Upgrades

It's been rather a long time since my words have graced this little known about space but not without good reason. firstly I now have a full time job in which I'm working shifts, meaning a vast amount more of my time is occupied than before and secondly because while I was out of the house - at work, we were burgled! This meant that 1 I had no camera to take pictures to then post and 2 I had no laptop on which to edit those pictures and to post them on to this little corner of the internet. thanks to the fortune of insurance companies (not something I ever pictured myself saying in a non sarcastic way until recently) the second of these problems has been resolved in the form of a shiny new laptop with which I am tapping away my musings. The camera - and more precisely the lens are going to take a little more time to reach me. given that i will be upgrading price is everything and as a result location is everything. I am unable to get my desired model of canon camera including lens and dedicated flash gun at a price that I can afford locally. fortunately the older the Currer family gets the longer and wider our stretch becomes and my brother is making a timely visit to the states where he will purchase the lens and flash gun at a far more competitive rate than anyone in England is able to provide, given exchange rates. meanwhile my other brother happens to know someone who can get hold of the body at a very reasonable price and hopefully all of the parts will end up in my house in Bristol sometime mid January. a long wait but one worth holding out for. but fear not I hope to get the body and borrow my brothers kit lens fairly soon so that I can snap away on our holiday in Tenerife in mid December.

much, much more to come ...

Exposure Fusion

You may recognise this picture from my previous post -

Input

I  used Photoshop to create 4 +/- exposures of the same image and introduced it to Photomatix pro,  -

Final Image

and then another, more extreme example using 2 input images:

Input1

Input2

Final Image

Autumnal Arboretum

The Arboretum just outside Bristol is somewhere I have been wanting to visit ever since finding out about it's existence given that it is such a spectacle of natural beauty and so near by it seems silly not to pay a visit at least once, and what better time of year than Autumn when all the colours of the leaves flare up, a last spectacle before they inevitably die. One hindrance however is that the Arboretum  is not the cheapest of attractions, at £9 a head you have to be prepared to make your moneys worth while there.

However last Sunday for whatever reason at around 4pm, a comfortable hour and a half before sunset, there was absolutely no one kindly waiting to part me from my hard earned cash ... Result!

And then things just went from good to better ...

And then better still ...

All in all a very successful trip. We were not there for a very long time but the time that was spent there was worth every penny we didn't pay!

Still Life

I saw these seed pods in my mums garden - I knew immediately that they must be photographed, the intricacy of the veins coursing through the leaves, the perfectly formed sphere in the centre, the extravagant yet regular shape. Unfortunately I am yet to do them justice with my photography but here is what I have so far.

HDR round 2

I have just purchased Photomatix pro - In my opinion worth the discounted £63 I paid for it using the following discount coupon to reduce the price by 20%  'kelbytraininghdr'  you may remember my earlier post HDR in which I gave a preview of what the program is capable of in terms of recovery of too far underexposed or overexposed shots.


Well I thought I might just whip out a quick post showing the results with the non watermarked full definition version on some old pictures that I have probably posted before but anyway - here they are...


Original:

After HDR processing:

Post produciton

Recently I have been fiddling a little with Photoshop Elements to try and produce some 'finished work' pieces. It's still in it's infancy but here is the product of a little tinkering that I've been doing.

Early morning

I decided to take an early morning walk - I wanted to see the sunrise as I hadn't done so in far too long. Unfortunately from where I live and where the sun rises this is somewhat of an impossibility as the horizon is well and truly blocked from sight, mainly by trees. Even climbing to the highest point in the tallest tree in our garden I could not catch a glimpse of the sun. As I was out on a walk anyway I thought I'd better not waste the journey so took a few snaps that I had been meaning to catch in our area when no one was around and this seemed as fitting time as any.

Bankhoilday

Despite none of us feeling well Dad Mel Barney and myself took a little trip to Saltford to walk by the riverside and soak up the tail end of the summer rays...

Harbourside Festival

A yearly event in the home town of Bristol, stalls, boats and fireworks - what more could you want?! Despite the fact that the entire harbour was fit to burst with punters (pun intended), many of whom were drunk we managed to have ourselves a wonderful time!

Thanks all for a lovely evening out. :)