Portrait Photography

Calton Hill Folly

09.08.09

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The best magic in photography seems so often to come from the unexpected. After watching the magnificent end-of-festival fireworks from Edinburgh’s Calton Hill, the folly suddenly struck me as looking fantastic (in the literal sense of the word) and so I quickly retrieved the beloved 40D and had a go. My “standard” 17-85 IS was on, and with its slow f4 aperture, it left the people too blurred. As is so often the case with Image Stabilised lenses it let me get a sharp folly handheld in almost no light, but it was giving a half second or so even on the 40D’s max ISO (3200) and so very blurry people. Anyone who reads my blog at all will guess which lens was quickly pressed into service, yes the Sigma 28 f1.8 prime. The fast aperture gave me 1/13th second, which was just usable. It’s not even vaguely a perfect picture, but it’s unprocessed, except a tiny bit of noise reduction and sharpening. It’s an atmospheric picture for me and captures a perfect moment on a special night.

Just get one of these lenses, I don’t regret buying mine for a moment:-)

Just one of the fireworks for fun:

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Crail – East Neuk

09.07.09

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I had a lovely day in Crail today with a friend, taking photographs and eating cakes naturally. The sky was only just south of crap for photography, and so I resorted to the sensible photographer’s trick of totally excluding the sky from my shots. A telephoto zoom, in this case my 70-300 is ideal for the job. Luckily Crail lends itself to this with its distinctive buildings in dramatic tiers around the harbour. If you haven’t visited the East Neuk of fife, I would urge you to do so; it’s beautiful.

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Raintown Station B

09.05.09

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Raining again all day, so I went to Glasgow instead. This is the view from the roof of the Buchanan Galleries car park. They have surrounded the roof with a high screen so that you need to use “live view” and hold the camera above the screen. I haven’t seen a nice sunset here for a month at least!

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Cycling Again

08.25.09

Bike riding self-portrait. Don’t try this at home folks, the wonder of my little Canon Ixus 100 is that I can keep it in my cycling top pockets. I couldn’t resist whipping it out and pointing it at myself while riding. I swung into a long layby for this one knowing that while I was still moving fast at least I was off the road briefly. Took the next one instantly afterwards, power off, pocket camera, check behind and rejoin road. My polarising lenses on my cycling glasses seem to have had an amazing effect. Overexposing in software reveals underexposed eyes that you can “fix” if you sacrifice detail elsewhere. It’s a fun effect and a genuine view of me indulging in some all-too-rare exercise.

And this is the view that cyclists know all too well, 4 hours of looking at this, I think it’s time I shaved them? Don’t you:-)

The little Ixus is really versatile, very basic but tiny and so versatile.

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Breege

08.16.09

Continuing with my series of second choices from my 100 portraits project of last year. Breege met me in the botanic gardens in Glasgow, (a frequent choice for my subjects), and we spent a fair amount of time playing with this colourful bush to bring colour and depth into the portrait. It was fun going back to this one and adjusting the saturation and the “curves” to get the effect I wanted. I used the selective brush in Lightroom to reduce the mid-range contrast (clarity control) in the purple flowers to ensure that nothing distracted from Breege’s face. In the end we used one with the glass structure of the greenhouses behind Breege which you can find in my 100 portraits pages.

And look cropped sensor portraitists, I checked the data and again it was my 28mm f1.8 Sigma that brought home the goods. I still think the general advice on portrait lenses out there is poor. 100mm or its equivalent is to long for an intimate portrait.

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