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 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

Thanks godaddy… both mysql database instances failed and they lost my last post. So, here it is again. So much for redundant services! We got a nice little message saying:

“We are sorry to report a portion of your data base may have been impacted by the failure of a primary and secondary MySql database server.
Our server support teams worked quickly to minimize any customer impact and there were no interruptions in hosting uptime.”

Great… except they broke the cardinal rule, which is maintaining data integrity!  Never mind. Anyway, here is the picture again.

On Tuesday night Kheng and I decided to head out and do some photo’s. We didn’t really have anything in mind, we just wanted to get out and shoot some landscape type shots. Well, I guess these are more urban and cityscape, rather than landscape.

Here are some pictures taken from my dry hotel room, it seemed to rain constantly for two days whilst I was in Sydney. Unfortunately my visit to Sydney didn’t lend it self for me to get out and about to do any photography, however I did some quick pictures late one night from my hotel room, on the 26th floor.

This picture was taken hand held from the 26th floor, with a Nikon 18-105 VR, ISO 2500, f/5.6, 1/15th.

This image was taken with the camera sitting on the window sill, ISO 200, f/8, 13 seconds

Matt, Kheng and I popped out today quickly at lunch to take a quick photo of an old shop in Osbourne Park. Was a little difficult to get close too, as it is all fenced off. The light was pretty harsh at lunch time today, so I wasn’t expecting to come away with anything useful. However I have an image to post. The image started out as a HDR, but then turned into the B&W… probably didn’t need to do the HDR Anyway, it took on a life of it’s own once loaded into PS.

Last Sunday we went for a wander around Star Swamp and took this shot of Amelie wandering a head. I quite like the contrast in colours and the shallow depth of field.

105mm Macro, f/2.8, 1/640, ISO200

The next picture is just for some fun. I liked the detail in the bark and the contrast of the ridges. Anyway… gotta have some fun.

105mm Macro, f/3.5, 1/640, ISO200

I was looking though some older pictures and came across some pictures from the Maldives which I thought I would post. The first makes it all look a bit miserable, but even when it’s raining, the place is still lovely. The second picture is the jetty leading to the spa treatments at the Hilton. If you haven’t visited the Maldives, best to get in quick whilst they are still here.

Here’s an image I took a few years back whilst sailing around the Whitsunday’s on a 54 foot timber Schooner, called the Schooner Friendship. I thought I would use the original image as a test image to try out some post-processing based on a technique from Christian Fletcher.

What a lovely day in Perth! This morning the family and I headed to Star Swamp… doesn’t sound too attractive, which is probably why it has taken us 5 years to get around to going there, even though I drive past it twice a day! But what a pleasant surprise it was. It’s like a little National Park in the suburbs! I took the camera along and took some snaps. I had my father in-laws macro with me (thanks Brian), and decided to have a go at shooting some flowers… but the bees kept getting in the way