Panorama

Never really tried panoramics before so this was kind of fun. The addition of a tall slim tree to the occasion made things all the more intresting as I attempted to remain steady and take a series of shots while swaying slightly a few meters above the height of my house.

I think I will try these out quite a few more times, mainly from the tops of trees because I enjoy the challenge but if the view is stunning there is no need to limit it to the tree tops.  Scfold, blocks of flats, tall towers/land marks, steep hills all could do the trick.

anywhoo here is my first, round about 270 degrees as a big branch blocked the rest of my feild of view... which wouldn't have been particularly great even if the branch were not there, so I'm not too caught up about it.
(you definatley want to click this image to view it full size so as to appreciate it)

 Horfeild and Southmead at sunset - Bristol

It is a composite of 14 pictures and was made using autostitch which is a completley free and permanent and legal trial version of a bigger, better, prefesional program for making panoramics called Autopano which costs alot.

I am truely suprised that software this good is being given away by its creators without charge, how brilliant!

Fire

For as long as I care to remember both I and my brothers have loved playing with fire. One of my earliest memories is having a huge bonfire on our patio and it cracking because the concrete slabs expanded too rapidly.

Our father has had to put up with us burning (which generally means destroying) things since we were old enough to strike a match. It comes as no suprise that I learned to make a bonfire before I learned to ride a bike.

This counjours another memory of my eldest brother; while weilding a burning branch he inadvertantly set fire to a nextdoor neighbours' tree which promptly burnt down itself - I was about 5 at the time.

As we grew older our pyrotechnics only became more extravagent. We learned to use aerosoles as flame throwers, we discovered that passing our hand breifly through a flame didn't burn us. Eventually we grew up enough to buy fireworks, build our own Mega-bonfires and set our hands on fire using petrol... All the while being told off by both of our parents, yet never suffering any real harm.

Somewhat more recent memories consist of handheld roman candles as an introduction to the performance that was the fireworks show at my dads wedding, burning lanterns at the youth weekend away, oil barrel fires at my brothers 21st and the wood burner in the house we just moved out of.

Unfortunatley I do not have pictures of any of the above, as I didnt have my camera when they were taking place and I can't find the pictures from other people at present. The ones that are here I took fairly recently, the majority just with a lighter in my room - just to see what fire looks like with my still fairly new camera.

Barry Lewis Art Exhibition

All credit must go to this man for all of the following works of art that I simply took pictures of.

Today was a wanderful day in weather and company. So the addition of an art exhibition only made things more enjoyable. Further, the exhibition was free and my step mum happened to know the artist which bought all the peices to life that little bit more as he talked us though some of the more spectacular and perculiar pieces.

Thankfully he was not only happy for me to take pictures of the gallery but also allowed my dad to place my baby brother on some of the larger sculptures!

So see if you can spot:  Lion(metal) : Corcosaurus : Dragonfly : Cheeky Monkey : Pegasus : Lobster : Girraffe : Crane Fly : Scorpion : Tarantula : Grass hopper : Boxing Rabbits : Saxaphone Bot : Seahorse : Dragon : Centipede : Jughead : Bird : Fishamajig : Hermit Crab : Aslan (stone): Owl


These are just a select few, there were several more that I dont have the memory or the time to name, but on the plus side, if you happen to be in bristol between now and the 27th of Feb 2010 then you can go see it yourself at the Grant Bradley gallery in Bedminster (very near ASDA) 


Things I liked the most about this exhibit:
 - The eco friendly ethos behind it all
 - The intricacy of all of the peices (especially the fish knives)

- The friendly chap who made them all
- The ingineuity and self restraint to make all of the peices from recycled scap.

Thats all for now. Enjoy !

My favourite colour

Blue! Has been for as long as I can remember, don't know why but there it is. Fortunatley for me lots of things in the word happen to be blue. This includes a large number of ink cartridges that were lying around in my work place despite there not being a fountain pen for atleast a mile. So in eco warrior fashion I took it upon myself to find a constructive use for these cartridges. So I thought I could try and improve on one of my previous photographic ventures. Here are the results:

Then I had some red ink, so I decided to throw that into the mix aswel:

Then, when I ran out of ideas I just droped the cartridges in the glass and filled it with water:

Unfortunatley I could not get enough light to highlight the definition between the red and blue very well, but I like them anyway. Toodles!

Hearts and Roses

Slightly more effeminate than Guns 'n Roses and better for taking pictures of too. Don't worry, not actual hearts that would just be weird. In fact the rose isnt real either so there we go maybe I should have called this post 'Hearts and Roses except not' any way, I like to feel that I have improved on the origami front, so here are the final stages of my latest rose...

Then for some reason, which at this present time escapes me, I wandered what it would look like if there were a light inside my little paper rose. As I was laking a light small enough to fit inside it I decided to put in ontop of a lamp:

Roses down, here come the hearts... Now you might be thinking ... 'pretty sure this person is a dude, what on earth is he doing blogging about hearts and roses, I think I might vommit.' 
In which case you think roses and hearts are for girls and guns and skateboarding are for boys. I would ask you if you know any boy without a heart and any girl who got a rose from another girl rather than a boy and if so, how is that less weird than a guy blogging on hearts and roses?

moving oh so smoothly onwards, I ended up doing these cause I had some spare ink left in some open cartridges and didnt feel much like just throwing the ink away, so i sprinkled it on some paper: 

I thought that looks pretty cool but I could do something more with it so i smudged a heart shape in:

Now at this point I really wanted to write 'Covers a multitude' after
1Peter 4 : 8   Above all, keep loving one another earnestly, since love covers a multitude of sins.

With the ink looking a little like blood and the heart being an international symbol for love, the imagery and symbolism would be brilliant. Only problem is that there was too little ink and also too little space reaining on the page to write it :(

anyway I also had spare blue ink so I did it again with that, just to see what it would look like, oh and I blew all the drops of ink to one side to make it a bit different:

The Good Book

I haven't really though of books as a particularly intresting thing to photograph untill recently. I found some inspiration on this site and thought I would try and do something creative and maybe even a bit thoughful with a photograph and a book. The only book I could and can think of that warrents having a picture taken of it is the bible, after all it is almost certainly the single most influential book in the history of mankind in every area of life - which very much includes art.

Anyway before I start getting all philosophical/theological on you here are the pictures I took, the ring was reluctantly lent to me by my father.

  

 

Think thats all for now ...

Charming

Wine charms are funny old things, I dont understand them myself, well I suppose I do on one level, they serve the purpose of making a wine glass prettier, which is brilliant. The stange thing is that there is high enough demand for wine glass beautification products that google gets just under 3000 companies that are willing to pay to let me know that they sell them.

Now dont get me wrong, I'm not down on wine charms I love the idea I just wander why beautification products for other, just as mundane things havent been invented?

like drain-pipe socks, or light-switch glitter, or toliet-handle gloves, heck even table-leg trousers. All I'm asking is why do wine glasses get all the attention ehy?

So anyway to the point: My dad and stepmum recived some charming wine-glass dangly thingys and they were left in a box for over 2 years. At this point I busted them out of their prison of card and plastic and let them dangle in all of their splendour!

Lovely! Yes I know they are clearly not hanging from wine glasses so here is how I took the pictures of the dangling ones...

Another post down! I have nearly caught up with myself, these pictures were in the 1100-200 bracket, I'm only in 1300-400 at the moment.

Falling Water

The first time I can recall finding a small mass of water asthetically pleasing was at the beach. Now you might be thinking 'thats no small mass of water!' but I'm not talking about the ocean, but rather when running in the shallows I used to kick up water into the air and take a look at the spray.

I always find that when I do this and look at the droplets of water in the air, time seems to slow, allowing me to catch a glimpe of clear water droplets perfectly and somewhat impossibly suspended in mid air.

I also find it amazing that when one over-fills a glass slowly the water doesnt spill over the edge but rather bulges over the edges asthough it has been put in a completley transparent bag.

It's known as water tension and happens because of hydrogen bonding, as a result of a polar bond in H20. It is also one of the main reasons for lots of the ways that water behaves, such as ice floating on water, or water 'clinging' to itself. It can be respresnted like this.

But I prefer to look at it like this:

And like this:

Here is the setup I used to take these, there was also a white background and a lamp but they were moved away for this picture:

I have 74 ish pictures of droplets that I decided to keep, so here they all are nice and small, if you want it larger let me know...

Craft and Presents

I have always enjoyed making things, partly for the satisfaction of beggining a project and seeing it through to completion and actaully having something tangeable that I have bought into existance. But also partly because I love to give away things that I have actually put effort into(which for me means having made it myself) to the people I love. I think for this reason the gifts that I treasure most are ones that have been made by the person giving them.

here are some examples:

 

These beauties were given to me on my 18th bithday, the one on the left from an avid recycler and her man friend, hence the '18' has been cut out of an aptly named book 'The book of choclate'  which, I'm assured, would otherwise have gone to waste.

The one on the right was given to me by this lady who happens to have a bit of an artistic flare of her own ... as you can see from the card!

so as I was saying I appreciate gifts like these alot, which is why I still have these cards, which is why I was able to whip out my camera and take the above picture mid blogging sesh!

One problem I have found with craft and generally hand made things is that they are somewhat perishable, I guess this is one more reason that I like photography; by uploading these pictures I have effectively immortalised these amazing gifts.

which moves me smoothly onto another present I reviced, this time for christmas 2009:

 

This was a combintation of making and buying pre-made in a present, the picture in the centre I took and sent to that recycling lady - mentioned above, who in true recycling style took my picture, printed it, framed it and gave it back to me for christmas - Brilliant! The frame is from IKEA, the only reason I know that is because they put a little lable on the inside, the only reason I was inside, was to stick on the extra 6 pictures ( 3 above and 3 below)

This has made me think of yet another good quality of presents, though one that is possibly much harder to achive. The ability to add to or build upon or even create from scratch using the initial present.

Here are some examples of things I have made instead of just reciving, unfortunatley I only got my camera recently and so was not able to document many of the things that in heindsight I would like to have had a record of.

 

 

So... reading the collage like a book, starting in top left:

1: This was my DT project in year 10 for my GCSEs, it is an oak box, made with dovetail joints. The purple stuff inside is plastic, heat moulded to the shape of the cross and covered in a layer of (fake) felt. The cross itself was made by pouring molten pewter into a wooden mould.

2: This is a kawasaki-style origami rose made with origami paper that my mother got me for christmas.

3: This is the box with the lid on, the cross on the lid is protruding by about 1cm and is used as a handle, it is made of mahogany.

4, 5 & 6  : These are various stages in the construction of a christmas card that I made for some of my friends. The pattern on the front is a celtic knot, definied by being 1 continuous line that follows the pattern of '1 over 1 under' which you might not be able to pick up in these small pictures.

7: Another christmas card, again with celtic knots, the '1 over 1 under' rule might be a little clearer in this picture.

8: Some preliminary celtic knots, drawn with graphite sticks. I designed the top one myself and used It in the making of another card ( birthday this time ) but I didnt have a camera at the time of making the card so no picture of the finished product... just imagine the design in silver ink on purple paper. The one below it I copied, it is a variation of a celtic love knot.

9: Last but by no means least, this is one of the first celtic knots that I drew, it took me several hours to design and a few more to draw, this was my initial vision of what my pewter cross would look like, although I actually only drew it  3 years after having made the pewter cross.

Finally, I recently recived a belated 18th birthday present which I happen to think is fantastic, not everything in the picture is from the same person but the majority are gifts:

 

List of all things in picture:

Belated 18th present items:

several sheets of coloured card, several black envelopes, pritt-stick, super fine gold and silver pens, wax for sealing letters. (not in picture-  sticky back foam numbers and stars)

Gift from mother: 

asorted coloured pens

Other random stuff I have aquired:

scissors, selotape, graphite sticks of varying softness, ruler.

wow, this was long, I could keep going but I will spare you.

Categories

so I have been wandering how I should go about organising my photos, at present I have broken down my photo collection into 8 categories:

1. arty 
2. bake 
3. barnabas 
4. misc 
5. nature 
6. old 
7. portraits 
8. events

Now this is working for me at the moment the problem I can forsee however, is an awful lot of overlap, for example portraits and events have a fair amount in common also pretty much all of the photos of barnaas are portraits and is it not possible to have an arty picture of nature?

I guess what I mean by the name 'arty' is that I have constructed and composed an environment specifically For the purpose of taking an artistic looking photograph, I have also used this as a label in previous posts and will continue to in later ones if you were wandering what I was on about.

Now, some pictures of baby Barnabas:

Zorb

yep, 3 posts in 2 days but I have a fair amount of catching up to do ... I have taken around 1200 photos already (Just under 3 weeks I've had my camera) so keeping up with myself might be tricky! Though on second thoughts there are a few things that will probably slow my trigger finger on the shutter release. The first and foremost being a lack of inspiration and creativity. The second being time restaints and the third being good photo oppertunities. But I think I could quite happily blog away through the archives as I go through 'Dry' periods. Also I probably only post 10-15 pictures per 100 I take (and dont delete) when I am doing a specific shoot like this one.

Another thing that just crossed my mind as I typed out the above paragraph: My camera only gives a 4 digit number referance after each picture ... So what happens when I want to take my 10000th picture ? This might seem a little far off but at the rate I'm going I will have taken over 20000 pictures by the end of this year ... which has now led me to think ... there is only one way to find out, get snap happy! Of course I could google my question but thats just not quite as exciting now is it?

so now that I have rambled enough take a gander at what happened between the 5 and 6 hundredth pictures I took.

So I Recived one of these (I Like to call it a zorb because I have no idea what they are actually called) for my 17th birthday from my Pa and it didnt really do much for about a year so one night when I was bored I decided to take it off the shelf, dust it off and see what it looked like in a picture, now having played with these a fair amount I knew that it would probably look quite underwhelming to take a normal shutter speed shot of it so I threw it up to 5sec got the gorilla pod out and got these:

 

I thought these were quite fun, good but not great, actually taking the pictures was fun in itself, trying out different shutter speeds, different zooms etc I tried LOTS of  different methods. So anyway I though I could possibly make them more exciting by messing around with the hue, contrast, saturation and RGB settings as I was shooting in raw I could also fiddle around with the sharpness lens abberation correction bla bla bla the list goes on ... here is how they came out:

So I was pretty chuffed with these, little bit abstract, very colourful definatley worth the time that I stayed up shooting them.