Morocco Photo 2

Morocco Chilling

Morocco

Spent a weekend in Morocco and took a million photos, will slowly upload the best ones.

Macro Photography Artwork Attempt and Monkey

Through Photoshop I decided to create an image from an interesting  photograph I took using macro tubes with my Canon 60D.

Original Image 

Piece created on Photoshop

 And here is my first attempt at photographing my pet Pygmy Marmosets whilst using macro tubes, can't wait to try again when there is more light.

Pygmy Marmoset (macro tube

Let me know what you think, cheers

Chris

Canon 60D Macro Tubes

A couple of weeks back I bought a set of macro tubes for my 60D from Amazon at a ridiculously low price. Paying so little I really didn't expect much but I've fallen in love with this cheap and simple addition to my kit. The general principle behind macro tubes is, by moving the lens further away from the camera's sensor you can greatly reduce the minimum focal distance capable by that lens. The tubes fit to my camera easily and support both my kit lenses with no problems, it goes with out saying just be careful with heavier lenses. When shooting with tubes you need quite a lot of light to work with but handheld shots are attainable outside on a sunny day or with the help of additional lights when shooting indoors. For interior shots though I would certainly recommend a tripod and a shutter release button (also available for a few quid on Amazon) for best results. 

The biggest challenge when using macro tubes is getting your point of interest in focus as your depth of field range is reduced to literally a centimetre of miniature sharpness. I know what you're thinking to increase the depth of field can you not just simply close the aperture on the lens? Yeah it does help but unless you have aperture controls on your lens we run into another problem as the macro tube is separating the lens from the camera and every time you disconnect your lens it resets to a wide setting. Through some online research I did discover a way to stop this lens resetting on the 60D by disconnecting the lens whilst holding down the unmarked button (actually Depth Of Field preview button) found just below and to the left of your lens mount. Obviously closing the aperture will mean you need even more light and this is when a tripod becomes a necessity.

Hand held Wasp in the Garden

Hand held Spider in the garden

Hand held Ladybird in the Garden

Tripod and additional light, Shelley's Eye

Tripod and natural light from window, Scratch Card

Tripod and natural light from window, Charm (for Ebay)

Macro Tubes on Amazon

Thanks for checking out my blog and please let me know what you think in a comment. 

Humber Bridge HDR and random Raw photos taken on the Canon 60D

A few HDR photos of the Humber Bridge which is just a couple of miles down the road from me plus a couple of photos edited on Photoshop's Camera Raw program.

Humber Bridge HDR

Humber Bridge HDR

Humber Bridge HDR

Seagull RAW

Me and my bird Shelley's cat Socks

Interior HDR attempt Canon 60D

First attempt at creating an HDR image indoors, using a window as my main point of interest. Let me know what you think.

Canon 60D HDR 

Canon 60D HDR Attempt

This is my first attempt as making an HDR image, which is basically an image made up of several photos taken at the same time at different exposures to create a High Dynamic Range (HDR) I'm fairly impressed with the outcome for a first try and I will certainly be trying this technique again. The picture was taken in my garden using a Canon 60D on a Manfrotto tripod, uploaded and converted using DPP and then edited using Photoshop CS5. Let me know what you think.

My Garden - Canon 60D HDR 

Suzuki Manji

It's been a while since I've posted about my other love, after Shelley, Cinematography and Photography there is the blues harmonica. By no means am I a musician, the world famous Yorkshire blues man Chris Ulliott, yeah in my dreams. But I do love my 10-hole diatonics and I play a mean solo set in my kitchen or in the bath tub. My playing is at least a lot better than my singing, I'm still waiting on that bluesy vocal tone which I hope comes with older age. Anyway lets get to the point of this post, I recently bought a Suzuki Manji for around sixty quid on Amazon. This is the first time I've ever spent so much on a harmonica, usually playing mid-level harps from Hohnor, Lee Oskar and Seydel, and I have to say I am enjoying playing this 'professional' mouth organ. Was it worth the extra money, I don't know, will I buy another? Probably when I can afford one. It's definitely easier to play on the higher notes than the equivalent cheaper models. I bought this harmonica when I was going through a 'Key of D' stage and therefore purchased it in a D and it does sound really nice however looking back maybe a C would have been a better choice. I could be tempted with a different pro-harmonica next and any advice would be greatly appreciated.

My Harmonicas

So what's good about the Manji? It's a little bit louder than all of my other harmonicas which is cool. It's also nice to venture into the high notes with more ease than I've ever personally experienced. It looks pretty cool and according to Suzuki it should outlast any other harp so if that's the case then for a pro-harp I guess it's good value for money.

Suzuki Manji

What I don't like so much, bending the second draw doesn't sound as strong as I would have hoped and within just a couple of weeks I've already slightly bent the casing whilst it's been, admittedly unboxed, in my pocket. I presume the open back design creates more volume at the expense of weakening the structure. Also the spacing and size of the holes are slightly different from my other harps so it's taking me a while to play as cleanly as I know I'm capable, practice makes perfect I suppose.  

Bears prefer the Manji

Maybe one day I'll post a video of me playing, not today though as I'm going red just thinking about it. Anyway take care guys, keep on keeping on and remember the wise words of Willie Brown 'If you don't play no harp, you don't get no pussy'.

60D Photo of the day

I recently bought a Canon 60D DSLR camera and thought I might start a series of blog posts showing photographs which I am especially happy about taking. This is a photograph taken of one of my family's many Pygmy Marmosets and I like the composition and layers in the shot. I've messed around with the levels a little bit on Photoshop to make the image more dramatic. 

Pygmy Marmoset

A few weeks after making this post I decided to have another go at the post processing on this picture and here is the result, which I think is an improvement.

Pygmy Marmoset

Monkeys filmed on my new 60D!

Degree show Photos ( I know they're a little late)

Here are the photographs from our degree show held at Fruit Bar in Hull on the 2nd June 2011. As you can see we got a pretty decent turnout and to our pleasant surprise we got an amazing reaction from the audience. It was a brilliant night and I couldn't have asked for a better conclusion to our course. You can see below that we were a small class and therefore a small crew and the results we achieved, to quote our external examiner, were beyond all expectations. What's next for us all? I do not know,  excited would be an understatement.

Future Classics (The class) - Me, Michael Hirst, Shona Singleton, Tom Lee, Olivia Young, Adam Hill

Me and my beautiful girl Shelley

Control Station

The Screen

The Audience 

Audience and displays on the back wall

Also check out this good review of the evening and films.

Independent Review of the night!!!!!!!

(All photos taken by Tom Lee on his Canon 60D)

Final Year Cinematography Show Reel

A rushed compilation of some of my work over my final year of a film degree. Criticism is welcome but don't be too harsh, cheers. I have a few months to wait for my results but I am confident I will pass to a decent standard, the external examiner liked my work. Guess I should start asking myself what's next? A couple of week relaxing in bed watching films sounds good.




I've had to compress the video file for uploading purposes resulting in a lower quality video, however I hope you can still get a feel for my work. The Roses at the start where part of a lighting experiment trying to recreate the look of practical lighting using studio lights and the horse rider footage was a project in colour correction, it was originally really desaturated and blue. The rest of the shots are from the short films 'Unrest', '99 Forever' and 'Perfect Pygmy'. Information on these films can be found in earlier posts including the full version of 99 Forever.

Unrest Screenshots

Here are some screen shots from the short film Unrest directed by Adam Hill. In this project I shared the cinematographer credit with Tom Lee, dividing the role by interior and exterior shots. Adam decided to use two cinematographers to emphasize the different states of reality. Tom filmed the interior shots which are the main protagonist's subconscious and I filmed the exterior shots which  provide the basis for the story through establishing shots and flashbacks. I don't want to give the story away just yet, I'm not sure how secretive Adam the director wants to be. However upon receiving the footage yesterday I've decided to put up a few screen shots for you to take a look at.

These screenshots are straight from the original footage before any kind of colour correction and I'm quite pleased with the way they have turned out, I just hope Adam can put together a decent edit. I'm going out filming the last bits today so wish me luck!