Night Photography | Stars From The Front And Rear Of My Home And The Perils Of Living With Suburban Light Pollution.

I am fully aware that the length of this post’s title is ridiculous, but, it does describe this post perfectly.

As I mentioned at the end of the Dover based photography blog post [as always, the link is below] I remembered on the trip home that the following night was meant to be a Supermoon. In other words the Moon was going to be closer and appear brighter that it would do in 18 years. The following night I headed to my back garden to try and capture some photographs of this rare astronomical event. But doing this, was not without difficulty.

General Photography | Dover
Date Posted: Friday 25^th March 2011

That night there was a few aspects that were in my way in respect to getting a decent shot of the night sky albeit the Moon. First of which is the fact that I lack any lenses that go beyond 50mm. Which, as you may or may not know, a 50mm lens does not really have the desired focal length for taking photographs of anything that can be considered an astrological object.

The second, which to be honest can be ranked as joint first for obstacles to night photography is that I live very close to Bluewater Shopping Centre, which, even late at night when all the shops are closed produces an inordinate amount of light pollution. I have grown up with a night sky with a particular hue of bright purple. It’s quite strange.

As well as the short focal lengths and constant purple haze that I have come to call a night sky another factor that plays it’s part in stopping me from taking brilliant astronomical photographs for the ages is location. This is much the same as the reasoning behind light pollution but with an added extra and that is that I have a bunch of trees growing across the way from my house and to the back of my garden blocking any shot of the Moon should it be too low. And that I have a long line of street lights to the front of the house complimenting the purple haze with orange-yellow undertones. Both of which, more often than not, like to join forces and play havoc with any exposure of considerable length that I try to take in the area.

But I have been lucky once or twice. A few years ago I was indoors sitting in my bedroom using my laptop, I think I was talking to a friend online, when I realised that the lights went off. I thought nothing of it at first but this darkness had a feel of something grander to it that just the all the bulbs being blown in my house. A total and complete darkness that enveloped my bedroom save my laptop screen. I looked outside to see what was going on. And that was when I realised that this sudden darkness wasn’t just affecting my house but every house on my road and not only that but all the street lights as well. It would be a lie to say that I had been waiting for this black out, but I jumped to the opportunity [literally, nearly breaking my tripod as I didn't know that it was by my foot as it was completely dark].  The streets were dark and somewhat eerie. The only sounds carrying through the cold night air was that of distant car alarms and barking dogs. It seemed to stop all the traffic as well with only a couple of cars going through what is usually a very busy stretch of road. I placed my SLR in a flowerpot and pointed it up towards the sky and in the process I managed to achieve my favourite night time shots that I ever taken around my home.And don’t worry I will include those photographs in this post.

A few years later I came across a handy trick to photographing the Moon. Which I wish to share with anybody having difficulty in photography our sunlit satellite. Wait till near dusk and with a long lens [preferably of a length around 300mm or more] point it at the Moon and take down the camera by about 2 exposure values [-2EV].

Don’t fret by the way, we will get to the photographs soon enough, that is if you are still reading this and haven’t already scrolled down to the pretty pictures already. The reason for the long post title and the lengthy preposition is that I wanted to explain that I have tried on many occasions to photograph the night sky. And although I didn’t produce a photograph of the Supermoon that I was happy with I was going to show a selection of my Astro-photography. As this is sort of a compilation post there won’t be a video to gowith this one. These photographs were either taken with a Canon EOS 350D or a Canon EOS 50D with a variety of lenses. Please enjoy.

General Photography | Dover

A road trip, suggested several weeks before it actually happened was the main reason that I managed to find myself on the Dover seafront on a cold and overcast Thursday a couple of weeks ago. There isn’t a whole lot to do in Dover so why did I go?

I can think of two very big reasons, the first that I shall mention is actually secondary and should not be considered the main reason at all. This first [yet secondary] reason being there is that I had never actually been to Dover before. Sure, I had once gone through Dover to get onto a ferry to get to France [OK, then I guess that would be twice with the return trip]. But I had not actually had a chance to walk around the town so I didn’t define it as actually having gone there. Otherwise I might as well say that I have been to Slovenia because I flew over it on the way to Pisa. By the way I’ve included a link to that blog post below.

Travel Photography | Pisa
Date Posted: Monday 23^rd Of August 2010

And that brings us to the second, yet primary, reason for my trip the Dover sea front and that was due to my companions on this trip. Matt, Emma and I were all on the same photography course in college and hung out a fair bit but after college we drifted slightly which happens. So this was a nice trip and chance for a catch-up. But as I said in the first paragraph and the video that will be displayed on this blog post [once I have finished with the edit] the weather was less than perfect.

As well as seeing the seafront we also made our way through the town to have a look around and I managed to return to my default of checking charity shops for old cameras as I have always believed that they are a great source of analogue camera equipment. But it’s all luck whether they have something when you get there. We made our way to Dover Castle but it turns out that they had closed half an hour earlier than they should have so we couldn’t actually go in. Not disheartened we carried on to the next place on our list to visit and that was the National Trust centre on the cliffs. From the top of the cliffs you mainly get a nice view of the Port of Dover [although I’m pretty sure in the video I call it something else] and the amount of traffic going through is quite surprising.

We slowly made our way home after this. The weather neither improved nor worsened all day until we were already on the motorway on our journey home. This is when the sun decided to finally break through the clouds to finally make an appearance before disappearing below the horizon. Allowing the Moon to be seen and although I fell asleep for a good part of the journey seeing the moon did remind me that the following night was meant to be the arrival of the ‘Supermoon’. But I will cover that better in the next blog post I am planning to do.

As you may or may not know I prefer taking photographs with people in them. Scenery doesn’t truly interest me. But as this was a new place for me I decided to try my hand at street photography. As I’ve never been the best at it, and I’m looking for a chance to improve upon my skills. To reiterate what was said in the video all the photographs in this post were taken with the Canon EOS 50D using either the Canon EF 28mm f1.8 lens or the Canon EF 50mm f1.8 lens. I;ve played around with making the photographs monochrome but as I have written this way before selecting the final photos for this post you never can tell what will end up in it. Hope you’ve enjoyed this post. There are links to my Twitter and e-mail address all over the blog. So if you want to get in touch feel free.

General Photography | 2011 Focus-On-Imaging Exhibition at the Birmingham NEC

Our blog today see’s me at the Focus-On-Imaging exhibition at the NEC in Birmingham. Today’s post also has the first ever video segment on this blog. This first video isn’t that great in all honesty and that is all down to me. I had written an outline on what things to talk about in the video and didn’t consider that I would get through it all of about 45 seconds. I would like to say thank you to Richard Hankins for helping me record it. I had previously mentioned that I was going to the Focus-On-Imaging exhibition and the integration of video to this blog in my February update post. Link below.

Update | 28^th February
Date Posted: Monday 28^th February 2011

The trip to Birmingham took some time and it saw me getting up at 7am to catch a train as I was departing from Victoria Coach Station. As I got to Birmingham I them had to get a train to Birmingham International Airport in order to get to the NEC. So as you can probably tell it wasn’t the easiest journey I have ever undertaken.

As I got to the Focus-On-Imaging exhibition I took in all the activity around. This event was very busy and somewhat crowded. There were certain stands giving talks, software demonstrations and advising on their services and different techniques. It was a great place to go if you wanted to save on some new equipment with stands from the likes of Moo.com [where I get my business cards], Silverprint [where I am likely to source darkroom materials in future] and many more, if you would like to see the 2011 floor plan for Focus click here. I did have a few problems with the event and these are just personal observations of mine.

I found that wherever there was a demonstration there would be a considerable amount of people sitting and taking notice of what was being said and then there were the demonstrations on studio techniques. These stands usually had a basic studio setup with one guy demonstrating and instructing on different techniques that he had used or is currently using. These particular stands were generally surround by about 30-40 grown men [maybe a couple of women] all with their cameras out taking photographs or using their video cameras. At first glance I thought it may have been that the guy in question was a leader in his field or chosen technique, this was until I saw the LCD screen of the camcorders being held high about the crowd. All these men were only surrounding this particular stand because of the women that were modelling for the photographer/demonstrator. Once I had noticed this it became clear and apparent throughout the entire exhibition. Where ever there was a woman sitting and modelling in a talk about studio photography there would be crowd of men gawping and pushing over each other to get a photograph of the model.

Now, I have had heard of this type of behaviour at exhibitions but I was rather embarrassed to witness it myself first hand. Another trend of behaviour that slightly annoyed me at Focus was the way that the majority of men were walking around with their cameras hanging around their necks. And most weren’t even taking photos from what I could see. Any conversations heard in passing where mainly between men or [worse still] men talking at exhibitors telling them what camera equipment they owned. Bragging is a problem in photography, with people going on and on about what equipment they have and so on. I am fully aware that I suffer from it but I’ll never be as bad as some of the people that were there that day. Hopefully.

I am glad to have gone to the exhibition as it gave me a good opportunity to look at what was available [company wise] for photographic equipment that I looking to procure in the near future. And as I said earlier I think that my darkroom equipment will be coming from Silverprint. It was also good for the experience and the photographs that I achieved. It was also good to see my friend Richard Hankins again. Richard also did me a massive favour as he recorded part of the video that I have included at the top of this blog piece, he is also a photographer and if you would like to see more of his work, click here. His photograph is the last out of the ten photographs on this post. All the photographs on this post were taken with Canon EOS 50D digital SLR with the Canon EF 28mm f1.8 lens. The Canon EF 28mm f1.8 is actually my favourite lens for my digital SLR. The video was recorded on a Canon Powershot SX200 in HD [high definition] recording mode and then uploaded to my Vimeo account.

Links from this post;

http://uk.moo.com/

http://www.necgroup.co.uk/

http://vimeo.com/richardanthonymorris

http://www.silverprint.co.uk/

http://www.focus-on-imaging.co.uk/

http://bigpicturephoto.co.uk/index.html

Experimental Photography | Cross Processing [x-pro]

As you may have seen in a previous post or maybe my Flickr account my bedroom wall is near enough covered in photographs and a few posters. Although, maybe not surprisingly given the nature of this blog and how I spend my spare time, the majority of the wall that is currently covered comprises of photographs. These photographs range vastly in content and method. Most are my own, made up of a series of Polaroids, film photographs, digital photographs and some passport photos for good measure. Even just saying film photographs doesn’t really cover it as there are quite a few different formats of film photographs currently placed into the format that I seemed to have adopted.

The photographs that are up are a mixture of photographs that I am proud of and other of friends and family. Other articles blu-tacked to my otherwise boring white wall are drawings, gig tickets, posters, postcards and the rules for ring of fire to name a few. I am kind of proud of this wall as I had spent a long time putting it all up and an even longer time taking it all down again and re-doing it. This second phase was carried on by my little brother when I moved out in 2009.

My little brother was standing looking at the wall recently, although when I say little he is in fact 19 years old, and asked me why some of the photographs have such strange colouring to them. After looking over to figure out what he was talking about [my first thought was fading or maybe that they had somehow became wet] it occurred to me that he was pointing to the photographs in particular that are cross processed.

Cross processing is the method of getting a film processed in a style for which it was not originally designed. The most common of this is to get a slide/colour positive film [designed for an E-6 process] and have it processed in chemicals designed to process colour negative film [this is known as a C-41 process]. And that is the method that I have mostly practised but cross processing [sometimes known as x-pro] can be any sort of mix so you can put colour films for black and white processing and so on.

Cross processing can result in higher saturation and higher contrast but the results are generally unpredictable adding to the fun of it. Although I would have to say, a really good subject matter is a vibrant sunset as it works really well. I have featured cross processed images on the blog before on my Fisheye2 post and because of that those images will not be featured on this post. As always with this blog I have included links for further information. These run throughout the post but I am also going to place them at the bottom of this text.

Generally my memory is terrible, but as I look at the photographs that I am going to include in this post I can say with absolute certainty that except for the photograph at the bottom the photos were taken on a Pentax K1000 35mm SLR camera using Fujifilm Provia 100F or Fujifilm Velvia 50. Both great 35mm slide films [E-6 Process] in their own right that quickly became my favourite when it came to choosing a film for cross processing.

The other last photo was taken on Kodak UltraMax 400 film still using the Pentax K1000. The photo was taken in a Woolwich building society in Gravesend, a town close to where I live. Not sure why I thought it was ok to take photos but the photo turned out ok and I didn’t get into trouble. Not how the photo has come out with a strong green tint. I only found this to happen when I processed colour negative film in slide chemicals.

The problem with cross processing is that it can ruin the chemicals used for everyday processing so some places maybe somewhat reluctant. I find that Snappy Snaps are usually very good when it comes to cross processing. But you could always ask beforehand and see what they say, from experience it’s best to ask that they write a note on the film docket otherwise there may be some confusion.

As you probably know, the effect of cross processing can be achieved through manipulation of Curves in Adobe Photoshop. This effect simulates the effect of colour slide film in a colour print process [E-6 in C-41] and although it looks convincing I personally prefer the traditional method.

So, below you will find a selection of photographs, all film based and achieved through the different methods of cross process photography. Enjoy.

Links.

http://www.fujifilm.co.uk/film/films/pdfs/velvia_RVP_AF3-960E.pdf

http://www.fujifilm.co.uk/film/films/pdfs/provia_100f_AF3-036E.pdf

http://www.kodak.com/eknec/documents/4c/0900688a8088594c/E7023.pdf

http://camerapedia.wikia.com/wiki/Pentax_K1000

http://www.snappysnaps.com