Pretty Paper
I travelled back to Royal Wootton Bassett, to my parents house for christmas this year. I decided to take a couple of lenses with me to try and capture my family (like i did when i went up north) at christmas.
the whisker
2016 has not been a good year for my family with the passing of my Grandad this summer so it was great to have the family together and to see my little gran pottering around and getting to spend christmas with us all in royal Wootton Bassett.
the storyteller
the baker
I sat in the kitchen with her while i was working from home. She was telling me stories and making cakes. Now my grandma hates having her picture taken so the majority of any taken of her are on the sly. i tended to frame up the shot by my side or on a work surface and hope that i had her in frame and in focus.
the lurker
Now along with my gran and chelsea. it seems my family are all very camera shy, so getting any pictures out of them is hard work. I try and catch them when they are least expecting to get the best results so i tended to favour the 100mm Macro as it was long but in a space like my parents it was not too long so i decided to use it along side the 35mm 1.4 instead of the 135mm.
The fury that is opening presents lasts moments in this house.
the thinker
The smiler
as you can tell i basically stalked my gran as she hates having her photo taken haha.
christmas gifts
For christmas i was lucky enough to get a Yongnuo YN-14EX macro Ring flash among other things. It is something i have been looking at for a while but have held off and held off getting but i hope it will be a great addition to my kit and add a new dimention to my macro pictures. I doubt i will use it much until the spring when the flowers and insects are out but when i do im sure i will get some amazing shots with it.
100mm macro shot of a flower- taken at the Hampton Court flower show (F/2.8)
what i would like to use the macro flash for is to totally black out a background and just concentrate on the subject, which as the picture above of the flower demonstrates, is not possible without it. A technique i will try is setting the camera to F22 and 250th of a second. The flash should then expose for the flower alone and black out everything else. We will see if this is the case though.
on boxing day the family travelled to Little Coxwell which is a little village in the cotswolds. This is a beautiful part of the UK so of course i took my camera to get a few shots.
little coxwell church
little coxwell cottages
i have been attempting to do more panoramic shots which i find easy to do with Lightroom photo merge option giving some great shots so using the 35mm F1/4 on the 6D i was able to capture these two images without the use of a tripod. If i were to have more time I would have used a tripod to get the shot tack sharp. Sadly I vary rarely get the change or time to do this.
