Give Yourself A Try
Welcome to June everyone, and another blog entry from yours truly to kick things off with this fine weather we have been having. Lets get right into it then with a little Bristol street party with these sexy bastards below.
All shot on the 6D with my trusty 35mm F/1.4 lens in between drinking cider and attempting to not know the words, and not sing along to a whitney Houston tribute act at 3 in the afternoon.
I have been desperate to take more shots with my 100mm macro lens now that spring/summer is really upon us, so I took a trip over to Ashton Court to spend some time attempting to get some insect on flower action.
Using the great mid afternoon light of a hot June day, I was able to use a higher F stop (over F8) to get more in focus, a high shutter speed, and keep the ISO low too. This meant the images we coming out very sharp, with minimal motion blur, and less grain within the image even when cropped in. These images were also taken without the help of a tripod, which makes me even happier with how they came out.
Bee pollenating - 100mm F/2.8 Macro
Buttercup - 100mm Macro lens
I also took a trip to my friends house in the middle of nowhere, to a place called Tring, where I got to hang out with these two reprobates (below) for an evening, and apparently walk around a reservoir as the sun came down. It all turned a bit bromance, and started what became a great yet slightly strange weekend.
Lads, Lads, Lads
A bird hide on the reservoir
Annoyingly I had decided against taking my 400mm lens with me on this trip, as I knew I would be walking a lot over the weekend and carrying all my camera equipment didn't seem logical. Typically I ended up at the perfect location for this lens, with the reservoir teaming with life from Oystercatchers and terns, to tufted ducks and Great Crested Grebes, so it would have been perfect to have had it with me. Instead I had my 5D MK III paired with the 35mm F/1.4, which was great for getting pictures of the guys, but left me frustrated with the lack of zoom in this location.
using the tractor tracks to form leading lines
We ended the walk with the sun going down, and what felt more close to an engagement shoot with these two.
Reservoir Sunset Panoramic - using 3 images stitched together
Moving on from the wilds of Tring and Despite living in London for over 13 years, I had always seemed to have missed any Royal occasion, mainly choosing to watch them on TV. However I was back in London for the first time since before christmas and I had managed to find myself out on the Mall, outside Buckingham palace for the Queens birthday in full on tourist mode with my 70-200mm F/4 lens on the 5D MKIII.
Getting to the Mall at around 11am meant we were a good few rows back in the crowd so getting a useable image was very difficult indeed. This was further hampered by the woman in front of me who seemed to be sporting a grey cloud for hair.
Even with the 70-200mm lens, I was still too far away really, but luckily this lens showed its versatility in this situation, and still looked good when cropped into the image somewhat. This is a lens I have had longer than any other, and is also my cheapest, with me almost selling it on several occasions, but I have stuck with it and it showed it was worth keeping for situations just like this one.
realising a fleeting chance for a different composition, as the crowd in front of me parted for a split second, with the guard looking like he is looking at me directly
waiting until one of the horsemen looked in my general direction to again make it look like the guard is looking at me
The horse was looking fidgety as it came down the mall so I concentrated on it instead of the guards.
It is very easy to fall into the snap happy approach in a situation when you have only a fleeting chance to get an image of what is passing by, however I try to be a bit more conservative in this regard, concentrating on capturing moments that may be missed with all that is going on in that split second. To do this you do need to have a little bit of intuition and guess what looks like could develop. I have selected a few examples of this (see above), where concentrating on something that looks like it might change or waiting for someone to look in my general direction makes for a more unique image.
The best example of this was towards the end of the Parade when I noticed a guard who seemed to be slumped on his horse as he came down. Instinctively I followed him with my lens and was able to capture him moments before he fell from his horse. As you can see below, the face of the rider next to him tells the whole story.
Image courtesy of ©daily Telegraph - Lord Guthrie
Moments after I had taken my image, Lord Guthrie fell from his horse. He was quickly seen to by paramedics and taken to hospital, where he recovered from apparent heat stroke.
To finish off this segment then the problems I faced during this parade were quite substantial. I found that getting the correct focus was difficult with the moving targets, depth of field was also an issue with many of the images not good in focus across all of the image. I was using an F4 lens so i am surprised this was as much of an issue as it was but its a learning curve for the next event like this I attend. The main issue however was my position. Getting heads/hair/lamp post in the images were all too common with the old lady in front of me bobbing around trying to get her own images it really ruined several of the images which was a shame. i guess you just have to be up a lot earlier to get to the front and have that unrestricted view thats required in this situation.
Trying to get the best view
red Arrows Flying over Buckingham Palace
After the parade the Royal family came out onto the balcony. Sadly, due to our position and the crowd numbers, we were not able to get a view of the balcony as the royals watched the flyovers, but I did of course get the obligatory red arrows flying over. This shot would have also been one for the 400mm lens as we were a substantial way away from the palace anyway so the 70-200mm would not have really been sufficient anyway.
Last but most defiantly not least, while drinking with friends on a members only roof top terrace, looking down on piccadilly circus, about 1000 naked people on bicycles decided to show up.... I had my 70-200mm F/4 on hand from the trooping of the colour, to capture this very strange procession from a very different viewpoint than most, and worked perfectly in this situation. There was a disproportionate amount of penis on show annoyingly, however and all I could think about was that I hoped they had all brought wet-wipes for those saddles, Im not touching a boris bike after seeing this thats for sure.
man with balloon hen coming out of his arse....
The queen making her second appearance of the day...
And I leave you with some men who decided that being naked in central London wasn't enough, and not drawing enough attention to their bits, so decided to paint them Silver to match their shoes.....each to their own I guess.
FIN
