Bring Out The Macro Lens

I pulled out my Sigma Macro Lens stuck it on my camera and decided to take some snaps of flies! My tripod also came out, a must if you’re doing anything with your macro lens, and was set up near the back end of my car where all the little blighters congregated. If I didn’t know better I would have assumed they were all having a business meeting discussing their next corporate takeover!

The Decision Process

I had already decided before I set up my tripod that I didn’t want a real close-up macro like many shots you see of insects but something a little different. It was also important to me that the reflection of the fly was showing to prove just how clean my car is!

Ultimately I’m happy with the outcome. I like the fact it’s not the obvious insect macro shot, I personally feel the desaturation adds something extra rather than full on colour. Most importantly is the fact it’s well offset to the top right, had this have been centered it wouldn’t have worked…at least I don’t think so.

As always feel free to comment, it’s great to hear others thoughts…so what are you waiting for!

There’s so many ways in which you could interpret his images that I’m convinced no two people would come up with the same interpretation.

Gregory Crewdson – A Little Bit About The Man

Born in 1962, Gregory Crewdson is an American photographer who creates dramatic, thought provoking, cinematic images. All of his images are staged and it takes a huge crew of people to set up each shot. It would seem he is a perfectionist, every little element needs to be in place to get the exact shot he is looking for and this clearly comes through in the final photograph.

Documentary

An independent film studio has recently created a documentary about Crewdson entitled ‘Gregory Crewdson – Brief Encounters’ of which the following is stated about the documentary:

‘Acclaimed photographer Gregory Crewdson’s 10-year quest to create a series of haunting, surreal, and stunningly elaborate portraits of small-town American life – filmed with unprecedented access as he makes perfect renderings of a disturbing, imperfect world. Filmed over a decade, beginning in 2000, Gregory Crewdson: Brief Encounters provides an unparalleled view of the moment of creation of his images.’

You can find out more about this documentary by visiting the site here.

Images

Here’s some of the images I really like, most of his images are untitled but belong to (normally) a named series of shots taken at the same location. Be sure to study the lighting effects in these photographs as this is ultimately where the power of his images shine through.

         

         

This is a new shot of my Nikon D7000. I was playing around with Camera Awesome on my iPhone and this was the result. For those of you who don’t know, Camera Awesome is an iPhone app (unfortunately it’s not currently available for Android devices) that allows you to do funky stuff with your photos, iPhone photography will never be the same! There’s a lot of stuff to explore in Camera Awesome so I’m not going to go into all the details here but the great thing is it’s free and you can check it our here.

It’s all about experimenting

This photo certainly isn’t the best in the world but iPhone photography is all about experimentation and snapping away. Don’t forget that these days you always have a camera in your pocket so don’t be afraid to use it. You won’t win any awards with your pocket phone camera but it’s good fun all the same. Having said that I might have to contradict myself and say I have seen some pretty amazing photos from a phone camera!

This shot was pretty simple….I pointed my iPhone at my Nikon took the shot using Camera Awesome and then added a single effect (again using Camera Awesome) called ‘More Wang’, that was it! Oh, and I uploaded it here for all you lovely people to see.

No More Excuses

So, don’t forget to use that pocket camera you carry everywhere, you never know when that perfect opportunity might come around to take a piece of history. Even if there isn’t anything special going on, grab your phone and take a few shots for the hell of it. There’s no longer any excuses not to create some great iPhone photography or Android photography.

Here’s a new set of images I took of the Sony PS Vita which I’ve added to the ‘Collections‘ section.

PS Vita As A Gaming Device

Putting the photography aspect to one side for a moment, I have a PS Vita and have to say it’s great, so much better than previous handheld devices. I guess it’s determined by what type of gaming you’re interested in but
if you want serious gaming then the PS Vita ticks all the boxes…at least it does for me!

PS Vita Shots Info

Back to the images, these were taken without any use of flash or artificial lighting. They were all taken with natural light from a nearby window. Having said that a ‘Cross Process’ effect was added at the post processing stage. I use Aperture for my post processing work and will occasionally use Photoshop if there’s a particular effect which is unachievable in Aperture.

For the eagle eyed viewers out there, you’ll notice that the Vita is placed on a brown, crackled type surface. This is actually an old wooden chest and due to the close-up of the shots accentuates the imperfections of the wood.

The difficulty with this collection was getting the PS Vita clean! Whenever taking close-up and especially macro shots, the slightest hair, spec of dust or finger print will be picked up easily by any reasonably priced lens. In fact there were a few times that I couldn’t see anything with the naked eye and it wasn’t until I got the shots on my computer that I saw many specs of dust.

If you would like to know more about the PS Vita, you can visit the official Sony site.

         

      

Photography Focus

I don’t particularly like to focus on just one genre, I know many photographers do and that’s great but for me I like to try and keep things fresh giving myself the option of having lots to choose from.

I also like the idea of post processing, a controversial subject to many but photography has moved on and to say that post processing is cheating is just ridiculous. Essentially the shot has to be taken by the photographer and it needs to be of a reasonable quality before post processing can take place, you can’t just take any old shot and make it look good. Post processing is an art in itself and to get decent results you need a good eye but ultimately it all starts with the initial photograph.

I hope you enjoy the photography on the site and would love to hear any comments you might have. I’ll be posting more images regularly so be sure to check back or follow me on Twitter where I’ll be tweeting about new images I’ve uploaded.

Please note that all the images on the site are copyright so please don’t use them for commercial projects. Feel free to use them for any personal use that is not in the public domain. In other words don’t use the images on a website for example but feel free to use them as a background/wallpaper image on your own computer.