Graham Leggate

I haven’t posted anything new for a couple of weeks. Life has been rather busy lately, especially since I had a little health issue which needed a small operation to fix. So I have been off my feet for the last 4 days, which has given me some time to post-process some pictures and have a good look at Aperture 3. My first impressions of Aperture 3 is, I’m really impressed. The control you now have with editing files in a non-destructive way is so much better and more advanced. I really like the Quick Brushes, they give you great control to wield magical digital editing in places that need it. Library management and labelling is heaps better and gives you greater flexibility to categorise images. I think that most edits can now safely be done in A3 without needing to flick over to PS. Now we just need the guys from Nik Software and Imagenomic to update their plugins to be 64-bit and I will be one happy camper.

Anyway, there’s plenty of Aperture 3 reviews around, best way is to download it and give it a whirl. Below are some pictures I have done recently. Most of them are some kiddies portraits and one is from a wedding we shot recently. All of these images have been processed the Aperture 3. I am Really loving this app.

So, we had the opportunity to enter 3 pictures for the chance to win a $600 Manfrotto tripod from Team Digital. So here’s my 3 entries. No blue skies, blue water and white sand from me… mainly because most of mine were a bit boring. I think the plan is that Christian will post the top 15 entries on his blog, and then it’s up to the public to post a comment for their favourite.

For Australia Day around 100 photographers gathered together on the awsome True North to listen to some fantastic photographers. We had a couple of hours on Rotto, the light was pretty harsh. I’m still doing some post processing and stitching, so hopefully I might get some pics up in the next day or two. In any case whilst walking back from town I came across the following scene which I think was worth wasting a digital frame to see what I could make of it later. Anyway, here’s a shot taken as the sun was getting low of a couple walking after doing some shopping.

Some simple post processing, adjusted the levels a little, add some more haze, applied a sepia tone layer, that’s pretty much about it

Not much to say really… it’s a flower, a swan river daisy, I think. I quite like the bold purple against the green leaves.

This is post is actually for some friends who are in HK at the moment, on yet another holiday! (yes, I am jealous!) I have been busy trying to get my photo library back in order after I magically ended up duplicating around 7000 images which resulted in a library which was a bit of a mess! Anyway, whilst sorting the library out, I came across from pictures from HK from 2002. So I thought I would post a few travel street/life photo’s to give my friends some inspiration to capture some candids.

The weather has pushed us all seaside I think, or at least to the pool. Mind you our pool has been around 30 degrees… lovely. We went for a drive up to Guilderton a few days ago, just to have a look to see if it’s a worthy close to home holiday destination. The answer to that is ‘yes’. The beaches are lovely, the mouth of Moore River is really nice, and very kid friendly. Amelie had a ball playing in the shallow water chasing the fish. Anyway, the picture below is a quick holiday snap taken from the look out over the river mouth.

ISO200, f/11, 1/400th

No new landscapes… just a quick portrait of James, who turn 6 months old on Saturday.

For those who might be interested. The setup to do this type of shot is pretty straight forward. This was shot using the D90 with an 18-105, at around 48mm, f/5.0, 1/800 at ISO 1000, I was also shooting using spot metering. The photo was taken on the dining room floor, which has a pair of glass doors facing north west, so shooting in the afternoon is preferable. I use a black sheet as the back drop, which is draped and clamped to the back of the dining room chairs. I have a trusty reflector on hand to help get rid of any hard shadows, fire off a few shots… and hey presto you have some portraits… well nearly. Work a little digital dark room magic, get the blacks black, increase the colour saturation a little, get the skin softer and sharpen a few features, then you are ready to print.

A few weeks back when we were holidaying down south in Capel, I took a few photo’s of some bales of hay in the paddocks. None of the images really turned out… I’ll blame the light  :) Tonight I thought I would try to rescue at least one of them. Not sure if this would be classed as rescued, but hopefully it’s not total rubbish, but it could be, I’ll leave you to judge for your self!

Another family post. It’s that time of the year when things start to get exciting with the anticipation that Santa is going to visit those of us who have been good Today at Amelies’ day care they had a special visitor, who put a huge smile on Amelies’ face… and James’s too.

I thought I would post a couple of pictures of the little ones, since I don’t have any landscapes to post. Plus I’m sure the family in the UK would like to see some pics of Amelie in the pool and James at bath time