Foggy photos (part 1)

I've had an idea for quite some time to get a very specific shot in the pre-sunrise fog, however predicting fog is incredibly difficult at the best of times, but getting it thick enough to actually impact a photo is where I've struggled in the past.

New Camera!

Yes yes I know it's verging on down right stupid now, but here is camera number 5!

Gitzo Head

To get tack sharp photos you need a to make sure your camera doesn't move when the shutter is open, and when doing a landscape with a few second shutter speed a tripod is a necessity, and when you're using thousands of pounds of gear you need faith in that tripod.

I've been using a Redsnapper RSH-12 head for a while now and have to admit I haven't been too impressed; the RS-284 legs are fantastic for the price and sturdy as a rock so maybe my expectations were too high, but the head just didn't do it for me. Heavy, too much movement and a cheap feel to it just made me nervous any time I put my D3 and a big lens on.

I've been an advocate of Gitzo for a while now and have figured if you can afford it and use a tripod enough, Gitzo is the way forward, so I took the plunge and bought a Gitzo head to replace my current Redsnapper.

Enter the GH2780QR:

A little imagination goes a long way, especially in the studio.

Photography is art, and art is all about imagination, if you get that spark of inspiration you're already half way towards a great photo.

I recently ordered an  el-cheapo watch for a project (not a photographic one), it finally arrived yesterday and before I did anything else I decided to get some shots while it was still in immaculate condition.

Night shooting in Derby

Never being one to shy away from bad weather I braved the frankly awful gales and biblical rainfall to get some night shots around Derby city.

My team: the Redsnapper tripod and head, D3 and Tokina 28-70 f2.6. Weatherproofing: passed!

f/22 6/1 200 ISO

New kit pt3

More new kit before I could even post anything else interesting.

I had decided to spend no more money for a little while. Working in a camera shop and not spending money is hard work though... sooo many temptations!

New kit pt2

...and the second part of my new line up!

Nikon's legendary 105mm micro (macro).

New kit pt1

2 new pieces of equipment for my bag.

First off a mid range lens, the legendary Tokina 28-70 f2.6 lens!

Sunrise on the Park

Bit late adding this one!

I didn't go out on Thursday night (a rarity for me) and managed to wake at a reasonable time on the Friday morning. I'm lucky enough to live less than 5 minutes from a park, so I figured I'd take a walk with my camera and see what I could get.

The first thing that I noticed was how thick the fog was, unfortunately though the light was flat and the photos were a bit bland. After wandering for a good 30 minutes waiting for some good light I'd finally resigned myself to the fact that it wasn't going to happen and that I might as well take photos of something else. So I switched to my 70-200, packed up my tripod and went to see what I could get.

f2.8 1/60

Derby Festé 2012

Apparently from September 20-22nd Derby has it's own little festival, due to working I missed the majority of it (although I did see some people running up and down my street with lamp shades on their heads!). After work today I managed to catch the end of a band playing at the top of the street, ever armed with my D3 and primes I took a handful of shots.

f1.8 1/2500, 800 ISO

Richard Franklin Photoshoot

So I've eluded to a job that I've done recently; I can now post some details.

By a random stroke of luck on a train journey I met Richard Franklin who happened to be looking for a photographer, after trading cards we arranged for a photoshoot.



Here are a few from the day:

Nikon 85mm f1.8

My newest lens, one that an awful lot of people rave about, is the 85 1.8. It also, ironically, is the oldest lens in my bag!

New Cards

One of the few pieces of advertising material I condone in the beginning (or at all) is business cards; it adds that little bit of professionalism, is a great means to network and allows potential clients to be able to keep hold of your details easily.

I've bought cheap cards before from one of the well known budget card companies (vistaprint), and while it was nice to have some cards, they were lacklustre, took weeks to arrive and cost more than advertised (they added silly service charges which dragged the price up); admittedly I was quite disappointed. Learning from previous mistakes I've ordered some new cards, they cost me a little bit more for 100 rather than the 250 I had previous, however the quality is just head and shoulders above those from vistaprint.

Bruntingthorpe 26/8/2012

Today was the second of my bi-annual trip to Bruntingthorpe, and this time around I have a whole slew of new kit to use. The D3, as expected, was amazing to use!

 Fresh out of the camera (no processing/editing):

1/2500 f2.8

Not for the faint of heart!

Tomorrow is Bruntingthorpe day, and so it's through the rigmarole of charging, formatting, checking and packing for the days events.

And here is the outcome; a combination that weighs in at over 10kg! This includes my tripod, Sigma 120-300 f2.8, and in the big bag the D3 with Nikon 70-200 f2.8, D300, Sigma 12-24, Sigma 28-70 f2.8 Nikon 50 f1.8, Nikon 85 f1.8, YN-565II, Panasonic G1, monopod and all the accessories.

New addition

Today I've received the latest addition to my arsenal, a D3!

And better yet, it's had the buffer upgrade too!

On Sunday I'll be taking my bi-annual trip to Bruntingthorpe where this will be put through it's paces; paired with the Nikon 70 200 2.8 and the D300 with the 120 300 2.8 this should be a formidable setup for any airshow!

New lens!

Well I've been wanting one for years now and I've finally done it... I've gone and bought a Nikon 70-200 f2.8 VR!

That officially brings me 1 step closer to my dream team and replaces the Nikon 80-200 f2.8 that was stolen in March; if that lens is anything to go by not only will this be an absolutely cracking piece of kit, but probably my most used lens too.

I also purchased a new Tamrac Pro 12 bag for big jobs, a great bag that should hold everything and the kitchen sink!

Wedding Workflow

Having raised my actuation count by almost 500 from just a wedding ceremony alone, it requires a lot of time and effort to go through and process; like everything though if you have some sort of workflow the pace picks up and the work is considerably more consistent.

My initial attempt at processing the photos was to find photos I liked and process them individually, however whilst they looked fine alone none of them really fit in with each other; the white balance was completely different, the colours were punchy in some and muted in others and the overall mood of the photos were wildly varying.

Needless to say I soon realised I needed to process them all in the same manner...

So first things first, I needed to work out which were the photos to use, and which to bin. Shooting in burst (which in the digital day and age I completely condone) means you'll likely get 3 or 4 blurry photos, and 1 or 2 usably sharp photos, so I load up all the photos and remove the blurry ones, then I remove the inevitable awkward photos where someone has their eyes closed or isn't looking their best! Sooner or later you should end up with the best photo from each burst.

Next is to adjust the curves, these have to be done on a per-photo basis, however it's best to do all the photos one after another in order to keep things mostly consistent.

Next is the white balance; trying to keep skin tones and dress the same shade throughout all the photos is key here and again is likely to be a per-photo basis.

Next is the colour adjustments; do you want vivid colours or muted? Maybe you want to vary it a bit, I usually keep the colours relatively muted however let loose if the formals are taken with a very green background like in a park.

Finally the 'style' adjustments, these are the ones which I apply to all the photos and which define my 'style', these should be specific per photographer.

So with all that done the photos are pretty much ready for the bride and groom to view right? Well I do a little more work on all images, the finishing touches! If the images are overly noisey I'll drag them into Photoshop and run my Noiseware batch, and if they contain people I'll run them through Portraiture to smooth the skin out.

No doubt over time this will evolve as I'm sure there are better, faster and more accurate methods around but this is just how I'm working now.

Dream team

So I've spoken about my dream team kit a couple of times but the real question is what does that kit actually comprise? I think it's fair to say it's obvious that I'm looking at high end kit but Nikon seems to have made 4 lenses that just 'fit'.

So first off we'll talk lenses. The obvious lens is the 24-70mm f2.8 which covers the most common focal lengths on full frame and acts as a mid telephoto on crop models. The next lens is the 70-200mm f2.8 which picks up from the top end of the mid range lens, these two alone should be more than enough for most jobs. The next lens is the 14-24mm f2.8 which picks up from the lower end of the mid range lens (see I told you these lenses fit together), this is ideal not for landscapes but for photos where a dramatic, imposing photo is required... it also happens to be excellent for real estate (which is where this lens will be earning money). Next up is the 200-400mm f4 which will be the lens I buy if I make money in sports or birding, otherwise it's likely to remain just a dream!

So there are the 4 main lenses right there, there is also a 50mm f1.8 (or f1.4 if I get around to buying one) purely for when the lighting gets tough (ahem, weddings). The 105mm macro lens for product shots wraps up the lens section!

So what about bodies? 2 full frame bodies and 1 high speed crop body, right now that converts into a D800, a D3 and a D300, but will obviously change as new bodies come out.

Diane and Ryan

First off a huge congratulations to Diane and Ryan, I wish you both many years of happiness!

This is my first wedding since starting this blog and also the last I am booked for, so until iI start filling my kit bag I probably won't undertake any more of this type.

I have to admit I wasn't happy about the lack of backup body; I'm used to having two bodies, one with a mid range lens (28 70) and the second with a telephoto (70 200). Fortunately nothing went wrong with my kit and overall things went more smoothly than I expected.

Here is my favourite from the day!

First car shots

After a particularly bad day I decided to meet a friend and take some photos of his car.

Car photography isn't something I've done before and most of the general advice I've read regarding car photography was either out of my hands or simply not possible, however I needed something to cheer me up and I'm happiest when I've a camera in my hands, so how could I refuse?!

We drove to Bradgate Park here in Leicestershire, one of my favourite spots in all honesty for all types of nature photography. The weather was unusually good and there was an amazing sunset, so everything on the light front was working in my favour!

A static shot of the car:

f10, 1/15, 800 ISO

and an action shot with my new 120 300 2.8:

f2.8 1/320, 800 ISO

I'm rather happy with these (especially the action shot), and hopefully will get the chance to try some more in the future.

The Mitsubishi FTO 2 litre V6 is actually for sale, so the next car shots I do may be of a completely different vehicle.

Special thanks to Paaras Doshi for giving permission to shoot his car.

Test shots (Sigma 120-300 2.8)

The weather has been in my favour today (finally), so I decided to walk up to one of the local parks and see if I could get any interesting shots with my new lens... unfortunately it started dulling up and raining before I got there however there was one brave little squirrel which couldn't be deterred!

f2.8, 1/800, 800 ISO

There were some obvious front focusing issues which was a shame as the first photo I managed to get was the best for colour and a full body shot, however the fact that the eyes were out of focus was a bit of a put off. Keyed in some fine tuning in the field and it seems 100% sharper now.

Overall, very pleased indeed!

New bit of kit!

So my new lens arrived today; a 120-300mm f2.8 Sigma.

This thing is a beast!

Unfortunately because of the appalling weather I'm not going to get chance to test it for a while (boo), all I can say is it weighs an absolute tun and is built like a tank, the real test comes when I can finally get the sigma 1.4x and 2x converter and use it at an air show.

The kit so far...

So you may be wondering what kit I have right now? Well not as much as I once had, and certainly not the dream team I'm working towards, but it's a good starting place.

I'm shooting a Nikon D300, with it a third party grip. My lenses include a Nikkor 50mm f1.8 and a Sigma 28-70mm f2.8. I use a Redsnapper tripod and ball head and some Yongnuo wireless triggers (RF 603s). I have an ND8, ND graduated and a circular polariser all 77mm thread, I also have a piece of welding glass, rated at 13 (about 16 stops of light reduction).

So that's it for now, I'll be adding to this soon with any luck as I work towards the dream team (but that's for another post)!

About me

Hi my name is Rob, and this is hopefully going to be a diary of my progression from amateur to professional photographer, its mostly for my amusement but might be interesting to fellow photographers, and if I manage to help anyone along the way then that's even better!
I've some experience with paid photography, I've done a wedding and some odd jobs here and there, I've learned a lot doing so but it was all cut short in May 2012 when someone broke into my flat and stole all my kit... thousands of pounds worth of glass and sensor gone.
I've learned from that too.
So these days I work in a camera shop and am in the process of moving which leaves me very little money to splash out on replacement kit, I've managed to grab a couple of bits and pieces thanks to help from family and should be able to cover my current bookings.
Hopefully over the course of the next few months I'll have my dream team kit and resume working as a tog!