Photography: Roma Night Photos

Taking night photos in Rome was my first attempt at HDR night photos.  I really like the effect.   The way you can have a lot more stuff correctly exposed with HDR is really accentuated with night photos.   They look really bright and vibrant.  I'll definitely be doing this again.  

 The Typewriter by night.   The blue streaks were caused by a police car passing in front of it.   The flashing of the light makes interruptions in the streak.  Pretty!

 And again.   Photomatix has a default setting that removes "ghosts", or parts of the photo that appear in one exposure, but not the rest.   This is very useful for automatically removing things like passers-by that wander in front of the camera and traffic and objects moving in the wind.   By turning this setting off I got a lot more streaks of light from passing cars than I otherwise would have.

Fontana di Trevi.   A very famous fountain in Rome.   It's surrounded by tourists day and night.   If you throw a coin in over your shoulder with your back to it it's meant to mean that you'll come back to Rome someday.

Photography: Beltane

On the last day of April every year the Beltane festival takes place here in Edinburgh.   It's a pagan festival of fore and fertility and marks the beginning of summer.   It's quite a big thing.   Every year people paint themselves with body paint, wear odd costumes, dance, frolic, set fire to things and act out the battle between summer and winter.   It's all a great spectacle and a great chance to take pictures.   Here is their website.   I used an external flash for these.   I suppose the biggest challenge for this shoot was the sheer number of people about.   It was hard to get to the front of the crowd and get a clear shot.   I've found a good technique is not to follow the procession, but to keep ahead of it.   Sadly others have worked out this trick too.   Here are a few of my favorite Beltane photos.   Warning: may contain breasts!

Enlighten Edinburgh

Sorry about the lack of blog these last while.   Christmas, you know.   Now on  with the entry!   Back in March the Edinburgh City of Literature Trust projected quotes from the Scottish Enlightment onto various buildings around the city centre for a few days.   Naturally I went out to photograph it, and it was well worth it!   Here are a few of my favourite photos from it:

This was a giant globe in Charlotte Sqaure with a Geological and weather type video and a James Hutton quote projected onto it.   "A succession of worlds...no vestige of a beginning, no prospect of an end".   Being a James Hutton fan, I found it quite exciting.

This is the Royal Society of Edinburgh building on George Street, lit up with an Adam Smith quote: "Science is the great antidote against the poison of superstition and enthusiasm".   I have to say this was the best projection for me.   It was so big and bold and striking.   The use of the features of the building was very clever and the whole thing was just beautiful.   The whole project was pretty awesome actually.   A great idea, and well executed.  There were more projections, but the pictures of those weren't particularly exciting.   And so, I shall leave you with this:

Not actaully part of Enlighten Edinburgh.   This a shopfront on George Street.   They project a live webcam view of a beach in California onto their windows 24 hours a day.   Pretty cool, huh?

Edinburgh Castle by Night

Two of my good friends have an absolutely fantastic view of Edinburgh Castle from their living room window, so a little while ago I went to photograph it, by night.   I took my camera, tripod, remote release and spirit level and changed shutter speeds and aperture until I found an exposure I liked.   Once I'd done that I opened the living room window and took my final shots.   I wanted to get as much right as I could with the window closed because it was a cold night!   The castle is always beautifully lit up at night and I manged to get a shot I really like.   Here it is:

German Market

Every year at Christmas time a German market comes to town, and everyone goes out to do their Christmas shopping, drilled mulled wine and eat waffles.   It's a beautiful market, so naturally I went along with my camera and macro lens.   Here are a few of my favorite shots from that night:

                                                Blurry, I know.   It's an attempt at artiness.

They also have rides at the Christmas market.   Here are a couple of shots of the rides:

It was cold taking those!   Very very cold!   I highly recommend a pair of silk gloves.   They're thin enough for you to operate your equipment without getting cold burns from touching cold metal tripods.

A Dynamic Christmas

My work, Our Dynamic Earth, is a wonderful building to photograph.   This is even more true at Christmas time when it's all lit up for Christmas party nights.   The usually white canvas glows pink and green and fairy lights cover the central white dome.   I took advantage of the decorations this year to get a few shots.   Here are some of my favorites:

Fireworks!

At the end of the Fringe in Edinburgh there is a fireworks display, set to music, from the Castle.   I very much enjoyed this year's performance.   The Castle was beautifully lit and I preferred this year's music to last year's.   Less obscure.   More relevent.   The fireworks themselves were good too, though not hugely different to last year's.   I, of course, took my camera, tripod and remote release along to capture the action.   Sadly the people I was with had chosen to stand somewhere that wasn't ideal for photography, but nevermind.

I'd never really photographed fireworks before and wasn't quite sure how to go about it.   I really just pointed the camera at a random patch of sky, set the focus to infinity and hoped for the best!  It went ok, though most of my photos came out looking pretty smoky.   I think this was more to do with the wind than with anything I'd done.   I also found the long lens to be unnecessary.   They weren't that high up really!  

There was only really one photo I was really happy with.   For your viewing pleasure:

I also discovered that I want a new camera!   My flat mate's newer camera had an autofocus that could cope with the lighting conditions.   Jealous!  

France

So back in August I had a lovely holiday in France.   Being in the middle of nowhere the photo oppurtunities could have been really good but sadly the weather was not on my side.   It was lovely and warm, but often hazy as is so often the case in the height of summer.   Still, I got a few good shots out of it.   Here are a few favorites:

                                                          

                                                                French countryside

                                                                   Thistle Macro

                                                 And a couple of night sky pictures


I took advantage of being in the middle of nowhere to take a few night shots.   Obviously for photos like this a tripod is a necessity and not an optional extra.   A remote release is good too, to minimise camera shake.  Seeing as stars move, it's possible to use a long exposure and capture their paths across the sky.   The above photo had an exposure of about 15 minutes.   For a stationary night sky shot it's a bit of a fine balance between freezing the stars and getting them to look bright.   I find that as long as the stars are frozen you can brighten them up a fair amount in photoshop afterwards.  The biggest problem with getting shots like these (especially with an older camera like mine) is noise.   Long exposures mean that the sensor heats up and you get hot pixels.   There are also problems with night pollution creeping in, hence the rather drastic crops of both these photos.   Still, overall I'm pretty happy with both of them.   :)