Summer's Disposable Photos

There's something about the images you get from those cheap disposable cameras. Perhaps it's the soft colours or the wonky angles that you get from squinting through the view finder. Maybe it's knowing you can't take 800 photos and pick the best one's later.

So it's become a bit of a ritual every summer to buy one of these disposables from Boots and use it up over the summer months. Come September I can't wait to get them developed and relive all those forgotten moments.

Georgina 

Looking... Really Looking

For my photography project I needed to look at crowds, strangers and big cities. So off I went to Waterloo station where I wandered around and snapped away, hoping no one would ask me to turn the camera off! My goal was to experiment with capturing the journeys strangers were experiencing around me, I thought I’d share my outcome.

I love this long exposure effect you can create using a really slow shutter speed, it seems to capture the movement and flow of the train station so well. 

I decided to make everything black and white partly because of the photographer that inspired this shoot, but also because it appears to remove some of the clutter that colour can bring to a photo. It lets the eye focus on lines and angles that make a photo. 

Looking back at the photos it amazes me how little I'd paid attention to the station when visiting previously; the clash of old architecture next to shiny new flat screens. 
Even the shot above seems to have something interesting about it. The sign is nothing special and yet it's signs & directions like this that are a crucial part of the journey through Waterloo station and beyond. 
Since this photography project is all about 'the journey', these thoughts should all hopefully lead somewhere. But outside of course work I'm going to try and appreciate the smaller details around me when I'm out and about. It might make unexciting travel that little more exciting. 

 Georgina 

Small Things \\ Food Landscapes

These last few weeks I've been chopping up fruit and veg to create mini little forests scenes. They were a little tricky to set up at times, but so fun to do!
The first shoot I did was using broccoli as trees and chopping up the stalks to create a little path that leads the eye through the image. I couldn't resist doing some little doodles on the last two images, using this awesome app called Paper 53 ( best one I've found for drawing on an iPad ).

I wasn't really sure what the plan was with this set of photos. I just knew I wanted to use some carrots with the fancy leaves still on. I ended up making these two weird and wacky scenes that I kinda ended up liking.

This last shoot was probably the most technical, I wanted to be a bit more ambitious so I decided to use loaves of bread as rolling hills instead of a plain studio floor. I liked the idea of doing a winter wonderland scene with lovely candy floss trees. I added the wall in, made out of Liquorice Allsorts, I like how it disappears off the first hill and reappears on the second.

One thing I didn't think through was that the candy floss sort of loses its fluffiness after a while and so by the time I'd built the wall and but all the icing sugar on, the candy floss had crystalised! Still, no biggy though, a bit of Photoshop came in handy.

There are still a heap more from this last shoot that I haven't edited yet - reshaping candy floss trees takes longer than expected! Maybe I'll do another post with the finished images? (can't miss out the nougat snowman!) 

I'll link the artists I used as inspiration here and here so you can see how the pros do it!

Georgina

3 Staple Camera Lenses

There's just something about buying and having a choice of camera lenses that appeals to me. The whole process of reading reviews of the best ones online to then switching between them myself, it's a very satisfying (and slightly pricey!) hobby. I thought I'd show you around my stash today, for any camera techie readers out there, or for someone that wants to dip in and try out. 

So to start with this is my beloved camera, a Nikon D5100 Digital SLR with flip screen - which comes in super handy, especially for any macro photography when you're down on the ground. In my opinion, lower budget Nikon cameras are much easier to navigate than a Canon for someone like me who learnt all the technical jazz after getting this camera. It's not that small, you could fit it in a backpack if you attached a smallish lens, but it's big enough to handle nicely and feel like a 'propah' camera. 

This Nikkor 18-105mm AF-S lens came with my camera and it's the one I stick to for landscapes or shots that don't need a small depth of field. I snapped a photo below so you can compare the type of image these lenses produce, you can see from this one that you can get a pretty wide angle shot without having to stand too far back from the subject. If you want to see what kind of shots it can take click here.  

This second lens, a Nikkor AF-S 50mm f1.8 is my newest addition and I honestly don't know how I survived without one! Great for taking photos of people and food, you can get a really small depth of field, so you achieve that lovely soft effect that looks professional and flattering in photos and videos. It's also pretty mini so great for days out when you want to keep things easy to carry. This photo above was taken from the same position as the previous lens, you can see how it's much more zoomed in than the wide-angle and has a much softer effect. You can click here and here if you want to see how this lens looks in video. 

This is the Sigma 105mm macro f2.8 lens, my final and most treasured lens. Gorgeous for when you want a sharp and detailed image of anything really small. The photo above doesn't do it any justice, but it lets you see how zoomed in the image is when the camera is in the same position as previously. If you want to see what kind of shots it can take I'll link some here, here and here.  

Hopefully this was helpful or just interesting to read, I do love a good techie chat from time to time. Any staple lenses you want to share? I'd love to hear. 
Georgina

Dabbling In Bulb Photography

Bulb photography is something that has always had me a little bit amazed. For anyone that doesn't know, it's when you fiddle with the shutter speed (making it say 30seconds long) and using a torch to draw shapes in the air. It's something I've always wanted to try but it's not often you find yourself in a field at night. So this summer when I was camping with a couple of friends I found myself rigging up a tripod and fiddling with the camera settings for a little taster session.

We did lots of 'taster shots' at the beginning aka an excuse to go crazy and make zigzag shapes all over the place. Then with the right settings and camera position in place we could get a little bit more creative. 

The idea in this shot above was to create three silhouettes all layered on top of each other, to make it look like someone was stepping upwards. I think we were a little ambitious but it kinda worked!

In the next three photos we tried to write '2015' in the air, sounds simple but then it dawned on us that 'oh wait, we have to write these numbers backwards'. It took a few shots, the suspense when you're waiting for the photo to load was intense, sometimes we really couldn't tell whether we were drawing the number the right way round! 

 None of these photos are perfect, and being a slight perfectionist I'd love to spend a few solid hours getting some shots just right. But it was so much fun, we ended up having one person hold down the 'photo taking' button so we didn't have a set time to draw - because 30seconds just wasn't long enough! The whole rushing to the camera to check how the photo turned out was super fun and meant a lot of gallivanting across the field!
If I ever happen to be somewhere dark and spacious again with tripod and camera in hand ( you never know ) I think shoot two will have to happen. 
Georgina 

Small Things \\ Water Droplets

There's something about drops of water on plants that has me fascinated - slightly weird? Probably! Typically I think of dew early in the morning for these kind of photos but, some typical English showers just before sunset a few days ago allowed me to grab my lens and head out to the fields near my house. For a little crouching-in-grass-and-looking-slightly-crazed session! The lighting was perfect and with my beloved macro lens I was able to get some pretty nice shots. 

When I was editing these I was zooming in on all the droplets and seeing if my camera lens had been reflected in any of them.. I think that's asking a little too much! Perhaps another shoot like this soon, I can't seem to get enough.
Georgina