Archive for March, 2009

Tree Amongst the Circus

Tuesday, March 17th, 2009
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Tree Amongst the Circus, originally uploaded by AJHosgood.

This isn’t a favourite photo of mine, but it has also been selected for use in an online brochure.

It’s the view from inside the Circus in Bath. I had missed the sunniest part of the day and it was starting to go dark. I’m not too happy with the colour, the HDR hasn’t worked all that well, the light smoothing is all wrong and there are too many cars in the shot to cause distraction. Still, all these little niggles together make this a less-than-normal shot.

Canon EOS 40D
Canon EF-S 17-85mm f/4-5.6 IS
17mm @ f/7.1, ISO 400
-2ev, 0ev, +2ev

Haldon Woods Photoshoot

Monday, March 16th, 2009
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Haldon Woods 1, originally uploaded by AJHosgood.

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Haldon Woods 2, originally uploaded by AJHosgood.

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Haldon Woods 3, originally uploaded by AJHosgood.

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Haldon Woods 4, originally uploaded by AJHosgood.

It was a lovely sunny Sunday afternoon…and I was asleep. However, I agreed to meet a mate, Chris at Haldon Woods near Exeter for a little freeride, downhill and photography. I got there just before 1 in the afternoon and it was a glorious day. The ground was dry and the trees kept most of the heat off us. I hadn’t ridden all winter, but despite this I wanted to get out on my steed and get the adrenaline rush that I needed. I also wanted a few more biking shots to help pad out my photography portfolio.

These are 4 of the best shots from the day out of the 180 that were taken. This was the ideal time to try out my new Canon Speedlite 580 EX MkII. Unfortunately because it was so dark in the woods (especially for an f/4-5.6 lens!), the flash wanted to blow out everything to white so I had to change it to manual power, as stopping it down didn’t seem to work. It would have been useful to have a sto-fen, but I haven’t yet bothered to buy one. However, the difficult light and my changing of position allowed me to really experiment with the 580s settings, including high-speed sync, rear curtain and stroboptic. I also got a chance to process them with the (not-so) new Lightroom 2 and garnish them with my new(ly designed) initials!

I managed to borrow a wide-angle lens for the day, as I knew I’d need to catch as much as I could from as close as possible. The Sigma 10-20mm, although cheap compared to some lenses of the same focal length handled a treat and I would highly recommend it to anyone looking for a cheap(ish) wide-angle.

All-in-all it was a fantastic day and we got to meet a wealth of like-minded people and have a good old thrash at some classic singletrack. I <3 Haldon!

Haldon Woods 1
Canon EOS 40D
Sigma 10-20mm f/4-5.6 EX DC
10mm for 1/160 @ f/4, ISO 1250

Haldon Woods 2
Canon EOS 40D
Sigma 10-20mm f/4-5.6 EX DC
10mm for 1/100 @ f/4, ISO 1000

Haldon Woods 3
Canon EOS 40D
Sigma 10-20mm f/4-5.6 EX DC
10mm for 1/160 @ f/4, ISO 640

Haldon Woods 4
Canon EOS 40D
Sigma 10-20mm f/4-5.6 EX DC
10mm for 1/250 @ f/4, ISO 800

Hasselblad Model

Saturday, March 14th, 2009
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Focus on model 1, originally uploaded by AJHosgood.

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Focus on model 2, originally uploaded by AJHosgood.

These 2 shots were taken at Focusing on Imaging 2009 at the Hasselblad stand. They had hired a professional model to pose all day so that people could go over and have a proper play with the Hasselblad HDIII-51 or whichever model it was! They had set up studio lighting and left the front of the stand open that that anyone walking past could take a photo.

The model really knew how to pose and I think these are 2 really great shots. I can’t wait until next year!

Focus on model 1
Canon EOS 40D
Canon EF-S 17-85mm f/4-5.6 IS
85mm for 1/60 @ f/5.6, ISO 100

Focus on model 2
Canon EOS 40D
Canon EF-S 17-85mm f/4-5.6 IS
85mm for 1/80 @ f/5.6, ISO 160

Big and Lil' Fiat

Saturday, March 14th, 2009
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Big Fiat, originally uploaded by AJHosgood.

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Lil’ Fiat, originally uploaded by AJHosgood.

These HDR composites were a little tricky with no tripod, so instead I broke out the ingenuity that I had locked up deep inside and used the ground.

Whilst walking along the docks in Bristol, I came across this lovely little classic Fiat 500 in a gorgeous (or garish, depending on your taste!) yellow. I figured that the bright yellow and the contrasting bright blue sky owned itself to an HDR effect, so I took these 2 stunning shots. It also shows a huge difference in how you compose your shot, as both were only taken within a few feet of each other.

It seems HDR really pops when you use a wide-angle lens and I hope to be doing more like this in the future.

Big Fiat
Canon EOS 40D
Sigma 10-20mm f/4-5.6 EX DC
12mm @ f/11, ISO 200
-2ev, 0ev, +2ev

Lil’ Fiat
Canon EOS 40D
Sigma 10-20mm f/4-5.6 EX DC
10mm @ f/11, ISO 200
-2ev, 0ev, +2ev

Design and Photography Quotes

Thursday, March 12th, 2009

Me

Some people have asked me about the quotes that appear at the top of my site. They are a collection of quotes that I have bundled together from different sources over the period of a few weeks. I find some of them very profound and close to truth and the rest are either useful or funny. So here they all are:

  • “Buying a Nikon doesn’t make you a photographer. It makes you a Nikon owner.” – Unknown
  • “Almost all quality improvement comes via simplification of design, manufacturing…layout, processes, and procedures.” – Tom Peters
  • “Every generation laughs at the old fashions, but follows religiously the new.” – Henry David Thoreau
  • “Colour does not add a pleasant quality to design – it reinforces it.” – Pierre Bonnard
  • “Design is the contrast of the core of limitations therefore there are no boundaries. It is simply an interpretation of creativity.” – Jenaiha Woods
  • “…said the blind man to the deaf dog.” – Matthew Campbell
  • “When you photograph people in colour you photograph their clothes. But when you photograph people in B&W, you photograph their souls.” – Ted Grant
  • “Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Design is knowing which ones to keep.” – Scott Adams
  • “Quality is remembered long after the price is forgotten.” – Gucci family motto
  • “Light is the language of the photographer.” – Unknown
  • “It is more important to click with people than to click the shutter.” – Alfred Eisenstaedt
  • “Knob on…” – Rupert Frankum
  • ” There are always two people in every picture: the photographer and the viewer.” – Ansel Adams
  • “No one should drive a hard bargain with an artist.” – Ludwig Van Beethoven
  • “Web users ultimately want to get at data quickly and easily. They don’t care as much about attractive sites and pretty design.” – Tim Berners-Lee
  • “Photography is simply painting with light.” – Unknown
  • “A purpose, an intention, a design, strikes everywhere even the careless, the most stupid thinker.” – David Hume
  • “The artist must create a spark before he can make a fire and before art is born, the artist must be ready to be consumed by the fire of his own creation.” – Auguste Rodin
  • “Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do and they will surprise you with their ingenuity.” – George Smith Patton
  • “It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.” – Henry David Thoreau
  • “Perhaps believing in good design is like believing in God, it makes you an optimist.” – Terence
  • “A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools.” – Douglas Adams
  • “To design is to communicate clearly by whatever means you can control or master.” – Milton Glaser
  • “A photograph is a secret about a secret. The more it tells you the less you know.” – Diane Arbus
  • “Reality leaves a lot to the imagination.” – John Lennon
  • “The conclusion of design flows naturally from the data; we should not shrink from it; we should embrace it and build on it.” – Michael Behe
  • “The distance between insanity and genius is measured only by success.” – Bruce Feirstein
  • “Good design keeps the user happy, the manufacturer in the black and the aesthete unoffended.” – Raymond Loewy
  • “If I could tell the story in words, I wouldn’t need to lug around a camera.” – Lewis Hine
  • “Dodging and burning are steps to take care of mistakes God made in establishing tonal relationships.” – Ansel Adams
  • “You don’t take a photograph, you make it.” – Ansel Adams
  • “Genius creates, and taste preserves. Taste is the good sense of genius; without taste, genius is only sublime folly.” – Chateaubriand
  • “Have no fear of perfection – you’ll never reach it.” – Salvador Dali
  • “An essential aspect of creativity is not being afraid to fail.” – Dr Edwin Land
  • “Great designers seldom make great advertising men, because they get overcome by the beauty of the picture – and forget that merchandise must be sold.” – James Randolph Adams
  • “Art has to move you and design does not, unless it’s a good design for a bus.” – David Hockney
  • “When your heart is in your dream, no request is too extreme.” – Jiminy Cricket
  • “Let your imagination release your imprisoned possibilities.” – Robert H. Schuller
  • “You don’t take a photograph. You ask, quietly, to borrow it.” – Unknown
  • “Ah good taste! What a dreadful thing! Taste is the enemy of creativeness.” – Pablo Picasso
  • “You can’t depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.” – Mark Twain
  • “We adore chaos because we love to produce order.” – M. C. Escher
  • ” In my opinion, no single design is apt to be optimal for everyone.” – Donald Norman
  • “I hate cameras. They are so much more sure than I am about everything.” – John Steinbeck
  • “I design my shots. I walk the rehearsal as the camera and say ‘this is where I want to be…I want this look.” – Debbie Allen
  • “A photograph is usually looked at – seldom looked into.” – Ansel Adams
  • “Good design begins with honesty, asks tough questions, comes from collaboration and from trusting your intuition.” – Freeman Thomas
  • “Limitations live only in our minds. But if we use our imaginations, our possibilities become limitless.” – Jamie Paolinetti
  • “The world just does not fit conveniently into the format of a 35mm camera.” – W. Eugene Smith
  • “Without art, the crudeness of reality would make the world unbearable.” – George Bernard Shaw
  • “Designers can create normalcy out of chaos; they can clearly communicate ideas through the organising and manipulating of words and pictures.” – Jeffery Veen
  • “It’s weird that photographers spend years or even a whole lifetime, trying to capture moments that added together, don’t even amount to a couple of hours.” – James Lalropui Keivom
  • “No place is boring, if you’ve had a good night’s sleep and have a pocket full of unexposed film.” – Robert Adams
  • “Ambitious, but rubbish!” – Jeremy Clarkson (Top Gear motto)
  • “In nature, light creates the colour. In the picture, colour creates the light.” – Hans Hofmann

I have more on the way, so watch this space!