Tuesday 11 November 2008

October submission - 2


I found these in St Albans Cathedral, and just loved the colours and the way they were light by the sun coming through the windows. The light only lasted long enough for me to get a couple of shots.

October Submission - 1


Bit of a late post; sorry for that. Anyway here's my gorgeous little boy, who was a great model, especially as I was using studio lights.

Tuesday 4 November 2008

Terraforming


Milton Keynes Central Station
Originally uploaded by mafiu
Not sure if I'm going to be allowed to enter this one - but I did take the original source pictures and all of the photoshop work is my own work - so here you go. Better viewed big..

Monday 27 October 2008

MK Central


MK Central
Originally uploaded by mafiu
Since I saw someone else do one of these I've wanted to do one, and with the amount of windows in the Milton Keynes station, and decent clouds this was worth a shot.
I didn't like it at first, but as I kept on looking at it on my flickr feed it grew on me - so here it is.

Wednesday 7 May 2008

Submission: Ducks Away



Didn't mean to take a photo of a duck, but when I was out and about this one obligingly decided to pose for me. Luckily my camera was pointing in the right direction at the right time, for a change! And no, I didn't do anything to it, to make it do this (as one person suggested!).

Submission: Cold War


Cold War
Originally uploaded by mafiu
Last weekends assignment was a 'Photo from the bank holiday weekend' type of assignment - Well here is my attempt. This is a Royal Observer Corps Listening post on the outskirts of Middleton Stoney.

Slightly photoshoped to give an HDR effect as the sky was lovely.

One day I'll photoshop it properly.

I took some pictures inside the bunker as well - but these weren't anything more than snaps with on camera flash. See them on flickr here.

Tuesday 25 March 2008

Submission: Homage, if only..


if only..
Originally uploaded by mafiu
Here I am, my version of this picture here.

I didn't have a round table, or a lamp I could use as a light, so I ended up using a ... well that would spoil it. I was trying to go for the specific effect of the original, but put things in slightly different positions.

The hardest part of this was getting the camera to auto focus when I wasn't in the chair. In the end I thought I had the frames in the bag, packed everything away, got changed, (bearing in mind I was doing this at around 2am so I wouldn't get stared at) and moved the furniture back into position... Only then did I port the pictures back into the computer and realise I was slightly blurred... Dang.. So at this res its not too bad, and theres a lot of Photoshop twiddling to try and sharpen the image, as well as desaturated it slightly.
Quite happy with it - but this wasn't the exact one I wanted to do and like yerself this was a lot harder than I thought. Least I could get away with being a bloke in this one!

A different picture, based on an idea by McNeney, is here.

Submission: Homage


I found this assignment a lot more difficult than I initially thought. I think it was because I found it hard copying someone's work, who obviously puts a lot of thought into the reason behind each photo. As I didn't have that same connection, I found it difficult to replicate. I decided not to copy the photo completely as I wanted it to be my own interpretation; so the hands are different, as is the angle of the photo. It was quite tricky getting a pose, which looked natural, and even this looks a bit staged. The Photoshop tweaks were minimal; just a slight adjustment of levels and then a colour cast; sepia plus a little bit of red, as that is the colour of the fabric, which I also wanted to convey. I also wanted to keep more detail in the hands; they seem a little burnt out in the original (but that could just be my screen).

Wednesday 19 March 2008

Assignment. Homage

Find a picture on flickr by the following photographer:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/maryannemc/

Now produce another photo in homage of the first . Try and capture something in the original and replicate it. Photoshop is allowed but not to add elements of the source image into the new image.

Deadline Tuesday 25th March 23:59

Sunday 20 January 2008

Submission: Open


Holetown is one of our favourite haunts in Barbados and full of chattel houses. Each one is painted a different colour combination, and I decided to take photos of every single one to make up a series of images. I took all the photos just straight on and then cropped and rotated them in Photoshop just to make them more interesting. I like this one as the lighting is interesting and the leaves add a bit of interest.

Submission: Tree



Was trying to get a good imageof a banana tree, but it proved to be really difficult. The tree was quite untidy, and my lens just isn't wide-angled enough to get a good photo. In the end I decided to concentrate on small details, in particular leaves and also the bunches of bananas. Little light was reaching the bananas, so that didn't really work either, but the sun was shining through the leaves, and looked quite effective. I like the way this one ripples in the top left corner.

Submission: Happiness


Somebody had left this chair in exactly this position on the beach, so I couldn't resist taking a photo of it, and for once had a willing model!

This beach was called Foul Bay, but was far from it, being completely deserted (apart from this chair) and absolutely stunning. I could have quite happily stayed there the whole day.

Sunday 13 January 2008

Holiday Assignment



Oh well. Decided to upload these making tomorrow the deadline.
Happiness.
Tree Hugger 2
Here is my 'Happiness' photo. Now the observant among you may notice that I probably didn't take the photo. Lets say I was the artistic director. I used a voice operated camera and lightstand. This had the SB-24 off to camera left on 85mm. The camera was my friends K-10D. I actually wanted more of the tree, with the light fading the trunk in and out of the picture - but in the end I was happy with this one. Next time I would have directed the model to hold his hand slightly differently - because now I notice it looks weird.

Tree
Next is my 'Tree' picture. I was tempted to just use the one above, but in the end I used a slightly different picture as I wanted to use the sunset.
Tree and Sunset
Again SB-24 was camera left, approx 45 degrees. I was trying to get the sunset in and capture the colours, but needed some foreground interest. Decided not to go for the obvious silhouette shot, so lit up the tree. I was first of all intregued to how green the trunk was. This didnt look green in the available light so the only thing I can think is that there is some strange effect going on with the orange sunset and the daylight flash and the balance brought out the green. Again on my friends K10D.

Open Picture:
Aliens in the Woods.

Aliens in the Woods
My final assignment picture, taken a few minutes after the picture above. Yet again SB-24 to camera left but this time way in front of me. If you look very carefully you can see Rowan's silhouette to the side. What I love about this is the colours in the sky. I've been itching to get up to these woods in sunset for a long time, but since its been the early nights the weather hasnt been nice enough. The flash actually drowns the available light, which wasnt too dark. I also like the way the trees are partially lit - giving a sort of stone henge sort of effect.

Ok - so all of these were taken at the same night. I did take some more pictures, you can see the best of them here, but as I was so ill over the holiday these were all I could manage - but I am pleased with them.