Fitzwilliam Cambridge - Vases

Our first visit to the Fitzwilliam Museum since March and I took the opportunity to take photos of some of the wonderful vases and teapots etc in their collection with the idea of practising some of the soft light techniques that we were demonstrating at our CCC Wednesday Workshop. My method is simpler than some we were shown with the image duplicated and then 50%Gaussian blur faded in screen mode to give a highlight glow. Next a texture in soft light mode and a white or pastel layer also in soft light. The opacity of each layer adjusted plus masks where required.

 

 

Birds at our Feeder into the Light

We had some fun photographing birds on our feeders with the sun almost directly behind them showing of the wing feathers. These were taken at 1/2500 of a second and still not quite stopped the motion and focus not always right on the eyes but I love the patterns the wings make.

Saffron Walden Churchyard

Yesterday we took part in a photohunt in Saffron Walden - more images to follow of other locations. I had with me my Fuji compact and a pinhole lens. The first image is a composite of a poppy from the compact and a pinhole image of the gravestones. Images 2,3 and 5 are pinhole images - all the rest are from the Fuji compact with a couple monochrome conversions as the sunlit areas just asked for a high contrast conversion. The final two to show the dominance of the church over the town and its tall steeple as depicted in a vertical panorama of 5 shots

 

Insect Eyes from Paxton Pits

Among the 70 or so different species that I photographed yesterday during one of our Wildlife Survey  mornings, I found this set of amazing eyes to share (Red-eyed Damselfly, Common Blue Damselfly, Snail-killing fly, Kite-tailed Robberfly, Median Wasp (at nest), Eristalis pertinax, Roesel's Bush Cricket, Speckled Bush Cricket, Cicadella viridis, and Common Darter female)

Wasp Spiders - Focus Stacking Exercise

I must admit to being somewhat addicted to finding these impressive spiders and then trying to photograph them accurately. So when after 2 hours in the field rain stopped play, I found I had 25 or so photostacks (20 or 30 images per stack) occupying a lot of disk space. Of these 9 stacked OK in Zerene Stacker and here are six different views of three different individuals. It was quite breezy and the spider does tend to vibrate in the web if it senses an intruder so not surprised at low hit rate

Toft 20 years On.

While sorting out my computer drives ready for an upgrade, I found some scans of photos that I took in 2000 as a record of the village at the beginning of a new Millenium. So yesterday in very variable weather, I made a quick tour of the village taking comparison shots.  Even allowing for the fact that the 2000 images were taken in winter, Toft is a lot 'greener' now with many tall trees and hedges that were not there or small 20 years ago. I will repeat this taking more care matching the view points in the winter.