Hi All,
I don't know what it's been like where you are but here in Derby it'd been pretty cold for the last few days. Yesterday (Saturday) we had a lot of snow and that continued into today. On Saturday evening the temperature dropped down below zero causing ice to form then the snow came again on top of the ice. It was bitterly cold in the wind but the weird weather did have some interesting side effects. The excess water caused by the snow melted slightly before re-freezing causing some interesting icicles to form.
Whilst I was sat having a lazy Sunday afternoon I happened to notice that icicles had formed on the Red Robin tree outside my front window. I couldn't resist grabbing the camera and snapping a few shots.
I took these very quickly using my 50mm Sigma Macro lens on ISO 100.
They're not too bad for quick snaps !!
Hi All,
One of things that causes me a lot of confusion in digital photography is aspect ratios and standard print sizes. I'm sure that for a lot of people out there this particular subject doesn't cause them a problem but, sadly for me, it does.
My D300S sensor is a 2:3 aspect ratio so if I want to send one of my images for printing which standard size paper can I print to without getting the image cropped ?
Most printers print at A4 and a lot of photo paper manufacturers make paper to fit the A4 printer. However an image generated by a 2:3 sensor doesn't fit exactly on an A4 sheet therefore I can either print the image smaller than A4 or risk losing some of the image if I print to fit A4.
Trying to visualise how much will get lost is almost as big a problem as trying to work out the ratios in the first place.
Thankfully my son Ben is, unlike his dad, a bit of a whizz when it comes to maths and ratios. So after some long discussions and a lot of patience on his part I finally got me head around sizes and ratios. My problem is that I tend to forget very easily.
So in a slack moment (very rare at this location let me tell you!) I decided to create an image in Photoshop that, when printed on an A4 sheet would give the viewer (me) an instant idea of what would fit to what.
The images is below and if you save it to your hard drive and print it to an A4 printer you may also find the visual reference useful.
Please feel free to give it a go. Apologies if it doesn't work on your printer.
Hi All,
Back in November I took a trip across to the National Arboretum over in Alrewas near Burton-on-Trent. It was a particularly dull day but I tried to make the best of it although the lighting was bad all day.
There was a heck of a lot to photograph and in the end I took over 100 images. The images are available to view on my main website at www.carrington-imagery.co.uk.
I'd arrived a few days after armistice day so there were lots of poppy wreaths around but the wreath on the image below struck me as particularly striking. The monument was in battleship grey and the poppy wreath stood out so boldly even in the dull light.
When I got the image in the home and into the computer I noticed that it didn't stand out as much as I'd remembered it on the day.
I tried various ways to try to make it as I remembered it and then it struck me that if I converted it to monochrome and then colour popped the poppy wreath then maybe that would go some way towards making it appear correct.
I converted the image to monochrome in Nik Soft Silver EFEX Pro then used Photoshop CS6 to carefully mask the background so that I could paint in the colour of the poppy's.
The result is as you see below.
I'm really happy with it. It still retains a little of the dullness of the overall light and also of the battleship grey but at the same time the poppy's come crashing through.
