With all of the dull weather in recent weeks, I have been playing around with some tabletop still life photography. This involves a lot of gathering props, setting up shots and being disappointed by the results. I was sort of happy with these simple shots, until this week's CCC excellent talk from Polina Plotnikova, which showed me what really good still life should look like. The key points seemed to be pre-visualise better and think bigger. Oh well, more to do.
The whole Christmas period has been dark, grey, and occasionally rainy. It has not inspired me to get out with the camera. Until today. The wind picked up, blowing the cloud through with some good sunny periods. Perfect 10-stop conditions. I headed to Rutland Water to have a go at Normanton Church. The low sun lit the church perfectly and I spent a pleasant couple of hours taking long exposure shots, until the best of the cloud was gone and a wedding took over the church.
We recently had a speaker at the club who talked about different lenses and the creative influence these could have on your images. This talk made me do a couple of things. Firstly it added a couple more lenses to my Amazon wishlist. Secondly, it made me dig out my Lensbaby Composer. Before the leaves were stripped from the trees by the recent storm, I used this for some slightly more creative autumn shots. The Lensbaby Composer can be tricky to use, and I find that my results with it are very hit and miss. Frankly, more miss than hit. And, I was using it with the widest aperture insert, which always ups the jeopardy. But, it did give me my most interesting shots from what, photographically, has been a very poor autumn.
Last weekend, I joined other CCC members for the annual club night photography shoot in Cambridge. We started on Kings Parade, before heading, via the Mill Pond, to the University's Sidgwick site.
I have wanted to photograph one of the National Trust winter light events for a few years. But they were always fully booked by the time I tried to get tickets. This year there are events at more locations and a friend was able to get us tickets to 'Ignite' at Polesden Lacey, near Leatherhead in Surrey.
The other Sunday, I had nothing to do and fancied a piece of cake, so, for the first time in about 2 years, I visited Wimpole Hall. Cake was the main purpose of the visit, but I took a camera hoping to find something of interest. I found something at the farm, in the shape of an old Fordson Major tractor. The paintwork was splattered with rust and lichen and I spent a pleasant half hour or so taking a series of hand-held close-ups. I would have liked more depth of field on some of the shots, but didn't have the light. I will have to take my tripod, the next time I fancy some cake.
