Thursday, December 20, 2007

Merry Christmas

After putting the tree up at home tonight, I put the tripod up. I've been pushing my luck a bit recently in low light, and after looking at some of Tony's night-time work, http://tonysphotodiary.blogspot.com/ , it's time to get back to the proper discipline of long exposures off a steady base.

The candle in the window is a shot for a calendar we’ve been working on for a while and was specifically requested, while the tree picture is a variation on one I saw by another photographer in the past couple of days. I was very impressed by his shot – the very shallow depth of field and the beautiful creamy circular bokeh (the out of focus area of the picture). You can see it on http://onepicaday.blogspot.com/2007/12/day-6923-tue-18-december-2007.html

I was wondering how he'd achieved that look until I read that he uses the beautiful Leica M8 (RRP in Ireland c€5k) with an incredibly fast f1.0 lens. If that doesn’t mean much to you, take my word for it that it gets us photo-types very excited. So as I couldn't match that, I did the complete opposite and shot at f22 with a 30 second exposure at iso100.

2 comments:

Suzanne said...

STUNNING.

XO Suzanne from CA

Anonymous said...

John.
Thanks for the plug on this page. Love the idea with the low-light, close-up christmas tree shots. They would make great cards. You are right of course regarding cutting down on Photoshop work. I use tri-pod and filters in virtually all landscape shots. Im afraid I did cheat a bit in the cottage shot though - I had to add a bit of red to the reflection at the bottom and adjust the curve, but that was it. I got a new infra-red a few weeks ago and I'm dying to try it out over the Christmas. If you have any tips for infra-red I'd be grateful? Im going to go out with Sean for a morning in the coming weeks for some informal landscape shots, it would be great if you could join us, flask and sandwiches on top of some mountain in the area perhaps?
Finally, I would like to add a link to your blog from mine if thats ok? Let me know. Will be in touch.
Tony.