Reverse posting

In a little change of track, I'm posting here to let everyone know of a new collection of photos I just posted on my Facebook page - Ian Mildon Photography

Over a period of several years I made 4 separate trips to the Tall Grass Prairie Preserve near Pawhuska, Oklahoma.  Going through my photo archives, I selected 121 photos that I posted on Facebook.

In a flash

As much as possible I try to not be without a camera when I leave the house - as an absolute minimum I have my cellphone with me at all times.  This weekend saw me without my Nikon while a guest at a wedding reception.  And forever the photographer, I couldn't help but check out what the event photographers were doing in covering the reception.

The biggest surprise to me and to many, a big "faux pas" was that they were shooting with the little pop-up flashes on their Canon's.  Let me clarify, they were not using the pop-up flashes to trigger off-camera flash units, they were using the pop-up flashes as their main lighting source.   

I thought it was known within the professional, semi-professional and amateur photography circles that the use of pop-up flashes were a major "no-no" other than as triggers for additional lights.  Using them for any kind of main lighting is pretty much guaranteed to  provide the following:

1. harsh illumination of the subject
2. hard, sharp shadows
3. unflattering lighting
4. high chance of flare due to the light being so close to the lens

To put it into context, the small pop-up flash on most consumer cameras can be likened to a spotlight, whereas what you want for most types of photography is more of a floodlight.  Having a wider spread of light is much more flattering on your subject as it reduces harsh shadows and doesn't "wash out" peoples complexions.

There's a reason why the main professional cameras from Nikon and Canon do not have pop-up flashes - they're unwanted.  Speedlights and small studio strobes are the things to use for portable light sources and they are kept away from the lens as much as possible.  At a minimum, when Speedlights are used on-camera, they are usually used with either a diffuser (of some description) or a bounce card to provide a softer, wider spread of light.  

Unfortunately there seems to be too many photographers with little to no experience in using flash in their work.  Working by natural, available light is all well and good when it's available but it's also unpredictable - and also usually needs some modification via diffusers and reflectors to provide even and flattering light.  Flash on the other hand is eminently controllable and can be used either as the main source of light or as a secondary source.  Many top professionals use flash in this manner and there are a plethora of books and courses out there that cover this topic.  Above all else, the one thing a photographer needs to know and understand is LIGHT.

Delving into my archives

Recently I've been spending a lot of time in my photo archives and re-editing some of my early photographs.  As these were taken on film, I was also checking the quality of the scanning I undertook to digitize them.  Unfortunately some of them have some artifacting where the film negatives have some damage.  Hopefully I can take them into Photoshop and clean them up enough to make them usable.

Doing this also took me back in time to the 1990's and my local areas of Plymouth and Dartmoor, that I used to explore a lot with my camera.  It certainly brought back a lot of good memories for me.

Now onto what you are probably waiting for, the photographs!  So, not to make you wait any longer, here is one of my favourite photos from the time:

This old tree sits on the edge of the River Plym at Shaugh Bridge, on the edge of Dartmoor National Park in Devon, England.  And yes, it is a real "living" tree and not a piece of digitial art created on a computer.  I also have a photo showing a wider view of the tree, with the river in the foreground.  If you are lucky enough to be in the area, go check it out - I'd love to know if it's still surviving. 

Snapshots - August 4th 2013

It's way past time I posted something here for all my readers.  Sorry for the delay but there's only so many hours in the day and lately there just seems to be something else taking my attention away from posting.  To be honest, I haven't found much time to take many photos...although I did have another cross-over between my photography and day job recently.  I had the opportunity to design a graphic advertisement for an up coming event on campus and as part of this I needed to create a photograph where I had two separate laptop screens evenly lit, despite being at differing brightness levels.

I did a few test shots as a proof of concept and found that using a single flash was not sufficient to give even illumination on the foreground, back ground and both screens so that they could both be read.  Also that flash placement would be very important so as to not cause flare.  I ended up using two flashes positioned at about a 45 degree angle at each side from the screens and at about -2EV to provide enough to light the scene but not overpower it.

Other than this I've been organizing my photo archives into one big library, and re-editing some of my older photos.  And in doing this I am formulating a few ideas on combining my photos and writing to create a photo essay.  Stay tuned on this as it should be pretty interesting.

Finally, my main website has received some updates!!  Still not entirely happy with how it looks and I'll be carrying out some further changes to give it an overhaul.  I'm wanting to bring in more photo work and need to have a good web presence to attract possible customers, which is also why I've been expanding my online presence a bit more to include a profile on DevientART.  

Park Life

(Post re-edited and re-published for changes in photo editing technique)

On another recent Saturday, I found myself back at Woodward Park here in Tulsa.  While my wife wrangled our rat terrier I was off spotting photo opportunities.  As it turned out, I have quite a lot of photos to sort through of the various subjects I found.  Among them was a selection of wildlife - insect, bird and rodent that I want to share on this post.

Without much further ado, here is a small selection of the photos I took:

Lunar...See

With the recent "super" full moon, I thought it would be interesting to take a sequence of photos over the day before, the day of and the day after the full moon.  I wanted to see if there was any real difference in it's appearance over these days.

The first photo was taken with a 55-200mm zoom.  I found this was a little too short and required a pretty severe crop to give a larger moon in the shot.  The remaining photos were taken with a 300mm f4.5 telephoto. 

~ taken at 11:22pm on 6/21/2013

~ taken at 11:19pm on 6/22/2013

~ taken at 10:19pm on 6/23/2013

I found it pretty interesting how the "slight" time difference on the last photo seems to have had a fairly large impact on the colouring of the moon.  I don't know with any certainty but I would think that with it being earlier, the sunlight refracted more within the atmosphere as it lit the moon's face, picking up the colour.

As a slight aside, I noticed on the following night that there was a lot of wispy clouds in the sky when the moon was out.  The challenge was in capturing these clouds as the moon was still (pretty) full and still had lots of contrast - the camera's sensor was having difficulties capturing the full range of darkish sky, pale clouds and brightly lit moon-face.  The following photo was the best of my attempts in capturing the image presented before me.

Snapshots - June 17th 2013

It's been a pretty mixed time lately, and filled with a lot of technological issues.  I have since overcome the ones concerning my camera, now I need to deal with my ailing Macbook Pro.  

Fortunately I have been able to source a temporary workaround for my lack of laptop - albeit having to switch back to Windows as an OS.  Thankfully my Adobe subscription to Creative Cloud permits me to use either Mac or Windows to run applications.  I also was able to track down a "free" application to give me the ability to access files on my HFS (Mac) formatted backup drive from Windows.  This means I have full access to my photo archives regardless of OS platform I use.

I'm still taking photos and as of today have over 6GB worth, in alternate archives, that I have taken since having laptop issues.  To some this may sound a lot, but to some this is a small number of photos for a 2 week period!  To me, this is  my experimenting stage, where I'm having fun and practicing my photographic vision to see and capture interesting images.  I have no real direction currently in my work, although this may change at some future time, just not for the foreseeable future.  Which is not a bad thing as it gives me the freedom to explore and experiment, which in turn could lead to new opportunities.

I have to say though that it has been good to simplify my approach to photography and return to working with a single fixed focal length lens.  For the majority of my recent work, this is what I've done.  There has been a few photos taken with one of my telephoto zooms but they are in the minority.  If the image can be captured the way I want with the 35mm lens, then that's what I use; if not, I will select the best tool for the job (if I have it). 

It's been a while since I've posted any photos here, and even longer since I posted anything on my website.  To be honest, my website has been badly neglected for a while and in desperate need of a full refresh.  While I'm at it I would like to see if there are any options to pull my website and blog together under the one URL.  If I can, this would help streamline my web presence and allow for better (and more frequent) updates.  Oh, and don't be alarmed if my website goes offline, as at the very least I need to do a big overhaul and refresh of it.

I guess this is going to be a new start for me -a  new camera, a new lens and hopefully soon, a newly serviced MacBook Pro.  Stay tuned for how it all works out.