Inspiration - Beboy

Beboy is a French "location independent" photographer, specializing in landscape and cityscape photography.

I've been following his work for some time as I love his processing style, and I think it's fair to say he does travel a lot!

For more, have a look at his Flickr portfolio:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/beboy_photographies/

I would also advise that you have a look at his blog, while it's in French it's still possible to interpret how he envisages shots even with my atrocious French!

http://www.beboyphoto.com/

Killmar Tor photo-walk

Well, good news! It appears that the small car-park to the north-east of Killmar Tor is accessible via a very narrow lane from Berriowbridge and allows much easier access to the Tor than parking near to Sharp Tor and walking from there. What would have been a 30 minutes walk is cut down to about 15 minutes, although the terrain is pretty steep so be warned!

We arrived at the Tor and were presented with a fantastic view over Bodmin Moor with clear skies towards Launceston but big brooding clouds amassing from Bolventor, and it was these that cut the evening short. After an hour or so exploring the rocks we could see the rain getting closer and closer until eventually rain stopped play and we beat a hasty retreat back down the hill to the cars.

Still, it did present us with the opportunity to get some shots of the fantastic Crepuscular Rays that were dotted over the landscape!

Here's looking forward to the next walk!

Macro on a budget

I’m sure most of you have considered a macro lens at some point in your photographic journey, the idea of getting up-close-and-personal with flowers, insects and other fine details is a lure that afflicts many.

For many the cost of a dedicated macro lens is a substantial outlay, often running into several hundred pounds, a hard pill to swallow for something you may not use all that often, but luckily there are some cheaper alternatives that while not as good as a dedicate macro lens, offer much closer magnification without the cost.

First up is the simplest solutions of all, a close-up filter. This is simply an extra filter that screws onto the front of your lens and allows you to get a little closer to your subject:

I used Scooby Doo as my model and focused on the eyes, clicking on the image below you can see how close I can get with and without the additional close-up filter,

Without Filter

With Filter

As you can see, a modest but welcome increase in magnification. The downside to these filters is that they are dependent on the thread size of your lens, so if you change lenses you may not be able to use the filter any more if the new lens uses a different thread size, plus you are also introducing new glass into your equipment so the quality of the filter will directly affect the quality of the final image.

If you are willing to spend a little more, extension tubes are probably a better solution. These tubes include no glass and so the image quality is purely dependent on your lens, all they do is move the lens further away from the body and this is what allows you to get close to your subject.

Some tubes are extremely simple and offer no connection between body and lens, effectively turning any lens into a manual focus lens (not necessarily a huge issue as many macro photographer exclusively use manual focus) but others such as mine shown below keep the electronic connection between body and lens which allows you to retain auto-focus.

Again using Scooby Doo as my trusty model, click on the image to see with-and-without images... as you can see, when using the tubes I managed to get so close that it blocked out most of the light!

Without Tubes

With Tubes

In the real world, here is a little bug that I found in my garden one day. and to give you an idea of scale, the entire bug was only 2-3cm long.

This shot was taken with my Panasonic GX7, with extension tubes mounted on the 45-150mm telephoto lens, and the shot was also quite heavily cropped but there is still plenty of detail to be found.

What a difference a day makes

It always amazes me how different the same location can be when visited in different weather conditions.

We recently had a weekend away near Newquay and I took the opportunity to visit Holywell Bay as it's been somewhere I've been wanting to visit for a long time but have never managed.

On Saturday evening I was being a little hopeful that the small band of colour on the horizon would break into a proper sunset but that hope quickly faded once I'd arrived at the beach and the night drew in under a veil of cloud with not even a whimper. Sunday on the other hand was a completely different evening, with fabulous colours lighting the sky all evening.

Here's my favourite shots from each evening, taken only 24 hours apart:

Wistman's Wood Photo-walk

I'm not sure if it was the drive to the location or the anticipation of the walk but something put everybody off this week and I had a lonely photo-walk!

Still, got to look at the positives and that did mean that I had the splendor of Wistman's Wood to enjoy all by myself allowing for a free-roam over all the compositional opportunities on offer, and I think it's only fair for me to post something that will hopefully make you a little jealous of what you missed! :)

News flash! As it turns out I'd just missed Andy by mere minutes, and while he didn't make it as far as the woods he did take some great shots of the moors on the way!

Davidstow Airfield photo-walk

Davidstow Airfield is always an interesting place to visit, lots of old abandoned buildings with plenty of rusty old metal... it's photographic gold!

But the weather had the best surprise for us... wow! What a stunning end to the day! Here's Richard and Shaun setting up for their shots of the old control tower with that glorious sky:

Droplet Reflections

It's great to catch a water droplet sitting on or dripping from a flower, with another reflection in the droplet. Its much easier if you slow the action down, or keep the droplet exactly where you want it by adding glycerin to the water or even just using glycerin on its own. This may seem like a bit of a cheat, but sometimes mother nature needs a little helping hand to get the shot you want.

Inspiration - Michael Shainblum

Michael Shainblum is based on the West coast of America and has a knack for creating larger than life landscapes; his motto is "EAT, SLEEP, CREATE" though with the amount of quality work on his site you've got to question how much he eats and sleeps!

If you'd like to see more check out his website:

http://www.shainblumphoto.com/

https://500px.com/shainblum

Telephoto Compression

For my first top tip, I have used my lovely daughter Jasmine, one of our chickens and our old Massey 35 as you do.

This is just a fun little experiment to see the affect that increasing the focal length of that lens can have on the background. Think very carefully about the focal length you use when deciding on a shot, as the results can be drastically different, as can be seen in the series of three shots. Jasmine did not move from her position, the tractor stayed where it was, the only change was the distance between me and Jasmine and the focal length of the lens. It's amazing how much the distance between Jasmine and the tractor has seemingly decreased.

23 Ninja Tips For Your Next Photo Walk

An interesting video from the Cooperative of Photography, some interesting food-for-thought for your next street photography adventure!