Sime Photography

It can be a bit difficult to get excited on a foggy dull day when the colours are washed out and there's little contrast. On the other hand it's a great opportunity to take some atmospheric shots through the veil of misty air. Here are some shots I took yesterday 1st Nov 2015. I love the texture of these pine tree trunks melting away into the fog. The golden ferns against the gloomy woods makes a great contrast. Another wall of trees. Several of them seem to pick up the light and stand out as though they were in the sun but there wasn't any sunshine! It's a great opportunity for some minimal silhouettes   I went out a bit later as well at dusk and took these I think this one captures the moment really well. It's so soft and muted but still has depth to it I pushed this one in Lightroom to bring out the yellow leaves and try to create a contrast against the trees in the background. It's amazing what can be done as this is not what ...

I created a image called growing towards the light. See it here  using freehand movement of the camera. I wanted to revisit this concept with my new Sony A7mkii which I've now had for several months. This time, however, I wanted to use a tripod and 2 heads to give me more consistent movement. This image below is one of the results of that shoot. I had to adjust the various angles of the set up to give me the picture I wanted and this is one of the ones I really like. More thoughts on the Sony A7mkii another time. I'd love to hear your comments. Simon

I've just put a new picture called "Gold Leaf" in my Motion Emotion gallery. It's a piece that I created using camera movement and flash to give both blurred and sharp parts to the picture. The leaves have a great sheen to them and seem to nestle in the gold mist created by the movement. Go to the gallery here

I was looking through the pictures I had taken with the EM1 today and I found a couple that I liked and thought I'd share. I've been reviewing my thoughts on this system and It's size especially with one of the Olympus prime lenses is very attractive. Also for my abstract work the shallower depth of field may actually be a benefit. A second camera with a 45mm f1.8 lens may compliment my Ricoh GR really well and give me a little more reach. I'm going to The Photography Show next Monday so hopefully I'll get to have a play with the new EM5 Mkii which looks good.

So I had my time with the OMD EM1. Thanks Olympus and Park Cameras for putting such a scheme into place. It's a really nice solid camera. I know it's seen as a small camera by most but I use a Ricoh GR most of the time so for me it actually seemed quite heavy, at least initially. As I said in the post the other day I was mainly looking at the long exposure "Livetime" function to see if it would give me greater flexibility and creative inspiration. Did it do that? Well....not really. My shots are typically 2 to 5 seconds or so. The updates on the screen can only happen at half second intervals. It felt a bit like playing an old video game where the screen refresh rate was really slow so you make adjustments and the when you see the result of those adjustments you've crashed into a wall and exploded into a huge fireball. Granted me moving the camera a bit isn't quite as dramatic but it didn't give me the feeling I wanted. I also found that I was tempted t...

Tomorrow I'm taking advantage of Olympus' Test and Wow scheme and getting an OMD EM1 and 12-40mm lens for a couple of days. In really keen to see how the live bulb function works for my motion blur photographs. This function gives you an update on the screen of how long exposures are building every half a second or so. You can Program the update interval depending on the overall length of exposure. I'm thinking it could be very useful as I will know have feedback of my movements albeit only every half second. At the moment I have no feedback so even 8 updated in a second exposure should give me quite a lot of information. Hopefully it may also lead to some creative inspiration that would not have been possible without it. I'll report back when I've had a chance to digest my findings