The belly of a Chinese stoneware figure of Budai from 1486, taken in the British Museum.
- abstract aircraft allotments bark Barnes Battersea Power Station beach beef beetle bird black blue bomber bones Boris Borough Market boys brass bridge Brighton brown butcher butterfly carving cat chard chestnuts chiaroscuro children Chinese Christmas clouds concrete Courtauld Gallery cows Crystal Palace deckchairs digiscoped dinosaur dog dogs doll door Dulwich Park Dulwich Woods dummy dust engine fence flowers football fossil frost funfair garden girl glass graffiti grass gravestones green greenhouse Greenwich grey gull Hampshire heath ice Isle of Dogs ivory jets Kent Kew Gardens leaves lion London Underground London Wetlands Centre machinery man market meat medieval moth museum Natural History Museum Nelson's Column New Forest Olympics Oxford Circus Oxford Street paint parakeet park Pembrokeshire pheasant pier pink Posy punctuation red reeds reflections rock rocket rosemary rubbish Science Museum sea self portrait shadows sheep Sheppey shingle shopping sign Skomer sky snow South Bank St James's Park stone sunlight taxidermy texture Thames Path thrift tiles tomatoes tourists Trafalgar Square tree trees typography vegetables Wales water wet white willow yellow
5 Comments
Hey there. I liked your comments on Nicolette Bethel’s Nah yuh see blog about the reporting on Hurricane Ike so I came over.
I thought I would take a look at your photos cause I am a professional photographer (which only means I require that people pay me, not that my advice will be any good). Anyway, I wanted to tell you about strobist.com because the best way to get more out of your photos is by controlling light. And the cheapest, most efficient and most fun way to do that is with some of the tricks you will find on strobist.
A lot of your shots would have gone to a whole new level with a flash fired from off camera. That probably sounds expensive and complicated but it’s not (you can get a setup for about $100). And it will allow you to take control, creating photographs you intended to take when you left your house, making the viewer look where you want.
Anyway I thought I would share the site because you got a new camera and set up the blog and I think it could make all kinds of ambitious things possible.
Blessings from Dom in The Bahamas
OK, there’s something weird going on with the comments. I will attempt to reply to your comment once I can work out why it’s not displaying properly.
Huh, that was weird: there appeared to be something very specific about the URL www dot strobist dot com which was giving the software conniptions, though I can’t imagine why.
I’m quite sure you’re right about the flash thing. My main reluctance to get into that side of it is actually the extra bulk to carry around: I like to just have my camera with me when I’m out for a walk.
But, of course, if I’m not going to get a proper flash, I ought to stop trying to take pictures in museums.
Conniptions. hahaha, have not heard that in a while. I hear your point about bulk. One of the points David Hobby (strobist founder) makes is that you need very little gear. In fact, here is a link to his blog about just that topic - strobist.blogspot.com/2006/03/lighting-101-traveling-light.html
You could fit a flash unit, folding stand and remotes in a knapsack. You might not take it everywhere but you could at least have a more advanced setup when you wanted it.
A flash is the most portable way to add a lot of easily-controlled light to the subject. If you don’t want to control the light it is an unnecessary weight, if you do want to (and you pretty much always do) then it’s a worthwhile compromise.
The most important ingredient is the desire to shoot. But shooting without some kind of control over the light is like writing a story with no capital letters, paragraph breaks or periods. You may have all the information but it’s hard for the reader to follow.
I know that I’m seriously limiting the possibilities by not using any extra lighting, and at some stage it will be on my list of things to do, but I think next on my list will probably be a wider-angle lens of some kind.
I find something attractive about the idea of just using natural light: the camera as a passive recording device. But I know that it has its limitations.