Hen Borth

 

Just one picture today, it is an image I have worked on this afternoon, trying hard to get it right.

I collected these pebbles from the beach at Hen Borth in Anglesey and originally I photographed them in the boot of my car while I was camping nearby on Friday night. I took the original photo using my mobile phone and I thought it looked really cool. I wanted to print it and hang it on  my wall but no matter how I cropped it or tried to resize it I couldn't get it to fit properly. It was so frustrating and after a while I had to give up. 

That's when I decided to recreate the image, this time using my DSLR and framing the stones a little better. I had to clean out the boot of the car from some of the dirt and grass left over from the camping trip and then referring to the original picture on my phone I organised the stones as closely as possible to how they were first time round, I took three shots using different settings and then selected this one. I had to do some spot removal in lightroom to tidy up the image. I then adjusted the shadows and brought out the blue tones to match with the colour theme of the other pictures this will hang with. I am really pleased with the result and I hope you will agree this picture is a real winner and so worth the effort I went through to create it. It is definitely too good not to share!

A little Christmas Cheer

 

Doesn't time fly! It is a month since I last posted anything and although I have had ideas of things to share I haven't really got round to doing anything until today.

A couple of years ago I tried a technique to create some interesting bokeh with the Christmas lights, I thought it was fun and quite effective but then I never did anything else with it, the lights got packed away and that was the end of that.

I had hoped to do more this year and post something in time for Christmas day but my first efforts were to be honest quite pathetic and I put my camera aside until I had a little more time to practice and figure out where I had gone wrong.

I have two lots of pictures to share; today I have some festive shots of Santa with a heart shaped bokeh and tomorrow I will have some other images with a different effect so if you like these then please look out tomorrow.

The first two shots today are of a Royal Doulton Toby Jug that I absolutely love, it comes out every year and has so many memories attached to it, it is a real treasure.

Pictures 3 and 4 are of two ornaments that sit on top of the mantlepiece, legs dangling overlooking the room, they also bring lovely memories, reminders of Christmases past.

I have enjoyed creating these images today and although they come a little late hopefully they help retain some festive cheer as the year comes to an end.

Creative with Cordial

So although I have several more cool images from this lockdown photo shoot these are the last ones I will share, for now at least.

After quite some time practising with positioning, lighting and shutter speeds I was really pleased to get some nice sharp droplets as in my posts from the last few days I went on to add a drop of colour to see what different effects I could achieve. 

I said yesterday that I used a mystery substance but there is nothing really mysterious about it, it is Vimto a sweet cordial. I had no idea whether it would work but I am really very happy with the results.

I went on to experiment with food colouring but it didn't work very well, it was perhaps too concentrated and dispersed quickly in the water so I think something thick and sticky like Vimto keeps its integrity longer.

In future I might try with different coloured syrups or even different coloured reservoirs  using juices or even milk so watch out. This lockdown period could bring out even more creativity.

Driftwood Sculpture

A while ago I posted a shot of a miniature stone henge made from tiny bits of driftwood created on a short stop off at Neys Provincial Park. Today's post is of another piece of driftwood art, this one was created by my daughter. I had to get right down to ground level to get the perspective right and I think that with my daughters' creative skills and my photographer's eye this makes a great shot.