love this beautiful little village - one of my favourite places. Cornwall is my spiritual home - I have lots of warm memories right back to my childhood holidays there. It's a shame I've not been in a while...maybe next year.



Location: Port Isaac, Cornwall. Autumn 2002
Camera: Canon EOS 500N, Fujicolor 400
Scanned: Canon Canoscan 4200F from negative
No exposure settings recorded.

Red Sea Jetty
A 35mm scan for today. A small wooden jetty running out into the Red Sea at Taba, Egypt. During the day, this pier is busy with hotel guests preparing for a snorkelling expedition around the coral reef. By dusk, it was perfect for a peaceful walk along before dinner. In the hazy distance are the coastline mountains of Saudi Arabia.


Location: Taba, Eygpt. Summer 2003
Camera: Canon EOS 500N, Fujicolor 100
Scanned: Canon Canoscan 4200F from negative
No exposure settings recorded.

Rockafella water feature
One of the water features around the plaza at the foot of the Rockafella tower. I liked the shimmery property of the wall - it fits well in with it's surroundings (i.e. gilded everything!).


Location: Rockafella Plaza, 5th Ave, New York. July 2004
Camera: Canon IXUS II
Sensitivity: ISO 100
Shutter Speed: 1/160th
Aperture: f9

Silhouetted tree
I captured this early one Saturday morning a few weeks ago. The tree stands on the brow of a gentle rise in the park and provided a striking outline set against the bright morning sky.


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

Lunch break on the girder
As I walked uptown from Battery Park, I came across this art installation parked on the side of the road. I even managed to time it so I got a NY cab in the frame too - pretty much pot luck with the shutter delay on the IXUS II! :)


Location: Downtown New York, USA. July 2004
Camera: Canon IXUS II
Sensitivity: ISO 100
Shutter Speed: 1/160th
Aperture: f9

Water reflections
Another shot from last winter, taken at the nearby nature reserve. This one was post processed to b&w using a red filter.


Location: Stockers Lake, Hertfordshire. December 2004
Camera: Panasonic FZ20
Sensitivity: ISO 80
Shutter Speed: 1/200th
Aperture: f4

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)