Reflections!

A colour assignment for College....

My Plan A (window reflections) didn't really work as too many things went wrong.
I was 'grilled' by a drunkard who wasn't happy that I might be taking his or anyone else's photograph without permission. I couldn't be bothered putting him straight about the laws but did try to explain that, as my camera was pointing up near the top of the 5 story builing in front of us, no-one would be in the photograph. It didn't stop him from trying to be in the shot as he moved from left to right while he tried to figure out just where to stand so that the lens was facing him. His comprehension of physics was obviously skewed by his alcohol consumption but it was quite amusing to watch him dance around for a while. He got fed up trying to get in the frame and came back for a second mega-rant. Time to move along, Ams, before this gets too scary!!

Even more of a problem was the fact that the beautiful Arch windows that I had spied, from a distance in the car, didn't actually have glass in the frames. Even the drunk guy would know that I could never get a reflections shot from them. Gutted!!

By this point it was too foggy to be able to see anything, anyway. Back home to mope about my lack of success.

Returning to Glasgow another day for Plan B (reflections on water) and I completed my second roll of film. Only after taking all, bar 2, of my shots did the reflections become really colourful so I'm not sure how this will turn out on submission. Acceptable? I hope so.

Here are two of the images, scanned from print. Both are taken at the River Clyde in Glasgow.

BBC Building


Finniston Crane [Clydeport] and the Squinty Bridge

Woody!

A friend once described me as a Woody Allen film. I am not against such a comparison but I think (hope) it was a slight exaggeration.

However, I have been thinking, lately (again), of re-kindling an old hobby - playing the clarinet. I have a few ideas related to this resurgence of an old passion but I will be keeping them under my hat for the time being.

I wonder how this venture will turn out.


(Photo from federicavalabrega@wordpress - click on title for link)

Catch a falling star!

"Catch a falling star and put it in your pocket,
Never let it fade away!
Catch a falling star and put it in your pocket,
Save it for a rainy day!

For love may come an' tap you on the shoulder,
Some star-less night!
Just in case you feel you wanna hold her,
You'll have a pocketful of starlight!"
Perry Como

Fun with christmas lights

I know they should all now be in the loft but I just love these red ones so they have been left downstairs in the living room until I can find a new home for them.
In the meantime, I had a bit of fun with them.

Cold branding!

It's so cold here that I've been sitting on my hands. I should've taken my ring off first, silly mistake.

Ouch!!!

Edinburgh snow

Even though we'd arranged our trip to visit Edinburgh again to complete our "City Lights" assignment ages ago, we all only managed to get there by the skin of our teeth.

The weather was still and calm here but the snow was so deep you couldn't drive. Then, after finally making it into the city, the snow started and worked itself into a blizzard of madness. We couldn't defy the weather's fury so we had to give in and come home.

The weather isn't going to let-up for the next two weeks but, regardless, we're going to try again on Saturday.

The Hub [St.John's] near Edinburgh Castle - handheld while I was sliding down the hill


Stencil Grafitti down a lane [unfortunatley, I can't remember which one] - taken on my phone camera

Attempt at TTV!

Ok, so I didn't try very hard but I did try it, nonetheless.
I couldn't be bothered looking through all my cameras to find a suitable viewfinder so I just used my Centon SLR (and my Sony Alpha). I didn't even remove the yellow filter, how lazy is that?
But, really, I was just trying it out to see what the effect would be and this is what I got....



The difficult part (which I clearly didn't master) was trying to ensure both cameras were focused correctly!!!

Through the Viewfinder!!

I've got a new style of photograph that I really love. It's where you take a photo with one camera, where the lens of that camera is looking through the viewfinder of another.

I haven't actually tried it out yet, but here is how my People in the Fog photo would have looked had I done it that way. I love it!!!

Happy New Year!!!!

In my excitement of my last post I forgot to wish you all a very Happy New Year!

All the best for 2010!!!

Cheers!

Bokeh!

So I decided to try a little experiment with the bokeh effect on my photographs.
I've done this before and created some photographs that I quite liked but I was only messing around.
This time, whilst I worked hard to achieve certain results, it didn't turn out as I planned. I even tried to create special effects by using shape masks over my lens. I couldn't get the aperture/distance combination quite right and I think my shapes were actually a little bit too large for my purposes.

However, here is a log of my attempts. Hopefully I will have a much improved version soon.

Christmas Tree

Close up of Christmas Tree

Star and Heart Lens Masks