Fixed Focal Length

So far I haven't posted the exercises for my evening photoclass in any particular order, something I'll rectify in future - you may have read some of my previous posts on some of the other exercises in the last couple of weeks. So for now, its back to the initial exercise for this post - "Fixed Focal Length". Most of us in the class (me included) were using a variety of lenses where the photographer can vary the focal length, raher than using a prime lens. The idea of this exercise was to set the lens at one focal length and stick with that same length for the entire shoot.- you may walk backwards or forwards if you have to, or even choose compostions which work ....

Anyways I put a 70-210mm on my camera and headed for nearby Richmond with the idea of taking some pictures along the Thames riverfront. When I got there I set the focal length of the lens to 85 mm.. Unfortunately for me the light was poor and flat that day and so, while I took many pictures, the results when looking at the screen on the back of the camera looked uninteresting. They can often look better on a larger computer screen later but I wasn't optimistic. And walking backwards and forwards isn't necessarily a good idea beside a river, or in some cases possible !

I like picture with bold (often primary) colours, and some colour in a side street leading away from the river caught my attention - a large fence painted mainly bright yellow but also with some red.  So the pictures just taken of the riverside were quickly forgotten, in favour of these -

All the pictures were taken with the lens at 85 mm, and its relatively easy to walk to and fro in a side street, dodging the occasional van or bicycle.

The results, whilst not brilliant. I seen and done a lot worse. Preferred my texture pictures, in the previous post.  There are some texture to be seen here, which better (side) lighting would have brought out. I'll go back there again when the light is better, and if the fence is still coloured, I''ll re-shoot.

I had these pictures here (amongst others) printed (6" by 4" size) by Tesco by their in-store one hour photo service, in order to show the prints in class. What a waste, am not sure if I'll use them again . They don't seem to know the difference between Yellow and Orange, the delivered prints were distinctly ORANGE.

Night time - downtown Twickenham

Our evening photoclass took time out of the class room the other week. Now that winter is on its way, it is dark by the time we get to class, an ideal opportunity to try out our tripods and long exposures with some night time photography in this case nearby Twickenham. I'm sure Twickenham has many attributes, but a vibrant night life is not up there amongst them - at least outside of match days at the rugby stadium - and there was no match on the day of our visit. Having said that we were not looking for reportage type photographs, and the object of the exercise was tripods/long exposure and not using flash.

 

I had been concerned about getting the correct colour balance, and set the camera to auto for this shoot, put the camera through its paces and set hoe it handled the conditions - street lights, traffic and moon; after all this was supposed to be a learning experience not a professional shoot nor a hunt for potential competition winners. Anyways - what ever about the subsequent pictures turned out to be, the initial shots of some street side (eg Heath Road, above) was acceptable. As you can see from the other pictures we ended up beside the river Thames for the remainder of the evening.  Even late in  the evening, the local airport Heathrow makes its presence felt - the long exposures used captures the aircraft coming into land as trails of light - as can be seen in the third and last pictures. And of course the long exposures mean that moving people (also the some of the local bird population, do they ever sleep ?) become blured.

Didn't capture any potential prize winners, or exhibition pictures, but then I wasn't expecting to. A useful exercise, one which I'd plan on doing again..

Self-Portrait

Another exercise for my BTEC evening photography was Portrait. That's fine I thought, I'll bring in some from my recent trip to the Notting Hill Carnival, this year, when I concentrated mainly on "street" portraits, as distinct from the Carnival as an event. No such luck for this exercise, the catch was the portraits had to be self-portraits.

Hmmm, don't want to put my face up here.

Winter hadn't quite arrived here in London just yet, there were still some sunny days around, and I'd been developing some ideas for the last few months - photographically - I'd been making images of people and their shadows. You can read my previous post on these pictures here. Anyways, I thought I'd make use of the sunny days (while they were still available !) and combine the self-portrait exercise with the shadow idea ... and here are some of the results ...

 The photographs were taken on 3 different days and at 4 different locations. I'm not sure I like the results, especially the 3rd and 4th in the sequence - I was very concious of the patterns made by the different coloured paving stones and was looking to make a pleasing composition. Think I prefer the other shadow pictures taken previously, they've got more mood.