Pure Mono

Well I finally managed to get out and get some shots today, Sue picked us up at 9 this morning and we drove to Catterick for the market, while they were looking at the stalls and spending money I was scoping the market for some shots, I didn’t get many as it was very busy and very rough so I kept my camera very tight in my hand and had the strap round my neck, at one point I took a shot of a butcher and he freaked out as he thought I was working for the DHSS, he wasn’t to know but if I was working for the DHSS he would not have even knew I was there ha ha. I decided to do some “in your face” street photography and get in as close as I could to the subjects, most shots were taken at between 50-70mm never once over 70mm so the farthest away I ever was from one of the subjects was about 2-3  feet away.  More photographs to come when I get them processed.

Originally uploaded by HotshotsSR1

Well I’m sick now as I was going to be going down Bolton to watch Trevor’s first pro fight but Sunderland Hospital has decided to put my mothers hip operation forward by a week so I need to be here in Sunderland as she will be getting out on the day of the fight, I was really looking forward to it but my mother has to come first and I have to be there to help her home after the operation as she may not be able to walk properly and my dad won’t be able to manage her up the stairs on his own as he is 78 this year and doesn’t have enough strength to hold her if anything goes wrong. I feel like I have let Trevor down in a big way as it is his pro fight and I feel the more support he has the better, you should be there to support your friends at such an event as it is a big milestone in his boxing career but on this occasion I have to be there for my mother as after all she is my mother and she will need me more than Trevor will need my support. I was really hoping to catch the punch that knocks out his opponent in a photograph as it would not only be fantastic photograph but it would have been great for Trevor to keep as a record of the day, so now today I feel rotten but it is totally out of my hands.

One is not amused

Originally uploaded by HotshotsSR1

Well I can’t add much today as last night some horrible geek hacked my pc, now I have lost all of my JPEGs and web sized images as I had to flatten my whole drive to fix what they had broken, I’m so glad I keep my RAW files on a different drive, if I hadn’t I would have lost all of my digital work from the last four years and most of my film scans, only one word to describe them…..twats! This photo was taken of people in the crowd at Steels Club when I shot Cirkus.

Originally uploaded by HotshotsSR1

For adding atmosphere to a photograph if there is no people in the shot I think that a bit of mist goes a long way to add to the mood, this shot was not set up at all or even planned. My parents came to our house for dinner one night and it was quite sunny when they entered the house, a couple of hours later when it was time to go we got to the front door and it was very dark, not only was it very dark but it was also very misty, not only was it dark and misty but is was also raining very lightly and as soon as I seen it I just knew I had to take a shot, I quickly ran upstairs and grabbed the D700, it was very cold and wet so I didn’t want to stay out long with my gear so I upped the ISO to 6400 and set the aperture to F/2.8 and widened the lens to 28mm, the reason I widened the lens was because you get a longer hyper focal distance the wider the lens so shooting at F/2.8 will not be much of a problem for the depth of field. The hyper focal range of the settings I used were a bit like this, I was 20 feet from the subject so the near limit was about 12 feet and the far limit was about 58 feet, so after a little bit of mathematics in my head (way to much info to type in this post I may write a tutorial on the subject at a later date) I worked out that the hyperfocal distance will have been around 30 or 31 feet this was enough to keep the shot in focus for the length of the alley. The shutter speed was 1/50 but to get a faster speed I would have had to up the ISO which would have added more grain to the shot so I leaned on the fence and stood as solid as possible to avoid camera shake.