Child Life...

The image to the bottom right was taken with the intention of capturing my daughters joy of playing with in the woods with the leaves. I was attempting to show the leaves sharp and frozen but due to poor light was unable to use a quick enough shutter speed. I had to use a wide aperture of f4.5 a shutter speed of 1/25second and ISO set at 100. By doing this it has created something else, a sence of the movement of the leaves is shown and with a few pictures taken I was able to show my daughters face and have the leaves in a blur all around her.

The above photo was taken at 7.10pm as the sun was begining to set. I used a small apature of f13 coupled with shutter speed of 1/6 sec to try andshow the back ground in focus. This has worked slightly as it is not a complete blur in the backgound I think I was to close to the subject for it to work properly.
Below I shot this scene with the intention of framing my daughter with the natural opening of the setting , with the foregound and the trees around her.I hoped to capture a sense of her owning the surroundings a feeling of her being in charge. The light wasn't the best but there was enough.  I'm pleased with my daughter's expression but feel the background let the image down as the colours have faded away.

Below I asked my daughter not to smile but to just look out over the scene and try to look serious. This took a few takes as she kept smiling and moving around.

Sunday Sunrise...

On the morning of the 16th of October at  5am my alarm awoke me. I got up threw my curtains open hoping to see stars in the night sky , I wasn't dissapointed . Myself and 3 others colleges friends had arranged to meet at Hilton Gravel Pits a nature reserve near to Derby to try and capture the sunrise. We meet at 6.30am and after a short walk we were set up on the east of a pond so facing west to get the sun rising over some trees which lined the pond. I took some test shots which I will show untill I felt I had aboout the right settings. The sun was due to rise at around 7.30am but whilst waiting so not to waste what little time we had arragend we started takiing shots of the pond and the sky above .All pictures were taken with myNikon D3100 with it's standard lens and my tripod was used.
Health and Safety ; as there was five of us and we were setting up before the sun rise so the light was poor we had to be careful not to get in each others way with ourselves and our equipment. 

The shot above was taken at 7.30am just as the sun had started to rise . I set my camera to 100 ISO to try and get the best image possible but buy doing this I knew I'd have to use a slower shutter speed so my tripod was used. I composed this image to try and draw the eye to the left of the image to see firstly the colours in the sky then thier reflection on the still water.I did this by framing the shot with the over hanging trees, this also helped to obscure the grey sky to the right. This was shot with as small apeture of F14 coulped with a shutter speed of 1/6th of a second .

Shutter speed 1sec, Apeture f20, ISO 100
This image to the right was a chance image taken whilst waiting for the sun to rise . I like the texture shown at the bottom where the twigs and leaves form a base to the image then the eye is drawn by the twigs to the top right to then show the reflection of the sky and the over hanging trees.

Shuu

Shutter speed 1/10sec , f22 100 ISO
I was at first not pleased with this image as I had wanted a stronger view of the sun rising through the trees but looking again was pleased with the warmth shown around the top of the trees and the reflection in water of the trees and the ripples give the viewer a good starting point which then leads to sun reflection which leads to the mist which gives a break to the top of the image.

Shutter speed 1/15sec , f22 100 ISO

Shutter speed 1/30sec , f16 100 ISO

Shutter speed 1/20sec, f25  100 ISOShutter speed 1/5sec, f7.1 100ISO

Studio Time 06/11/10

Today we visited the colleges studio facility. We were shown some of  the equipment the college have in stock and Steve talked us through the camera operations . We talked about the three main settings of the camera, firstly the ISO setting which is set by the International Standards Organisation who rate the film speed used in a camera. The setting of  the ISO on the camera we used in this case a Canon 5D has a range from 50 to 3200, so is capable of reacting to very low light,  moon light or street lights to capture an image . The problems that will arise through using the higher rated speed, or fast film is that your image will not be as sharp as if you had chosen a lower rated or slower film setting .As the higher the ISO used the less light is required to process so your image , so will not be given the time to give a real sharp image and will show a noisy or grainy look to them.So using a low setting of 100 or 200 will always give a sharper image . We secondly talked about the stutter speed and as we were using as lamp with a flash built in we could only choose a speed of 1/200th of a second or slower as the camera had to be in time with the lamp giving of its flash of light. The lamp's flash was controlled by the camera via a cable joining the two.The shutter speed dictates the length of time the camera's digital sensor is exposed to the light it has to read. The higher speeds would be used to capture fast moving objects, for use in sport and in windy conditions as so not to produce a blurred image. Slower speeds will need to be used in low light condition for example indoors . Thirdly is the Aperture setting ,this is controlled by adjusting the 'f' stops of the camera's lens.By doing this you can dictates how large or small the hole, known as the aperture in the camera's lens, will allow the light to hit the sensor or film used in it. The higher the 'f' stop number used the larger aperture will be and the smaller the 'f' stop number used the larger the aperture will be .By using the higher 'f' stop your image will show focus in both the fore ground and background in your image used for example to landscape photography.When the lower 'f' stop number used this will show the image in the foreground in focus but the back ground will be a blur, good for use in  portraits so your subject is the main focal point for the viewer of your picture. The adjusting of the aperture will also dictate the speed of the shutter you will need to use. The small the aperture the the longer the shutter will need to be open to let enough light in to have the picture correctly exposed. Below shows a picture shot with a high shutter speed which you can see was able to catch the water in mid air.

Above shows another shot of water but this time with the shutter speed slowed down to give a sense of movement in the image.

Here we can a range of different 'f' stops , showing the apertures relating to them.The larger the aperture the smaller the number.

 

And lastly above shows an on line calculator which can be used to calculate the correct shutter speed and aperture to be used in different light conditions.This gives a range of light conditions to choose from.I will be posting some picture using this to web site to calculate all three setting to see if  accurate.

http://www.calculator.org/calculate-online/photography/exposure.aspx