Oxford - visit in pictures

We headed down to Oxford for a short break on the weekend, bit of a rush squeezed in between other things but we both needed to just chill out, if only for a couple of days.

It was dark when we arrived on Saturday and Sunday dawned foggy and dull. But by midday it was bright and clear and there was some great contrast shots to be had.

This weathervane is on the very top of Carfax Tower. We climbed all 99 steps - really it wasn't all that high.

The bright pink taxi in the dull intersection fulfilled one of my 'colour' assignment shots for week 5.

Also looking down from the blue blue sky was the little devil on top of Lincoln College

Colour again - much of Oxford is built out of this stone. I love the way a whole building can be one colour and yet have such incredible depth and texture.

The contrast of the warm stone and the intricate wrought iron found everywhere really fascinated me. I didn't put the leaf there - truly. I love this shot and it was just there on the street for the taking.

I have to admit - Oxford didn't really grab me. It was nice enough, but not anything special. I did get some nice shots however and had some good practice at fiddling around with angles and shadows given the sun was so low and strong.

Shutter Speeds 3

Night shooting was the final part of the shutter speeds exploration - I don't think I'm going to get to doing water as I really need to get on to week four.

Last night I got to the bus stop quite late after work and looked up the river to the most awesome light display. I hung around for about 15 mins experimenting with different ISOs, apertures and shutter speeds.
400 10" f/22

On this one I bumped the camera a bit which elongated the lights - I like it though.

320 10" f/22

I found I wasn't getting any noise even at high ISOs but then I wasn't going for super-long exposure. I was aiming to reproduce what I was seeing rather than brighten up the scene.

One of the activity tutorials for week four was playing around with layers and blur effects to reproduce extreme focal lengths. This was my experiment:

The original photograph was sharp - taken on macro, indoors with flash. I created a duplicate layer and then blurred it to a factor of six, then erased one pair of needle tops to allow the sharp image to show through.

The tutorial recommended using a wide brush for the eraser - I discovered that I could pump this up nice and high to make the job go faster. I also discovered that turning off the background layer made it much easier to see any bits I'd missed. Cool huh!

More Shutter Speeds

Continuing my commute, I got off before Putney Bridge hoping to get some shots down the river. The sun was still fairly low and waaaaaay too bright so I waited until I was behind a tree on the other side (I could have taken shots upstream but that would have meant crossing the road - not a good plan in peak hour).

The sun is behind the tree here and I was trying to capture the bright contrast on the water and the railway bridge. The first shot rather alarmed me until I realised I still had the shutter speed set slow from the motion blur shots (oops).

1/4 f/22

I started playing with the settings and discovered that just changing the shutter speed meant everything was coming out under-exposed - too much light I guess. So I switched to fully manual and altered my f-stops as well.

1/200 f/22

About the tenth shot came out how I liked it. Funnily enough, quite similar to the shot the camera took for itself on 'auto' :-)

1/400 f/11

Shutter Speeds

I took the camera out on my way to work this morning to have a play with shutter speeds - it was so much fun!

At first I had no idea - thank goodness for unlimited digital 'film' - and got lots of blurry bits where I hadn't intended them. But in a while I started getting the hang of it all. I set the camera to 'S' (for shutter) and let the F-stop take care of itself.

Bike 1/4 f/22

Playing around with speeds I found that (not surprisingly) different speeds gave good results depending on whether I was photographing a car/motorbike or a bicycle. But the speed did not have to vary much at all.

Car 1/4 f/22

I also had a go at panning, which was MUCH harder, and did manage to get one or two clear shots eventually.

Scooter 1/15 f/10

From the bridge I played around a bit more with shutter and aperture taking pictures against the sun but I don't have time to upload them now - I'll get to that in the next post.

Btw, all today's shots were taken at ISO 100 which, in hindsight, I probably should have changed due to the bright sunshine - anyone tell me what it should have been? I haven't got my head quite around it all yet ;-)

Brilliant!

For all of us struggling with f-stops and shutter speeds Dave posted us this great link:

http://www.uscoles.com/fstop.htm

Thanks!

Stops

This week it's all about the light. F-stops, apertures, ISO, under-exposure, over-exposure.

I have learned: When the F-stop goes down the aperture goes up - and vice versa. And if you change the ISO you go back to the beginning and figure out the maths again. I need to read it all again I think.

Here's a photo I'm rather proud of as I've finally figured out how to shorten the depth of field for artistic blurriness :-)

This week's assignment has us taking photos in interesting light. Creative motion blur, night-time shots, high contrast settings. It's going to be interesting - and Ali's offered to bring round the Fire Poi for a bit of night practice!

Moving house has put me a bit behind (note the suspicious lack of posts labelled week 2) but I'll catch up that shoot sometime.

Done! Well, almost...

I got through most of the week one assignments. It's proving pretty tricky squeezing it all in around everything else, but they did warn us how big the workload would be - so no complaints.

Here's a few of the photos I took for the alphabet shoot:

'D'

'I'

'E'

And the obligatory Flower Close-Up:

The alphabet assignment was designed to make us look around us in a new ways - seeing things in the normal environment with new eyes and as possible photo subjects. I found that even when I didn't have the camera with me I was looking around me more and seeing things on my walk to work that I'd never noticed before.

I need to catch up on the last couple of small tasks. The bottle task I could skip but it really intrigues me so I'll try and squeeze it in next week.

New Camera!

Today my new camera came :-)

As you can't take a picture of a camera without another camera (which I'm still lacking) I pinched this one from the net:

It's the Olympus E500, my first Digital SLR. Luckily it arrived at my work while Nathalie and Michelle were both there - they are photo pros and were able to explain to me all the tricky stuff (like how to put the lens on ;-))

The course is going to be fantastic - I'm working through the first week's assignments including the Flickr task. Below are a few of the shots I found to comment on.

We had to pick photos that we found particularly striking - they could be anything. As I mentioned before, I am discovering definite things I like to see in photos. I like B&W, very minimalistic photos (think the opposite of those Impossibles puzzles), close ups of flowers and foliage and shoes. Well I never denied that I like shoes.

I think the thing I like most about these two photos is the fact that the legs are disembodied. They came from different photographers in a random browsing session but both focus on a body part which is often passed over in favour of faces and torsos. They are both taken at quite odd angles - standing on the desk and lying prone. Not quite where you'd expect to see legs.

This is the kind of minimalistic picture I am growing to love. In fact, thinking back, it's quite similar to an oil painting I bought once in Thailand and never got around to framing. I like the way there's the merest hint of buildings peeping through the mist at the back.

The obligatory flower close-up. I'm not sure I like the two black fields on the left - one would probably be better, less symmetry.

Once it stops raining I'll take the camera out and get to work on the main assignment.

Getting Started

Class officially begins on Monday 1st, however everything's up and running for those who want to make an early start.

I spent some time browsing around the forums, uploading software and generally finding my feet last night. Wowee! There's an awful lot to learn!

Loads of people have already uploaded the first assignment, and it's amazingly inspiring browsing around all the photos and thinking about how I'd do things differently. Part of the week's tasks is to comment on other photos but I will be assigned to a small group on Monday so I'm waiting until then.

This week's tasks:
- Browse Flickr for public photos you like and write down some comments
- Look at colour and photograph a bottle
- Read through Photoshop tutorials

Photoshoot:
- choose 6 letters from the alphabet and photograph them, 4 'free' photos

I'm on the wrong computer atm but I will share some photos that I found on Flickr with you tomorrow. I haven't started this week's shoot as Neil has trotted off to Tokyo with the camera, and I am waiting on my new one to arrive in the post - hopefully Monday!

Welcome!

This blog is not a knitting blog, however it will probably feature loads of yarn.

For a while now I've had a hankering for being able to take decent pictures of Yarn in a Bowl - why did my YiaB never look like some of the other cool YiaB I spotted here and there on the web?

So I signed up for an Open University photography course, took the obvious next step and bought a new camera, and will henceforth bore you here with my discoveries.