We’d hired a car to go in to the mountains and took the road up to Roque Nublo. We stopped at various scenic points along the way and the light was at times amazing. On the walking ascent to Roque Nublo I spotted these trees backlit in the valley below. They stood out from the drab volcanic surrounds. I used the Olympus Pen EP2 with 40-150mm at the 150mm setting to get a tight crop and the most compressed perspective.
Taken while on a week’s holiday in Gran Canaria. We stopped in a bungalow at the Cordial Green Golf in Maspalomas. The first thing I noticed on arrival was the number of cats. This one had beautiful blue eyes.
A simple arrangement of uncooked spaghetti and farfalle (butterfly) pasta.
Lit from the side to give depth with an Elinchrom light fitted with a softbox
Taken with an Olympus EP2 and 14-42mm lens
Will Cheung had today off and asked if I wanted to go taking photos. So I booked the day off too and suggested we went over to Rivelin Valley as I knew the leaves would be fresh on the ground and the river has some interesting areas.
As a child I spent most of the school holidays and weekends either up Loxley or Rivelin Valley on boy adventures, so I know it well. I’ve rarely been up taking photo though and today was ideal.
As luck had it the weather was perfect – over cast and dry. Also very warm for this time of year. We parked at the old post office car park and walked back down the valley. There are various remnants of Sheffield’s industrious past, small bridges, streams that have been routed off the river, and dams.
My main task was to get some slow shutter speed waterfalls with leaves to add colour. And I got a decent collection for my files. I also found a couple of tiny fungi that were worth shooting and I’m pleased with what I got.
As the light faded we squeezed a few last shots out and then headed off over to Broomhill to Record Collector and finished the day off over the road with a curry at the Balti King.
For the blog I’m uploading a simple view of one of the slightly scary aspects of the valley as a kid – stepping stones. They seemed much further apart and dangerous as a 10 year old. Today I was just worried about slipping and knocking a hip out of place or something else middle aged!
Will Cheung emailed this morning to say he’d been to see Yes last night, and that they were playing Sheffield. I looked them up and realised the gig was tonight. So I quickly ordered a ticket and managed to get centre position in the Circle at the Sheffield City Hall.
I’ve been listening to Yes since the early 70s but I have never seen them until tonight. Shame Jon Anderson wasn’t singing or Rick Wakeman on keyboards, but the line up was solid and almost a 2 1/2 hour set was played, including all the golden oldies such as Roundabout and And You and I, plus at least one track from their new album which I hadn’t heard before.
This is them playing the opening title track from the album Fly From Here – it was a 20min long song. Prog rock lives on!
Notice Steve has his own special carpet. I wonder if that’s like a comfort blanket?
Taken with the Olympus EP2 and 40-150mm zoom set at 40mm. ISO800 so noise is quite bad.
…or a stupid idea to see what happens inside a washing machine with a fisheye lens.
Good fun trying A to get in, B to operate the camera phone, C to get the light in the right place and D to find the right angle.
I quite like this one.
I was subjected to a one hour delay on my visit to the hospital this evening for a routine check up. I’d hoped to record the delay message on the board in the background as well as the figure, but sadly the capabilities of the iPhone’s exposure system couldn’t cope. I’ve deliberately darkened the photo to give the result a more sombre feel.
It’s another iPhone / Hipstamatic shot
I went to the Whitby Goth Festival today. I decided to travel light with the Olympus Pen E-P2 and used its 40-150mm zoom. The intention was to take candids, but as usual as soon as you point the camera at anyone and they spot you they switch into pose mode. I lost count of the number of times I asked them to look elsewhere. I prefer natural looking shots than posed ones, as posed expressions in such situations tend to look false.
I got lucky with this one. It’s cropped and for some reason the bloke didn’t think I was taking his photo and only realised when I’d pressed the shutter. So what we have here is a really natural glance that fortunately looks right into the lens.
A really enjoyable day, and I got one of my favourite portraits to date taken with the iPhone, when the Olympus’ battery was exhausted. I’ve uploaded it to my ePHOTOzine portfolio
Went to Lincoln Tokyo last night for what I thought was going to be a Katy B gig with her on stage at 10:30. It was a club night…banging DJ so the sound was great but I was amongst hundreds of young revellers and felt slightly out of place. At 12am we heard she was on at 1am, at 1:30am we were told she was 30 mins away, at 2am she was just 20 miles away… she finally arrived on stage at about 3am and did a 20 minute set. To top it all some bimbo barely dressed dancers totally blocked the view I’d found. Nice one!!!!! They had very nice bodies so I guess I could have just stared at the arse in my face, but that’s not the point.
Oh and drinks are almost £5 a bottle!
And as I was taking pics at 3:10am I can count that as my photo of the day. Shot with an iPhone…I love the iphone for photography, but it really is dreadful at shooting stage lighting…as you’ll see. It was taken with a 6x digital zoom to get a decent size ms B, and that’s accentuated the crapness. So along with the worse gig ever* I post my worst photo 365 photo, and possibly my worse ever photo.
*actually seeing the Fall at the Leadmill was the worsed gig ever
Inspired by a fellow ePHOTOzine blogger, Stewart (bfgstew) I decide to get my British made BPM bellows out and connect them to my Olympus Pen EP2 via a T2 /micro 4 thirds adaptor , and mounted a Pentax 50mm f/1.4 on the front. I then poked the contraption at some bonfire toffee, but didn’t like the results enough to want to post here, so I went the whole hog in copying Stewart and pointed the set up at a camera lens. He shot a screw, while I found gold…the rear electrical contacts of the Pen lens.
I illuminated the scene with a Manfrotto Pocket LED light that I currently have to review.
I’m quite pleased with the result, especially the colourful curve of the rear element complete with colour fringing. I increased saturation in Lightroom to enhance these colours.
