Out for Coffee

Last weekend I took a break from the thesis writing I've been doing lately and headed out to Dalkey to meet a friend of mine and of course I took my camera along. We wandered along the coast in search of a seal we had seen earlier in the day and ended up following a yacht which was slowly making its way south.

Yacht and Dalkey Island

It was a typical "soft" day in Ireland with plenty of clouds and the occasional rain shower. During one of these showers we sheltered in a coffee shop called Mugs, which I highly recommend and this gave me a chance to play with my 35mm 1.8 lens again. Shooting wide open allowed me to capture our food and drink with a really shallow depth of field and gave me results I really liked. I'm sure if I had more time to play around before our coffees got cold I could of achieved better but I was just glad to get a few photos for the first time in a while. 

Redesigning Smugmug

I have had a Smugmug account now for 4 months and after initially going with the default theme before I decided last week a change was in order. The black theme that is the standard smugmug was good but I felt that a lighter colour would really make my photos pop. I love smugmug, every since I was first pointed to it from Trey Ratcliffs Stuck in Customs blog in the summer of 2010. I think the way people have their portfolios setup there is fantastic. And one of the great things is that all the sites are unique. That is because of the number of ways there is to customize your site. 

First of all you can a professional site done by anyone who specializes in CSS or if you feel confident enough in your own coding skills there is an advanced customization section that will allow you to build your own site. Me, well I'm a photographer and a chemist and don't even know what CSS stands for without googling it so I went the Easy Customization route. 

By selecting Control Panel from the Tools on your homepage, you can select the 2nd last tab which is customize. As you can see from the picture above there are plenty of options under the customization section here,

• Bio - fairly self explanatory really, tell your adoring fans about yourself
• Easy Customizer - the option I choose, and what I'll explain further
• Advanced Customizer - where the CSS experts can go and play
• My Themes - build your own themes, again a knowledge of CSS required
• All-Page Themes - this is where you can select one of the many, great-looking, themes that Smugmug has ready for you to select

Selecting edit at the Easy Customizer line brings up the preview screen (see below) where on the left you can see what your edits will look like on the right giving you various options.

All the edits that are made can be saved and previewed in this pane and when you are done, you can save your edits or publish your changes straight away or if you hate the changes you've made just start all over again. The options on the right make changing your Smugmug site to the way you want it very very simple. 

So lets go through the options;

Basic Appearance:

This lets you select light or dark and depending on your theme selected will change it accordingly. I've selected the default theme so my background comes out white and the dark option will make the background black. 

Browser:

The browser options allow you to select what is displyed in the browser title and in the bookmarks.

Header:

The header section is one the sections where you can really make your mark on the site. 

The first option is to show/hide the smugmug header, I like to have mine hidden as I don't think it fits in with the scheme of my site.

Next is the custom banner section. Here you you can choose your banner to be either text or an image. If you choose an image, you navigate to an image on your computer to upload. If you choose text, there are plenty of options here. In the field you marked Text, enter what you want to be displayed e.g. Damian Synnott Photography. You can then select your font, font size, colour and the alignment. The best thing is that you see it all update in the left pane as you make changes.

The click to URL lets you set where your visitors go when they select the banner, mine sends my viewers back to the hompage. 

The navigation bar is an excellent tool and one I will deal with toward the end of this post. 

Background:

Here you can select what you want as your background. I selected just a block white colour but you can also choose a custom image from your computer or one of the default backgrounds that Smugmug provides for you. Looking around the many many Smugmug sites you can see what people can do with backgrounds to really make their site stand out.

Text:

The text options allow you to select the font and colours for the text you will use on your site. By clicking on the colour panel it will bring up options to enter the hexadecimal colour code or select colours from the rainbow selection on offer.

Photos:

The photos options allow you to select the border colours of your photos. 

One of the great things about Smugmug is it allows you to disable right clicks on your photos, which stops people downloading your photos. Here you can send them a nice message if you want!

Footer:

Here you have no choice but to leave the Smugmug brand on your set. You can select whether or not to show the full or mini Smugmug footer.

Of course you can always upload a custom footer from you computer. 

Now back to the navigation bar thats seen in the header options. When you select navigation bar builder this window pops up

Here you add as many as titles to your navigation bar. In the left box you give it whatever name you want. I have mine titled galleries, journal, black and white and cityscapes. In the second box, you can select a number of options, including URL (where you select your own URL) or you can point the title to any of your galleries or your own URL if you want. For example I use to journal link to point to this blog. 

The other options allow you to select font, font size, colours and all sorts of appearance options. 

So thats how I customized my Smugmug site, made it match my blog and now I'm really happy with its appearance. It's so easy even I could do it. 

Children of Lir

The Children of Lir is an Irish legend that we all learn and read about growing up. The basic premise of the story is that the 4 children of King Lir are turned to swans by their jealous stepmother and forced to roam the lakes of Ireland for 900 years.

There is a statue on the median on Dame St in Dublin commemorating the story and because of the traffic flowing through the area, its an interesting area to do long exposures and capture light trails.

Children of Lir

This first shot is a 13 second exposure in which I tried to capture the traffic moving in both directions. 

Children of Lir

This second shot is a 6 second exposure and I was lucky to catch a bus moving across the frame, while crossing the road, giving a really interesting effect. The long exposure gives the water from the fountain a nice milky look. 

I have previously written a post on how I shoot light trails and if your interested in trying them out, you should give it a read. 

Nik Dfine

I recently downloaded the trial version of Nik's Dfine software and after 2 days I had to buy it. This software is incredible and for the money really boosts the range of my entry point SLR - the Nikon D3000.

Previously when using this camera in low light, with a 35mm 1.8 I still had to push the ISO up to 800 to get, for me, an acceptable shot. This little camera is great and I love it but pushing its ISO to 1600 or Hi 1 always gave me pictures that I wasn't happy with. But since I got this software, my perspective has changed. I'm now going over some of my old shots and recovering them and making prints that I love.

 London Eye - Before Nik Dfine

Londen Eye - After Nik Dfine

This shot was taken handheld with my 35mm 1.8 at ISO 800. I really liked the photo and after applying Nik Dfine, the print I made at 8x10 looked fantastic. 

New Orleans Musician - Before Nik Dfine

New Orleans Musician - After Nik Dfine

This shot was taken in a Bar in New Orleans, this guy playing was amazing. I took this at ISO 1600 and after processing with the software it really picked this photo up. 

So if your having some trouble with noise in your photos I highly recommend downloading the 15 day trial of Nik Dfine and give it a shot. 

D

Shoot for the Moon!

The Moon

There is nothing like looking up at the sky and seeing a full moon on a cloudless night. For as long as the moon has been orbiting the earth it has had a huge influence on our planet and captured the imagination of man. Capturing the moon in a photo isn't too difficult either but there is one key thing you must remember and that is the light on the moon is sunlight so you need to expose properly. 

I took the shot above with my camera mounted on a tripod and at 200 mm. Ideally you'd use a longer lens but that is the longest in my current arsenal. I had the camera set on manual and set to f/8 with a shutter speed of 1/250th of a second. ISO was set to 100 to keep the noise to a minimum. 

This shot is heavily cropped because of the focal length used but the detail in the image is still remarkable. So next time you have a clear night, go take a photo of the moon, its quite a satisfying experience and when you go back and look at the photo and the detail you've captured, it'll always put a smile on your face. 

D

My Favourite Flower

I've always enjoyed taking pictures of flowers, something about the deliberation, setting up and the time it takes setting and taking the photo really appeals to me. In the year I've been taking photos with a lot of care, I've paid more attention to the changing of the seasons and how our garden and city parks change.

This photo of a water lily is one of my favourite flowers I've captured. I was on holidays in Bordeaux, France so didn't have all my gear with me. We were wandering around the Jardin Public and behind the botanic gardens we came across this lily in a pond. I kneeled down and set my ISO to 800 so I could get a faster shutter speed. An aperture of 9 kept the green leaves enough in focus to my liking. I set the white balance to cloudy in post to warm up the photo. The colours of the lily, I found to be quite unusual and I often find myself coming back to view this photo. So as the title suggests, this is my favourite flower photo, so far....

Sold My First License

 

Samuel Beckett Bridge and Convention Centre, Dublin  .

Nearly a year to the day since I started shooting with my DSLR and I sold my first license. It all came about in an unexpected way. I have many photos on flickr and I recieved a flickr mail from a website designer in Cork who was looking for an image of the Samuel Beckett bridge in Dublin. We emailed back and forth for a few days working out a price based on how the image would be used etc. This was a really new thing for me so I consulted websites including Getty (which suprisingly has no images of the Beckett bridge) and Current Photographer and I'm still not sure if I priced appropriately.

Yesterday the cheque arrived and the photo is now up on the 'Franc in the city' website. I was amazed at how easy the whole process was and of course was very chuffed to have my photo selected and used. The whole event really highlighted the importance of keywording all your photos so they can be found. Now I must finished tagging all my smugmug photos.

Story of the shot - Frog Reflections

Frog Reflections

One of the most common pieces of advice I hear and read to get better photos is to change the angle. Reach high, get down low, don't just shoot from eye level. That piece of advice ran through my head as I visualised this shot. I was walking through my girlfriends garden when I noticed two frogs in the pond. They seemed to be resting and as I watched they didn't move at all. The view gave me the impression of old Roman statesmen relaxing in the bathes contemplating affairs of state. I took a few shots of the frogs but wasn't overly happy with them. 

So I grabbed my long lens, my 55-200 and lay flat on my stomach beside the pond. I tried to steady myself as much as possible and fired off a few shots handheld. A few came out and in others the focus plain shifted so that plants and not the frogs head that was in focus. When I loaded the image onto my laptop I was delighted to see that the frogs reflection had been preserved and I feel like that contemplative mood I picked upon from the scene was preserved in the photo. A little cropping and sharpening in Aperture and this is the final image. 

Changing the angle gave me the photo that I wanted and it's something I always try to remember when visualising a shot now. 

You can view this photo on flickr too.

D

One weekend, one prime lens

So last weekend I took a trip to London to catch up with some friends and take in a show. I was trying to travel light so decided to take just one lens, my recently acquired Nikon 35mm 1.8 prime lens.

I have been reading lots about how great prime lens with plenty of people saying how the lens never leave their cameras etc. I must admit that since I bought the lens I haven't given it that much use, opting rather to shoot with my 18-55mm kit lens or my 55-200mm. I guess I just liked being able to zoom.

So, off I went and packed my Nikon D3000 with the 35mm lens in my one bag that ryanair allows on the plane. We arrived late on Friday evening and spent the evening in the pub catching up and I forgot about my camera as the ale flowed. My first chance to test out the lens and especially the low light capability was sitting in the Adelphi theatre waiting for the start of Love Never Dies, the amazing sequel to Phantom of the Opera.

 

Adelphi Theatre, London

I had to open the lens right up to f1.8 and turn the ISO on my camera to 1600 to get the shot. Unfortunately the D3000 doesn't perform too well at high ISO so there was a lot of noise in the image. I couldn't take out my gorilla tripod and shoot again without being told off for using my camera.

After the show we went to find a pub to watch the Ireland v All Blacks but I managed to catch a few handheld shots of Trafalgar Sq on my way past. This was really where the lens came into its on. Using any other lens I could never have captured these photos without using a tripod and remote shutter.

Trafalgar Square, London

Trafalgar Square Fountain, London

After seeing some these photos, I finally realised the potential of this little beauty. I loved the fact that I could walk around on holidays and not be lugging a load of gear with me and be able to capture shots that normally I'd set up on a tripod for. During the day this lens is great, as sharp as anything I've experienced with my other lenses.

Goose, London

The one thing about traveling with the one lens was that I missed the longer zoom when we went to St. James Park beside Buckingham Palace and all the animals that live there were rather photogenic. The 35mm meant I had to get quite close to the animals to photograph them and as friendly as they were, they weren't that friendly. On my final night I got a chance to test the lens with my little Joby Gorilla tripod and some night shots. Being able to shoot at ISO 100 greatly reduced the noise in my shots and allowed me to get some great photos. 

London Eye

The weekend away with just the prime lens, really opened my eyes to the potential of this little beauty and also the benefits of traveling light. Having just the D3000, a light camera anyway, and the prime lens felt like carrying nothing at all while wandering around the big city. This weekend I'll be taking it and it alone to a friends dinner party to shoot the food and guests.

I have more photos of the trip up on Smugmug

Now, back to thesis writing....

D

Shooting Light Trails

So for my first blog post I decided to talk about one of my favourite things to shoot.....light trails.

Light trails are seen at night when you let a light source move across the frame while the shutter is open for more than a few seconds. One of the most common and pleasing sources of these light trails is traffic!

Custom House, Dublin. 

The first thing you need to produce a light trail shot is of course a source of the light trail. Usually an area where the traffic is frequent is best so any city street corner will do. In terms of equipment, the most important thing you will need is a tripod. And a steady one at that.

When setting the camera up I always shoot light trails in Aperture Priority mode and set the aperture between f11 and f14. You need to have the aperture set as such to give a shutter speed of about 8 - 15 seconds while keeping the exposure correct for the background. Firing off a test shot to ensure the background is correctly exposed is always a good idea. The camera should also be set to a low ISO to prevent too much noise in the long exposure. 

Ulster Bank, Dublin.

When your set and composed and have fired off your test shot, you are ready to go. Ideally you will use a remote shutter release to fire the camera but if this is not possible you can use the timer on your camera, this will prevent camera shake. Once the traffic is about to move across your frame, fire the camera and watch as the traffic passes and leaves wonderful light trails across the scene. The traffic will be moving at sufficient speed that you will never see cars or buses in your picture. For added interest look at trying to capture emergency vehicles to add blue lights to the traditional red and white colours. 

N11 motorway, Wicklow.

The most important thing when attempting to capture light trails is to have patience. It will take many shots to get the composition just right, the traffic perfect and the exposure exactly as you want it. But all that patience will deliver results you will be truly happy with. 

All the best,

Damian