Dave Frost Photography - Canvey Island » Photography – General

A suite life……..

Dave Frost — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 19:43:56 +0000

Feeling a bit low so thought I’d try something different for a change. As always, time limited and not much interest here at castle canvey so grabbed a bicycle light and a pack of cards, dusted off the tripod and set this up.

If anyone’s interested, this was set-up on a kitchen work-top.
The cards were held in place using blue tack with the camera set up on the tripod.
As there was a light and a television on in the same room I had to go to F18 to get a 6 second exposure.
On release of the shutter I weaved a small LED bicycle torch in and out of the cards, then reversed it onto the cards themselves to highlight them.

Post processing is minimal – Lots of spot healing because the cards are well used, little bit of dodge and burn and a light dusting of contrast tweaks before a quick sharpen and save.

The Ultimate Diet

Dave Frost — Sat, 07 Jan 2012 15:45:22 +0000

OK, had 20 minutes to kill and couldn’t think of anything constructive to do. Not that often I get an empty house and ponce again I failed to capitalise on it. One day I might grow up a bit !!

Trapped

Dave Frost — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 10:50:59 +0000

It’s a bit early in the year for negative thoughts !!! – Not really sure why I did this, but stumbled across an online Photoshop Tutorial and thought I’d have a crack at it. Was a lot more difficult than the 4 step tutorial suggested to try and make the final image look less like a cut and paste job than I ended up with. Image processing remains a bit of a sticking point for me, and I despair that I’ll ever really be able to do it without butchering the original file. So, for now (and this is the closest I’m likely to get to a new years resolution) I think I’ll have to stick with trying to get things ‘right’ in camera and keep the processing to a minimum.

This isn’t the tutorial I used (in fact I wish I’d found this one before) but if anyone else fancies a crack at it there’s a useful step by step you can find simply by clicking this link clicking here

the xmas Nifty 50 Challenge……

Dave Frost — Wed, 28 Dec 2011 11:56:07 +0000

I set myself a challenge this Christmas of only using the Nifty Fifty (Canon 50mm F1.8) prime lens. I thought it’d make me think harder about composition and framing as well as lighting. I’m not sure whether it was down to the unwillingness of my models, too much to eat or more likely too much wine but as challenges go, the end results weren’t that spectacular. Plenty of snaps for the family albums and the kids scrapbooks, resplendent with accompanying memories but precious few ‘real’ photographs.

And for something a little different…….

Butter wouldn’t melt

Dave Frost — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 10:51:01 +0000

Really???? – Just a quick grab shot of number 2 son. Should have upped the ISO as it’s a little soft due to camera shake but sums things up nicely nonetheless…….. Happy Christmas

Messing about with the tubes again

Dave Frost — Sun, 20 Nov 2011 09:52:18 +0000

November – Right. Crappy weather busy at work and aside from the Football I don’t think I’ve taken a photo for fun for months.
Someone on the talkphotography forums had asked a few questions about Kenko Tubes so I dragged mine out of the bag and had a play….
Nothing special but not a bad result for 10 minutes titting about. The one with the flash underneath will be interesting to play with and try to recover some of the stamen detail…..

And so to bed

Dave Frost — Wed, 26 Oct 2011 16:01:37 +0000

Unlike the previous post which prompted a plethora of verbose musings I think this image should just be left without comment. It’s all about the light.

Timeless classics

Dave Frost — Wed, 26 Oct 2011 15:58:25 +0000

OK, so perhaps classics is pushing it a little bit too far, but whilst leaning back in my office chair I saw this pile of books that my eldest son has ‘finished with’. Music in the Meadow is 40 years old (was given to me in 1970), The Pictorial History of Aircraft was bought for me when I was around 9 (according to the inscription my Nana always insisted on writing) and The Ever Changing Woodland was published when there was woodland to change and the countryside wasn’t just a strip of land between motorways. Whilst the annuals in the photo are recent, both The Dandy and The Beano were also regular deliveries from Santa for me and my Father before me when he was a boy.

The image is nothing special, but it made me think about the printed word, the feel of a book, the smell of a book store. None of which a Kindle will ever be able to match. In spite of electronic everything, there’s something about the smell of a well thumbed novel, or the way a glossy page of photos turns that hopefully will continue to live on.

Morning Glory

Dave Frost — Mon, 03 Oct 2011 09:01:34 +0000

Early Autumn Mornings just can’t be beaten, especially when at six o’clock it’s already 18 degrees with a promise of record breaking sunshine. The heat creating a lovely ground hugging mist, coating everything in tiny droplets of water.

This cobweb, was captured with a Canon 50mm f1.8 and 30mm of Kenko Macro extension tubes.

Misty footpath – Atmospheric Black and White images

Dave Frost — Mon, 03 Oct 2011 08:59:50 +0000

There’s something a bit special about an early Autumn morning when the blossoming day is set to be an unusually hot one. Being by the riverside, the cool evening dew had begun to be heated by the sun. Quite thick in places, I could have been totally alone, a thousand miles from anywhere as I had a wander along the footpath.