Peter Bargh

Sights & Sounds

Archive for the ‘Photography’ Category

August 23rd, 2011 by Peter Bargh

Photo365 – Day 235 – blurred vision

I bought a Micro 4/3rd to T2 adaptor to use on my Olympus E-P2 the other day. I was messing around with different lenses and added a El Nikkor 50mm f/4 enlarging lens on the front. I just held it in place and it provided a very close focus. Infinity was way out of focus. I could move it forwards to blur even more.

I started to experiment with the out of focus views and wandered around the house looking for interesting abstracts.

This was one of them…a reading lamp.

There’s a skill to getting out of focus subjects looking interesting. I hope you think I achieved that here.

August 22nd, 2011 by Peter Bargh

Photo365 – Day 234 – zoom dandelion

This is actual an old photo (transparency) but rephotographed today using a new adaptor I bought for the Olympus E-P2. The adaptor converts the micro four thirds mount into a t2 mount…and onto that I attached an old Ohnar Zoom slide duplicator. The dandelion was a portrait shot cropped due to the effective 2x magnification of the sensor and using the zoom feature of the duplicator. As I made the exposure I adjusted the zoom to give a bit of motion blur resulting in a more surreal seed head. I also applied the cyanotype preset in Lightroom.

August 21st, 2011 by Peter Bargh

Photo365 – Day 233 – Castlerigg Stone Circle

Day two of the stream of errors (see yesterday’s blog – Photo365 -Pen-y-ghent for scene setting)
The bed in the B&B was a four poster, which sounded great but it was quite small (I couldn’t lay straight as my feet pressed against the foot)…and the room, while being quaint, was tiny so the bed was against the wall and the covers trapped in I felt like a sardine.
Got up had cooked breakfast…brilliant quality and maybe things were going to go better today. Or maybe not!
The iPhone battery was almost flat and I hadn’t taken a charger. The Olympus Pen EP2 which had full power yesterday was totally flat (again no charger), so I just had my Pentax K5 to shoot with.
The polarising filter on the 77mm filter thread lens fell apart and couldn’t be used.
We headed back to Castlerigg. No sooner had we got there the weather started to pick up, but a coach of French students arrived. They spread out all over the stones so there was no clear view. They hung around for ages, and when they went the weather had gone dismal. I managed to get lots of small clusters but not a decent full ring. And the iphone gave up after just one shot.
Off to Ashness Bridge (weather hit & miss) no sun on the bridge.

Decided to head back home using sat nav but it sent us in wrong direction so we had to do a u-turn 30mins out of way.

Got back in 3 hours 30mins and attempted to download pics off my 8Gb SM card. It’s come up with error so all my K5 shots are currently in limbo. The error also caused my main drive to disappear and it took half an hour to resolve that error.
So today’s picture is the only shot I have from today, taken with the iPhone. I am now going to try and recover all my pictures taken using the K5…lots of HDR of Scalebar Force, Castlerigg and Ashness Bridge.

The shot is of Castlerigg stone circle. It’s my favourite cluster of stones and from the best viewpoint. Weather was rubbish at this point. I took some HDR brackets with the K5 later when the sun hit the stones.

August 20th, 2011 by Peter Bargh

Photo365 – Day 232 – pen-y-ghent


Just got back from a weekend out and about. I went over to the Lake District and had a lovely time, despite a catalogue of errors that has continued now I’m home.

The start Saturday…I forgot various things and had to go back home to get them…resulted in later than expected kick off.

First stop Scaleber Force nr Settle. I took a newly purchased interval timer remote to do big stopper timed exposure but didn’t take glasses and couldn’t remember which settings were need to set 3 – 5 min exposures.
Weather intermittent and not ideal for location.

Over to to Pen-Y-Ghent weather had become lovely, cloudy but perfect for walking with sun breaking through to turn landscape quite spectacular. Headed off up the hill and as soon as we got to a decent height for photos, cloud came down along with rain. Got drenched! Walked over summit and didn’t see a thing. Descent wet and miserable and no sign of summit where we’d been.

Soaked but decided to go up to Castlerigg Stone circle for evening shoot. I’d not planned this so didn’t know directions but Castlerigg nr Keswick was located in Sat Nav so we set off. Arrived at 8:45 (dusk) at Castlerigg farm…no signs for stone circle. Got OS map out, but car interior light stopped working so couldn’t locate circle on map.
Decided to call it a day and head off to B&B. Arrived at B&B in Kendal (still soaked) Changed and went out for Indian On opening the door to enter the Indian we were greeted with the loudest noise we’ve heard in a restaurant. About 11 lads, all drunk, were shouting at each other as though they were in a night club with loud music. They were discussing where there might be girls or how to pay a local a tenner for sex. Great. It might have been mildly amusing if it wasn’t deafening. They left after ten mins so the place quietened down. Finished meal and set of back to B&B. It started to rain and we’d walked so a second soaking occured.

Got back to B&B, plugged laptop in and started to look at photos but it went dead slow and I fell asleep waiting.
Picture from the day is a style at Pen-y-ghent This was taken with the iPhone as it was easier to use than the SLR while the rain was heavy and for another reason which will become clear in tomorrow’s post

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August 19th, 2011 by Peter Bargh

Photo365 – Day 231 – wide and hdr

Thought I’d play around with the wide angle lens and HDR. So here’s a close up self portrait from above using the Pentax 12-24mm at 12mm and a five exposure bracket blended in Photomatix 4.

August 18th, 2011 by Peter Bargh

Photo365 – Day 230 – primer

Rather than replace the kitchen units I thought I’d have a few years with some colour. So here’s the second layer of primer going on before they get an aubergine facelift.

iPhone and hipstmatic

August 17th, 2011 by Peter Bargh

Photo365 – Day 229 – Solar Panels fitted

Today the installation team from an energy company came round to fit solar panels to my roof. Six hours is all it took two guys to mount 16 panels.
I took advantage of the fact the scaffolding is still erected and went up to roof level to get this shot. A good cloud filled sky and hipstamatic treatment adds to the effect.

August 16th, 2011 by Peter Bargh

Photo365 – Day 228 – Scaffolding

Today scaffolding was erected ready for the men who come to install solar panels. In a few days I will begin being slightly more self-sufficient. This is the ladder and scaffolding rising to the platform the installers will work from.

August 15th, 2011 by Peter Bargh

Photo365 – Day 227 – Selbstportrait

Title borrowed from an album by one of my early musical influencers – German artists Hans-Joachim Roedelius.

The shot was taken this morning as I played around with the SLR Magic Toy lens in preparation for a review I’m writing.

It’s a 26mm f/1.4 lens that fits the Olympus E-P2

August 14th, 2011 by Peter Bargh

Photo365 – Day 226 – coal bunker

An old 60s? 70s? coal bunker photographed using the iPhone