Graham Leggate

Love the museums in London. Below is a HDR taken by balancing the camera on some stair railings. For this type of shot a wide angel lens would have been great. In any case here is my effort with a 24-70 (Nikon f/2.8) on a cropped sensor body (Nikon D90).

I eventually got around to editing a HDR Panoramic version of the National Centre for the Performing Arts. What a fantastic building!

We had a great time in Bali. Probably needed a few more days to unwind. But it served its purpose to have an Easter break and test flying with James and Amelie. We are now that little bit more prepared for the Dubia -> Venice -> London -> Prague trip. I did’t get the DSLR out as much as I would have hoped. I ended up taking more videos and snaps on the iPhone then I would have initially thought I ever would. I think 2 things really kept the SLR back at the hotel:

1. Size & weight of carrying it around. Call me slack! But when its so humid you really feel like travelling as light as possible, especially with two kids.
2. Humidity. Every time you take it out of the A/C’d room it would take around 1 hour for the lens to clear up.

Not to say I didn’t use it, because I did. But not as often. Anyway, I was feeling artistic, so I did an alternative edit to the previous image. I was curious to see how editable iPhone photo’s are. I guess my conclusion is… they are as good as a normal jpeg, nothing great, and noise is really apparent, which is no surprise. I think the image cleaned up OK with the help of Noise Ninja.

What a great view, just a shame it’s not from our hotel this was taken from The Westin.

It has been another long break between posts. Oh well, you get that when life is busy. Hopefully there should be some new contant over the next few months as we have booked a couple of holidays. In the mean time, here are some shots of the kids for the family taken over the weekend. All shot using a Nikon D90 and 50mm f/1.8.  A gold/white reflector was used to help with filling some shadows with all of the shots, they were all taken indoors with an aperture of f/1.8 – f/4 with ISO 800.

Last Sunday we were at a 3 year olds birthday party in a park. I was helping our daughter in the toilet, when I had my biggest camera accident to date. I bent over and the camera strap slipped off my shoulder sending my Nikon D90 and Nikon 24-70 f/2.8 lens first in to the tiled concrete floor! It felt as if the camera travelled in slow motion, yet there was nothing I could do to stop it. The sound of the lens hitting the ground was defining. I felt sick as I looked down to see bits of broken plastic on the floor Ami looked at me and looked at the bits of plastic on the floor and said to me, “daddy, your camera broke, don’t worry you can use mummy’s”. Thankfully I had the lens hood on, and it took most of the damaging force. Anyway, lesson learnt… get a new camera strap. So with out further ado, I would like to introduce the Black Rapid R-Strap, RS-7. What a great feeling strap, I’m looking forward to many long hours of shooting with it. My gear feels safe, light and comfortable. Check out blackrapid.com to see the range of straps.

A blog post for the family in the U.K. Some pictures of Amelie and James. The first two images were shot at the weekend around a friends place. Amelie was having fun jumping on the trampoline whilst James was keeping us busy exploring anything he could reach. Both were taken on the Nikon D90 with the lovely Nikon 24-70 f/2.8.

Amelie Jumping

James - 18 Months, trying to keep out of trouble

Environmental Portrait of James, if he was homeless

This picture of James was floating around in my Aperture library. Taken using the Nikon D90 and a Nikon 50mm f/1.8.  When I saw James with dirty finger nails, I thought there is only one treatment for this image. So I did some work on it to give him a grubby homeless appearance. Love him heaps, look at that face, how could you not

Not sure why I did this… but I did. Done as a bit of a laugh for my own amusement, but I’m sharing it. Easy shot; camera set on a tripod, fire off 3 frames, and for each frame move the model, then overlay the three images in CS and apply a mask to rub in/rub out the bits you want.

Multiplicity

I thought I would share with the rest of the blogging community some of the photography podcasts I listen too. I like listening to the podcasts as it gives you some different business ideas and technique tips and tricks. All of these podcasts are available from itunes, I typically listen to the podcasts in the car when I’m out and about.

So, my favourites are:

1. GoingPro
2. Photofocus
3. This Week in Photography (TWIP)
4. For Wedding Photographers
5. Pro Photography Show
6. Photography Monthly
7. Nik Radio
8. Nikonians Podcasts
9. The Digital Photo Experience
10. The Typical Shutterbug
11. Lastolite School of Photography (Video Podcast)

For anybody starting a photography business, there used to be a pretty good podcast called, “The Pro Business Forum”. Aric Hoek, who is the guy who produced them, stopped after 8 episodes, however they are still worth listening too.

I also subscibe to some others, including; Chase Jarvis, LensFlare35, Lightsource Studios, Photo Couch, PAPA – A Wedding & Portrait Podcast, Meet the Masters, Martin Bailey Photography, etc. But to be honest I’m not in the car long enough to listen to them all

Anyway, if anybody else has any recommendations, leave a comment.

Thanks.

It's a buzz

I was hunting around my Aperture library looking for something and I came across this image, which was taken a few weeks back in Araluen. It stood out because of the flower being alone in the Sun. I quite like the image, nice clean and simple