Photographing A Full Moon

Photographing the moon is something I have never done before, so on a very clear crisp evening I ventured out with my camera, 100-400mm lens and 2x extender mounted on a tripod. It's surprising just how bright the moon really is as I soon found out when I shot the first image at 1/160 second on f11 at ISO 400. Previous attempts to capture the subtle gradations on the moons surface failed with overexposure including 1/50 second and 1/80 second. However, this is not to say that using slightly longer exposures cannot give pleasing results. The second image you see here (shot on a separate evening) with the moon more bleached out, out of focus behind the spiked branches blurred from the breeze, combined with an exposure of 1/2 second, offers enough light to highlight the foreground detail, whilst giving the impression of movement but the downside is that the moons detail is lost which is why I chose an aperture of f8 to keep the depth of field relatively shallow.

Goldfinch Pays A Visit

I was very excited to see a new visitor to my garden last week in the form of a beautiful Goldfinch, who didn't stick around for long but just long enough for me to grab my camera and take his picture. This is a very pretty bird with bright orange on its head and vivid golden yellow on its wings, I am assuming that it's natural food source is becoming more scarce as winter draws in and so the Goldfinches will be more frequent visitors to the bird feeders.

I have really gotten in to bird photography recently, it's something I had never done previously so when I bought my new digital SLR I bought a decent zoom lens too so that I could get as close as possible to these tiny garden birds.

Paris 12th-15th Nov 2008

The trip to Paris was a huge success and great fun, and although there wasn't much time for photographing this wonderful city there certainly was a lot of photography and art on display for us to enjoy. Highlights for me include my first visit to Paris Photo at the Louvre which was so vast that I didn't even see everything, talk about image overload but it was well worth it. James Casebere at the Galerie Daniel Templon was amazing and highly recommended as it is on until December 31st, and Shirana Shahbazi at the Centre Culturel Suisse was also very inspiring.

This is a handheld night time shot from my hotel window looking east across northern Paris, bumping up the ISO and setting the camera to 'anti-shake' mode helped me maintain a sharp image. I didn't take my digital SLR along with me for several reasons, this was shot on a Nikon P5100 compact camera. Notre Dame at night is also handheld and the camera handled it pretty well, there is a certain amount of noise due to the high ISO but considering I didn't have an SLR or a tripod I'm pretty pleased with these shots.

A really useful leaflet I found in one of the small galleries is called 'Galeries Mode D'Emploi' and lists dozens of small independent galleries and exhibitions, the link to the website is www.fondation-entreprise-ricard.com or click here.

Photographing Paris & Eiffel Tower At Night

Well I'm off to Paris for a short break, although this time around I'm one of seven members of staff accompanying a group of sixty four students which should be fun. I have visited Paris three times before and absolutely loved it, and on previous visits I have taken many photographs of this fantastic city, though this time I'm not sure I'll have that much time to myself to snap away.

One of the most photographed landmarks in the world, the Eiffel Tower, dominates the skyline from most parts of the city and is a huge tourist attraction, so it can be difficult to find a good spot to photograph it without people walking across in front of the camera, particularly at night. I persevered when I took these night photographs back in 2007 and managed to successfully take three or four long exposures and here are some of the results. In the first image I wanted to include the tower but make it a small part of the scene in which I have tried to capture a small slice of the hustle and bustle that surrounds this attraction even at night, and I like how the fountains soften the harsh street lighting with the blurring that has occurred due to the long exposure.

With the second image I wanted to try and do something a little different and so I chose to include one of the magnificent sculptures in the foreground, and this one of a bulls head grabbed my attention. Once again the running water appears soft against the imposing lit tower that contrasts greatly against the dark blue sky.

Brighton Photo Fringe Photography Exhibition 2008

These images show my photography exhibition as part of the Brighton Photo Fringe, I am pleased to say that all went well and I was happy with the way my work looked in the space. This series is entitled 'Night' and although I only exhibited a selection of images from the larger series, I feel that these images work well together as a four. The following statement is the text that accompanies the images.

"This series is based on the idea that the beauty in the landscape around us is very different at night than it is in the light of day. Having photographed sunsets, rolling hills and dramatic cloudy skies I began to question whether we only really see our surroundings when the sun is shining; when darkness falls do we react differently to what we see in front of us?

These images where shot in the suburbs of Brighton close to where I live, areas that I often see on my way home or from the car window. Just as the appearance of our landscapes changes gradually over time throughout the seasons, what we see every day is determined by the time of day and the weather. So I began to take note of how these elements affected how I perceived the same scenes I pass almost daily.

By this time the leaves had fallen and winter had moved in and I was able to capture the huge variety of shapes formed by the trees and the light they filter through their branches. I started to explore the idea of beauty at night including many man made elements, mainly artificial lighting from street lamps and car headlights, combined with the often eerie beauty of the natural landscape that transforms itself at night when its shape, form and scale change from the way we see it during daylight hours. When the sun has gone down what we see before us is a fusion of natural and man made elements. My photographs portray a world that is easy to pass by without being appreciated, transforming mundane structures such as masts and posts into striking silhouettes, often reducing intricate objects like trees to masses of shapes and rely entirely on artificial lighting that acts very differently to natural light."

Photography Exhibition

As part of the Brighton Photo Fringe I have an exhibition entitled 'Night' showing part of a series of suburban night landscapes shot on the outskirts of Brighton. As far as I know this will run from today (Friday 17th October) until Sunday 26th October, with my work showing in one of several rooms on the 2nd Floor, One Grand Parade, Brighton. If you haven't had a chance to see any of the dozens and dozens of exhibitions running throughout the festival I highly recommend you see some as there is some excellent work on display. For more information and exhibition listings check out the Brighton Photo Fringe website.