Posts Tagged ‘Canon 400D’

Anyone who knows me, knows that I have a long standing series of photographs staring a Gremlins ‘Gizmo’ plush toy, and a few (growing) number of friends. Looking out at the melting snow a few February’s ago, I thought “what I should have done is get Gizmo a Santa hat, take some pictures of him in the snow, and make it my custom Christmas card” for the coming Christmas. That single thought gradually built up through the year until I ended up finishing off with a full nativity scene of them and the following year wasn’t much more sensible when I had them as Santa & Reindeers.

Well I’m happy to say it doesn’t get any more sensible this year, because this year we had a huge snow fall in Feb, and, I already had Santa hats for them, and I had a day off to go up into the peaks to find some snow the kids hadn’t, so this years cards will be loosely based around…

Gizmo & Furby in the Show

Also like to make a special mention to Moo Printing at this point, as they’ve been through their printers twice trying to get the colours right on the cards, as I’d managed to select some text (the cards will have Merry Xmas on them) that CMYK printing really doesn’t like.

Fingers crossed the next batch will be bang on, and cards should be landing on some peoples door mats soon.

Last month visited the Crich Tramway Museum for it’s spooky ‘Starlight Halloween’ night. The Halloween decor was a bit on the cheap & nasty side, but that wasn’t the reason for going, instead short of going to Blackpool, the Crich Tramway Museum is one of the few places you can see trams operating, and the Halloween night gives a rare opportunity to do some long exposure night time shots for added affect. That Blackpool is a 300mile round trip & Crich a 30mile trip just helps to seal the deal. As an added bonus if you gift aid your entry admission, then your tickets are valid for 12months, bargain, so shall be going back to get some more ‘summery’ shots. Some period cobble stones, pub, cars etc all help towards maintaining a little piece of history at this working museum.

30second exposure, tram was moving for approx 20sec then painted the front end in with a few pops of flash to help freeze the front end of the tram after it had stopped. Pushed the raw white balance around which helped towards the period processing.

This shot is simpler than many think at first look. Basically it’s a stationary tram up front with another passing behind it during a 30second exposure.

This shot quickly got back a comment on twitter ‘”Oh WOW! I live about 7 miles from Crich but I’ve never been… you may have tempted me though.. Great photo…”

Beyond Limits is an anual scultpture exhibition in the ground of Chatsworth House, Derbyshire. I was meant to be helping a friend clear out a garage but last minute change of plan left me with a spare day and a spare BOGOF ticket offer to Chatsworth thanks to an earlier visit to Keddleston (so if your a NT member worth dropping in just for the ticket en route), making it a slightly more pocket friendly £12 for two around the house & gardens.

It can be all too easy at these events to just ‘shoot the scultpure’ which can leave with shots not to dissimlar to the catalogue shots for the exhibition, or even worse. The first exhibit we came to was the substantial bronze “Eros Bendato Screpolato”, which was being backlit by harsh September afternoon sun. Not a great start. Having looked for a few different angles from the lit sides and coming up with nothing, I decided to pull out the Canon 580EX and my 3m OC-E3 (off camera flash cable). First shot I knew I was onto something, and after a few changes of camera & flash angle, I got this…

which is much more dramatic than anything else of this sculpture I’ve seen, see Google and see for yourself.