PaulSeward.com
Finding his photographic feet, one photo at a time
Spot the difference
August 2008:
June 2009:
Go on then, spot the difference.
Got it?
Yes, that’s right! The second image has been taken with a different camera from a different position in the room. Oh, and if you look closely enough, you can just about make out that someone has stolen the 1m x 3m print of the Clifton Suspension Bridge off the wall.
Not only was this print my first large scale work to be hung in a public space (yay!) – It’s also my first work which has been valued highly enough by someone, that they wanted to pinch it! (Super double bonus YAY!)
Everyone around here seems to think I should be upset about the theft, but my ego disagrees.
Still, We’ve asked security to check through the weekends camera footage to see if they can spot someone leaving the building with a honking great picture of a bridge, but given that they’re more geared up for spotting people who park in the wrong parking bay – I’m not holding my breath. I’m also keeping half an eye on ebay, just for a giggle.
Update:
Extract from the incident report, as filed by security – “No CCTV Footage” – despite them having to carry it past a minimum of 3 cameras to get it out of the building. I suspect it really means “we didn’t look very hard”
Posted in Photos | 4 Comments »
Happy Birthday!
I’ve got a nephew! He hasn’t got a name yet, but he was born today at about 1:30pm. Congratulations Mary and Mark!
A couple more photos of him in this album here.
Update: Meet Nathan Alexander Watson!
Posted in Photos | 2 Comments »
Drip
I’ve been playing again. I think I need more practice at water drop photography though, this was the best shot I got. Mostly, they were under lit (I might turn my flashes up a smidge)
I’ll probably return to this later in the month. I’d especially like to drop red ink into milk.
Posted in Photos | 3 Comments »
Editing – Part I
Stu’s Tuesday Challenge this week, is simply to “post your best photo ever” – which sounds easier than it is. I take a lot of photos, and to narrow it down a bit, I’ve taken the easy way out and thumbed through the thousand or so that are already online (I’ll leave the negative archive folders alone for now!)
I think I’ve got it down to 6, although I’ll go back through them later in the week and see if there are any I missed.
I’m finding this really hard though. Photos I know people have cooed over in the past (Including those which are hanging as prints in various peoples homes and workplaces) now leave me cold, Images I thought were memorable just look a bit “meh” – I’m my own worst critic though!
I will return to this, I will weed out some more interesting images, I *will* pick the best I can find.
Posted in Photos | 3 Comments »
Glowing
I’m really quite pleased with how some of these images from last weekend worked out, I don’t get to take photos of people much (I really must sort out some models at some point) and I certainly don’t get to play with lighting in this way. This is the first time I’ve tried to balance strong sunlight with portable flashes – I can see myself doing more of this!
This one was another of my favourites:
Note for next time though, early afternoon makes this sort of shot more difficult than it could be – if the sun had been lower in the sky, Mary wouldn’t have had to stand on a garden bench!
Posted in Photos | 1 Comment »
Parents to be
Today, I did my first “maternity photoshoot” with my sister Mary, and her husband Mark. We had a lot of fun (and rather a lot of ice cream soda!)
I’ll link to the rest of the shots once they’ve had a chance to look at them.
Posted in A photo a day - 2008 | No Comments »
Back from Bungay
Bungay was grand! Quite possibly the best one I’ve been to.
Buttercups, Bubbles, St Peters Mild in bottles, Pewter, Hot Tubs and Saunas in a field, croquet, new tent, Monty on form in the kitchen, MEAT!!!, kittens, Farmer Paul having velvet curtains in the shed… it were ace.
There are more photos of my week in a field here – According to my frame counter, I shot 342 frames 33 made the cut. That’s only a 10% success rate – pretty poor really.
I’ll do a proper write up for r.j at some point, if I get around to it. But for now, I’m going to go curl up with the cat and make the most of my freedom before the real world comes knocking on my door tomorrow morning.
Posted in Photos | 1 Comment »
Thoughts on photo competitions
I’ve learned something this week.
It’s that trying to organise a “fun, family friendly, inclusive photo competition” aimed at allowing people who take holiday snaps to join in along side those who shoot with honking great DSLRs – it’s that those with the DSLRs have an astounding capacity to be jerks about it.
The rules of the game started off as:
- Deadline is 1pm Saturday
- Photos must be taken this week, and of the festival (daytrips to the seaside don’t count)
- One entry per person
- No photoshopping
That last rule was put in because not everyone has a laptop with them, let alone the skills or inclination to drive photoshop. It’s essentially an attempt to level the playing field and allow everyone to take part. It’s also been the bane of my week.
It started off as “That’s ok, I use GIMP” – so it was changed to “no post processing” – this was the worst thing I could have done. I’ve spent all week having the same discussions with every bugger who shoots RAW. I’m fed up with them asking “what am I allowed to do when converting raw to jpeg?” I started off trying to answer these questions, “whitebalance is allowed, exposure tweaks aren’t, sharpening and noise removal are not, cropping and straightening is right out” but last night, one shooter in particular (who it turns out, is not even intending to enter) wound me right up.
It started as your average “does converting to jpg count as post processing” progressed through some “cloning should be allowed so I can eliminate dead pixels” and turned into “your rules are completely arbitrary, you should be using the set of rules that my favourite photo competition website uses as they’re clearly much better”
It’s rare that after 10 days of chilling out in a field I get so steamed up about something that I need to take some time out, but I walked off site for two and a bit hours, and walked for 7.5 miles down country lanes in the dark.
It took 2 and a bit hours of stomping along in the dark for me to come to the conclusion that what I’d experienced is a fundamental difference in approach to photography.
For me, a photo is about capturing a moment in time, a subject, a feeling. It’s about composition, timing, and emotion. It’s about what you point the camera at and when you press the button. For some, it’s about the technology, the toys, the gadgets, making each pixel technically perfect, ironing out any percieved imperfection carefully and methodically.
So, the Bungay Photo Competition will be going ahead tonight, we’ve had 6 entries so far and half the site aren’t even awake yet – but if it happens again next year, I’m having nothing to do with it.
Posted in Uncategorized | 11 Comments »
Bang2
I killed the ambient this time, and adjusted the lights a bit (snooted them so more of the light goes where I want it and less is wasted, and propped the right hand one up on a bigger pile of books)
I’m out of balloons now though.
Anywho, it’s been fun playing but I should really start thinking about this weeks “decisive moment” photo! :-)
Posted in Photos | 2 Comments »
Bang!
So far this evening, I’ve:
- Rebuilt my £2 audio trigger and found some fresh batteries for it
- Taken the above shot
- Spent *far* too much time fixing the wordpress plugin I use to pick an image from my gallery software.
FFS, the gallery software has supported nested sub-albums for at least one major version now – why do I have to re-implement the support for it in the plugin each time I upgrade that to match the new version of the gallery?
This time round, my fix is everso slightly slicker. Perhaps when I submit it back to the maintainer he’ll bother to roll it into the next release.
Now, time to feed the cat, feed me, and possibly take a look at PHP-IDS
Posted in Photos | 2 Comments »
