Quick shots from the beach
I’ve been pretty busy recently, so it was nice to have the chance to get out over the weekend and in the sunshine no less and shoot some fun pictures. My sister and her husband have a new pup, called Remy, who isn’t the easiest target to photograph. With such strong backlight off of the sea and with fast movement, getting anything remotely right is pretty difficult. So I was pleased to get these shots of my daughter Evy, whilst she was playing with Remy. All manual focus, using an OM 50 1.8
This is also my first blog, using my old Smugmug blog to link to. With the change over to this website, I had started to upload blog images to here rather than Smugmug. Now with a bit of reorganising I’m back to using the old Smugmug blog to power this one. Sounds confusing, but sort of makes sense to me anyway 
Ice Forms
A couple more shots, capitalising on the cold weather gripping the UK at the moment. These two icicles were shot using a +2 macro diopter on on my ZD 40-150. Converted to Black & White and given the cyantone tint that I’m loving at the moment. Post processing in Silkypix.
Mountain Race clip ( Cenise Bargy )
I was back in Haute Savoie last weekend and amongst other things, shot a ski mountain race, which I’ve done regularly for the last few years. The shooting conditions were way far from ideal, with rain falling at the start line in the morning.
The race, like a good meal, is in 3 courses. 2 ski mountaineering courses combined with one cross country ski course. Competitors take part as relay teams ( one for each course ) or, as individuals completing all three! It’s primarily a fun event, but still a tough undertaking, especially with knee breaking wet snow. Even with the conditions, spirits were high for everyone involved and even though filming it was quite demanding, I had a lot of fun.
Here is a highlights reel from the day. If you want to find out more about the race, or watch other videos from other years, then visit cenisebargy.fr ( in French )
Quick and easy HDR
I found a great little piece of software a while back, called HDRtist. It comes as a free and simple faux HDR package or you can buy the “Pro” version for not a lot. While PS and other editing software has plug ins a plenty for this sort of thing, HDRtist just does what is wrtten on the tin. Quick, simple and very easy HDRs and HDR fakes from single images.
It will open Raw files directly, so no need to go round tripping through a conversion first. Here are a couple I did the other day, from the same beach session in my last post.
Posts of Christmas past No.4
Another old seasonal shot for my Christmas week posts (missed out yesterday)…
The story cabin, at L’Hameau de Pere Noel ( Santas Village ). The village is an old savoyard farm, complete with toy workshop, reindeer hospital and living quarters for Santa and the elves. The story room, is where Mrs Claus reads a story to all the kids, while they sit around on blankets. An amazing day out if you’re in the area of Annecy/Geneva before Christmas.
Posts of Christmas past No.3
Another old seasonal shot for my Christmas week posts…
A day filming 2 years ago, where I had a thousand mini avalanches around me, as the heavily snow laden trees gave up under the weight and heating from the sun.
Posts of Christmas past No.2
Another old seasonal shot for my Christmas week posts…
Taken with my ex E410. It looks colder than I actually remember it this day. Taken on the Plateau de Solaison and looking straight into the low winter sun.
Posts of Christmas past
I’ve been sorting through hard drives over the last few weeks, trying to order some of my work from the last year or so. With the amount of seasonal material that I’ve got, I thought it would be an idea to creating a daily rolling post of old photos, for Christmas week…
Taken after a fresh snow fall, the forest at Le Bete, above Mont Saxonnex.
Super Macro
I’m definitely a dabbler when it comes to macro photography, but dable I do anyway. While I’ve been in the process of updating my telecine set ups, I had such a dable with inverse macro adaptation of my OMs. Anyway, I dabled a bit further than I needed to, but got some cool results in the process.
All shot with an OM lens inverted and coupled to a ZD 40-150. This gives around a 2:1 magnification on a 4/3 sensor ( shooting on the GH1 ). With the lens fully stopped open, depth of field is about as narrow as you would ever want to get and trying to maintain focus handheld on an area the size of a pinhead, isn’t too easy.
For the purposes of telecine, this magnification is almost spot on, for the transfer of Super 8, using a GH1. Working distance proved to be a bit of a problem, but I may have worked a method to position the lenses, without hacking away at this particular projector. I’ll post some results, as soon as I’ve got something that I’m happy with.
