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Photo of Oyster Catchers Porthleven

Abstract bird Photography

In my ever expanding Cornwall photography range I thought I would include a few abstracts and try and explain a little about how and why this was captured.

Abstracts get a beating by many. A few argue Photography is meant to portray a subject to its very best and should show a clear representention of the object being recorded in a factual way – meaning they want clear difined photographs of a subject, your standard picture postcard type image.

Many photographers argue this point. Photography as an art form should do exactlly what is said upto the FACTUAL bit.

This iamge of Oyster Catchers, it’s no use to a birder who wants to visually pick out a bird standing in a stream, however it portrays so much about the bird, more that the average “portrait” shot you would see in a bird spotting book. The environment is caught in this image, the speed across the water and the rapid wing beat are all shown clearly by this picture. You can even see the proxmity and pattyern they fly in….

So how was the photograph taken? here is the exif data for this image

• Exposure: 0.1 sec (1/10)
• Aperture: f/5.6
• Focal Length: 190 mm
• ISO Speed: 500

The shutter speed has been slowed down and the camera panned with the birds. This gives you the streaked background, the main body of the birds sharpness, yet you can see the motion in the wings. The knack is panning the camera. You need to hold the camera steadily moving your whole body in the direction of the subject. It takes a while to get it right and I have found the best practice is on moving cars, you get lots of shots and you know which plane they are moving in.

To buy this photograph follow this link: – Cornwall Photographs for sale

High Key Orchid

Strobist photo

Learning to use off camera flash units has to be one of the most interesting aspects of modern digital photography. The knowledge you learn, shooting light box images, can open up a whole new world for your portrait work.

I wanted to produce a high key photograph of this Orchid to produce a very modern contemporary photograph. Balancing the back-light took a few attempts until I got an image that I was happy with, but after a few trials I got this photograph that I was very happy with.

Coloured Smoke

A photo of Coloured Smoke

This photograph is a first attempt for me and I have learnt a lot already from this trial.

The basics are:  you need a fast shutter speed with the right amount of lighting to capture the detail of the smoke, and the wonderful patterns it makes. Combined with a bit of tweaking afterwards…

This image is suffering quality because I used a natural light source that was not bright enough, hence I had to increase the cameras iso setting to compensate. This has created the slight graining effect you can see. I want a very sharp, detailed capture. Better luck next time I guess.

Please share any smoke photographs you have or similar abstracts.