Dave Frost Photography - Canvey Island

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.

Apparently it’s officially my Day in Meerkovo !!

Dave Frost — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 08:54:30 +0000

Annoying as the adverts are they do tend to stick in your head, so on receipt of me Annual renewal notice for my house insurance I thought I’d at least have a look.
I wouldn’t normally have bothered, but this year my renewal premium had increased some 100%. Admittedly I had a claim last year when some wanker smashed the downstairs window of the house, but 100% increase – I think not.
Ran my details through the Meerkat people and the cheapest quote available was around the same price as last year – With the same insurer (WTF ????). Rang them this morning, and just on the strength of a phone call they miraculously managed to knock off £500 (why not quote the ‘best’ price in the first place – Tossers).
Still not impressed, that one’s now marked as not renewed and the Meerkat people got a few more clicks on their website. I’m happy. Fully insured at the same price as last year (under £700) and a stuffed Meerkat is on it’s way to my house.

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…..

QR codes – The quickest way to access long url’s on your mobile?

Dave Frost — Thu, 27 Oct 2011 12:40:21 +0000

Will you scan this? Where will it take you.
Just wondering today whether there’s any real value in QR (quick response) codes for anything other than marketing surveys etc.

If you have a ‘smart-phone’ and are curious to see where this one will lead, I dare you to open your bar code scanner and take the plunge.

Protests in London - A peaceful day

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.