This was taken on my first ever tweet-up in London on the last Saturday of November.  We met outside the Tate Modern before going on to Borough Market, but I have to admit to knowing nothing about London and I had no idea that the replica of the Golden Hinde was there.  I am not particularly interested in boats, but I did like the different lines criss-crossing the sky.  It isn’t framed well, but I couldn’t find a better way of cropping it.

Changing to Black and White makes up for the dull grey sky a little, although it is still a little mottled.  I took this on my EOS400D with the 50mm lens set on ISO200, f/5.6 which gave a shutter speed of 1/800secs.  (OK I admit it was just a fired off shot and that is why the shutter speed resulted in a need for a lot of fill light.)

This is an example of a photo that could have worked a lot better than it did.

This was taken inside the Palais des Papes, on the bright, sunny Monday.  I took it using my 50mm lens, 1/160secs, f/10, ISO100 (I told you that it was sunny!) and converted it into black and white in Lightroom.

When I go through my photos, one of the first things that I do is check that the pictures are sharp enough that I won’t be ashamed of them.  All I do is zoom in to 1:1 and look at the picture closely.  When I did this with the picture here I actually liked the texture on the stairs and so have also included an additional crop on this post.  Although the size is about the same, I think it emphasises the textures more and is more abstract.

I liked this just because the reflections are so clear.

The picture was taken on my compact camera, settings chosen (when set on P mode) were ISO100, 1/50secs, f/2.8 at 8.56mm.

One of the places we went to was basically a dumping ground for the bits left over from the making of the interchange – lots of bits of steel slowly rusting away.  If the light was good, then the shadows made my the steel should have been very photogenic, but I did find myself a bit bunny in the headlights, not sure what to try and take a picture of – hence I came home with more than 300 shots from the day.

One of the suggestions that he made was to look through things – to try and get a different perspective.  This is the shot that I found – although I think my blog and Flickr account may become populated with images from the day.

There were numerous bits of steel lying around, and this was taken using my 50mm lens on my EOS400D (ISO200 1/200secs at f/5.0) through one of the holes made for a bolt.  I have cropped in quite a lot and changed to black and white in Lightroom as well as upping the contrast a bit and applying a blue filter to pick out the texture.  I did think it looked better in black and white, but have included the colour version as well for comparison as on reflection I am not so sure.

Urban photography is a relatively new area for me, and one I think I could enjoy a lot.  Whilst on the course I was really a little bit stuck as to which photo to take – and I did get distracted a little by flowers and butterflies, and found that I was trying to take photos that I though summed up urban photography.  It was only towards the end of the 3 hours that I started to relax a little more and take the photos that are more about the smaller details, perhaps that other people wouldn’t see.  This is one of them – I was surrounded by the tall pillars of Spaghetti Junction and a veritable junkyard of things that had  been abandoned – but I decided to take some pictures of nuts and bolts – even though I didn’t have my macro lens with me.

It was a photo that had to be taken.  I have cropped in, but that is all.  It is not an exciting photo, but I still like it.  It is an example of what is out there if you take the time to look around.

Taken on my compact camera, the settings were (in macro mode) ISO80, 1/30secs at f/2.8.

Our camera club has the subject Stone Walls as its subject.  I am not sure I want to sit through an evening of photos of stone walls, or to go out with the intention of taking photos of stone walls, but, if I was to enter a photo, then this would probably be it.  It is the outer wall of the old Coventry cathedral.  The interest for me though was in the two small patches of thin layers of stone that are inserted in between some of the large stones.  Why are they there, how long have they been there?  Who knows, but they do add some interest to an otherwise not very interesting subject.

I was tidying up the garden on Saturday and discovered this cyclamen hidden by hellebore leaves.  I liked the coppery coloured stems and the tightly would spirals.  I also like the contrast of the new growth and green leaves of the cyclamen against the grey-brown of the clematis leaf that the spiral is resting on.

I left the edges of the cyclamen in the picture to put a bit of context in and make it more obvious what the subject was.  As it is winter my 50mm lens is on the camera and the settings used were ISO200, 1/250secs at f/2.0 (the wide aperture used to make the subject stand out a bit more from the background).

I admit it is not a great picture, but it reminds me of Winter evenings in the UK, a bit cold and empty, but surrounded by nature, even if it is hidden by the night.

I put the picture into black and white in Lightroom and tried to reduce the noise a little (after all at ISO8000 there is a lot of noise!) and applied an infrared filter to lighten the sky. I thought that the black and white showed the shape of the tree a little better.

I had my compact on low light setting, and the settings were ISO8000, 6mm, 1/15secs at f/2.0.

Another Boxing Day picture.  I have stood on the bridge over the small weir on the River Ecclesbourne many times, just watching the water pouring over.  Even for such a small river there is quite a lot of force behind it.  However, not being a resident of Duffield, this is the first time I had seen the river frozen over.

This is the view from the bridge, looking down, there is ice on the top, water pouring out from underneath the ice, and then foaming at the bottom.  I liked the different textures in the photo, and the different moods / speeds that I imagine when I look at it.  The stillness of the ice, the speed as it flows smoothly down the slope, and the turbulence when it hits the bottom before serenely meandering away on the other side of the bridge.  I also think it looks quite abstract with vertical and horizontal lines leading the eye around the picture – but does it suffer from not having a definite focus and resting place for the eye?

The settings chosen by the camera were 1/30secs at f/3.2 with ISO80 and 6mm.

I like the repeating patterns and effect of having a wide aperture (f/2.0).  This is another shot that I took on the industrial estate – as much as anything I thought I should have a walk in the snow and see if I could find something different to take.  This almost fit the bill – I hadn’t taken it in snow before.

I like the triangle of light sky at the top reflecting the snow at the bottom.  Other than that I don’t really have a lot to say about the photo – I guess it is just a matter of taste.

Settings were ISO200, 1/4000secs at f/2.0 using the aforementioned 50mm lens.