Catching Up With Lost Time

Well you may have noticed it has been sometime since my last post but I have really been up to my eyeballs with working and photography projects I have not managed to keep this blog upto date. But hopefully I can get it back on track.

I fell behind with updating here on around week 21 of my view 52 project but I am happy to say that I did manage to complete the challenge and am doing it again this year just to keep me shooting. It was also a great honour to find out that one of my images won photograph of the year for the group which was a great honour as there was some seriously stunning images to choose from.

This year I hope to continue with my smoke photography but I am also looking forward to getting my lens around more landscape shots as I don't take as many as I would like too. Here is a few samples of a trip out I had the other day to Raglan Castle

Thanks for viewing
James

Week 21 View 52

Week 21 View 52

As explained in my recent thread this week I will not be able to get time to shoot so I decided to take this image and upload it a day early I hope this is ok.

Right this Lilly was actually the pure white Lilly I shot last week. Yes I know they are still alive these were well worth the £3 I spent lol. As you may notice the white now has pink and red going through it and I must admit this image was created on instructions from my daughter from a book she got from the libary.

So I will explain in simple steps how to do this.

1) Get flower cut stem on angle

2) Fill glass/vase with water

3) Place flowers in water

4) Now add a few drops of food colouring.

And that is all it takes. It does say leave for a 24 hour period but this was created after about 4-5 hours .

Why does this happen? Flowers drink through bunches of thin tubes like straws that carry the water up the roots, stems and into the leaves and flowers hence it turns the flowers to the colour of the dye.

You can also split the stem and use two glasses with different colour dye to see what happens.

This was my daughters idea and I must admit it was great fun watching the change so I am sure I will try this out on some other flowers to see what I can get

Near Miss

Thanks For Reading
James

Week 20 View 52

Week 20 View 52

Time is going by so fast I have really been struggling to keep up with View 52 but I am determined to complete this challenge. So I decided to try for the first time a high key flower shot and I was really pleased with the result so here is my week 20

Here is my near miss

Thanks For Reading

James

Week 19 View 52

Week 19 View 52

After stumbling on my butterfly last week I decided I would try it again and see if it was a fluke. And thankfully it wasn't.

I find myself looking back to when I first started photography and I used to spend a lot of time looking at smoke images thinking that isn't photography that is image manipulation and I am sure most of you may think the same.

But you couldn't be further from the truth. Until you actually sit down and spend as much time as I do photographing smoke you will never understand that there is more to these images than meet the eye its not all about snapping away pulling off as many frames as you can and creating something in PS. A lot of time is spent setting up the lighting, moving the lighting, finding the right position for the josh sticks (believe it or not it can make a difference), but most importantly controlling the smoke because believe it or not that is what matters certain patterns create certain looks/finishes yes there is an element of PS skills involved but it is the smoke patterns you capture within the camera that make the foundation of the final image and that is where the skill to smoke art is based.

I am still in the learning part of smoke myself but slowly I am starting to recognise what patterns to look out for where to sit the smoke within the frame (like normal composition) etc etc

I really hope you enjoy looking at these images as much as I appreciate taking them

Thanks For Reading
James

Week 18 View 52

Week 18 View 52

Last week had proved to be an uplifting week I had a call to start a new job so I decided to celebrate by playing with smoke today.

Thanks For Reading
James

Week 17 View 52

Week 17 View 52

Well this weather has been poor but that has not affected me as it was a great excuse for some still life I decided to shoot some tulips today as I simply didn't have time to set anything up and the tulips were just sat there looking at me, so I thought why not.

It's a simple set up all you need is a black (or whatever colour you desire) and a household desk lamp and hey presto you have a nice clean floral shot

Thanks For Reading
James

Week 16 View 52

Week 16 View 52

As they say stick to what you know. So I decided to cheer my stream up a little to get back to what I enjoy most and that is smoke even though I did play with water I returned back to my smoke as the family had eaten all the strawberry's and I wanted to try a shot like Simon did but had to make do with an apple which I will add underneath as I know some people are not a fan of smoke.


This took some serious playing around with adding different layers and gradients but it was worth it and is the reason I decided this would be No16.

Here is my near miss with an Apple and Water and then a gradient layer added to add a little interest

Thanks For Reading
James