Macro photography

One lunchtime a few weeks ago I went to a local park to experiment with macro photography. I spent about 20 minutes walking around the park failing to find anything worth photographing. Then a bird flew over a crapped all over my shirt.

I was starting to think someone was trying to tell me something. Eventually I found a suitable subject and put down my tripod (which I didn't use at any point) and reached to get my camera out. As I opened the bag my camera fell out and had the choice of tarmac path, stone wall or flower bed to fall on. Fortunately it landed on the flower bed and seems unscathed but I was panicing for a few minutes. I really shouldn't have left the office that lunchtime.

After all the trials and tribulations I started to take some shots. I also tried some in my garden on another occasion and the best of both sessions are shown below.

Happy New Year by the way

I forgot to wish everyone a happy new year.

One new year's resolution I have is to try and post more photos this year.

On Hogmannay I thought "maybe I could do a picture a day during 2009" but quickly realised this was unlikely to happen so I thought "well I could manage to choose 1 photo for each week", as sleep took hold I thought 1 photo a month was doable.

As 2009 dawned I came to the conclusion that I'll just stick to taking photos as and when I can.

All the best for 2009

First steps in night photography

So the other night I drove 10-15 miles into the Aberdeenshire countryside at night in temperatures of -8 degrees celsius (not the best conditions for location scouting) looking for a place with little light pollution and some nice foreground interest.

I eventually found a reasonable forest and after driving along the forest track to a sign which said 'no unauthorised access beyond this point' and reversing back down the icy track in the pitch darkness trying to avoid hitting anything or getting stuck in a ditch or damaging by beamer I decided to stop looking for the perfect spot and actually take some photos.

(I recently ordered an intervalometer to do some time lapse photography but this hadn't arrived by the time I was out and about.)

I am planning on doing 3 types of night photography (a) taking some shots with minimal light pollution and maximum visible stars (b) time lapse photography of the stars rotating about the pole star and (c) star trails.

The 2 shots I have attached to this post (the best of a patchy collection) show my first attempt at method (a) and also some light painting of my car.