August « 2009 « mikeglover

Archive for August, 2009

Yorkshire Weekend Trip

Friday, August 28th, 2009

Hi Everyone!

I have recently had a long weekend holiday in Yorkshire, staying at a farm just outside of Beverley. The site was fantastic and best my family and I have been to in a long time. We spent 4 days relaxing and I had the opportunity to practice my photography skills. I am a regular reader of Digital SLR Photography. Some of the photos in the magazine are inspirational and open my mind to new shots I can take.

The main thing that I have concentrated on is composition. Using the ‘Rule of Thirds’ to position a shot. For landscape photos I have tried to make sure that there is something interesting in the foreground that complements the main focus of the shot which is the background. An example of this is the Lighthouse. Normally I would have just taken a picture of the lighthouse as close as possible and fill the whole frame, but stepping back and looking at the surrounding allows you to experiment. Personally I think the photo of the lighthouse is much more interesting with timber in the foreground. The eye automatically looks at the timber on the beach and then travels back to the lighthouse. A small trick like this can do wonders.

Overall I have found that I’m starting to look at things in a different way when it comes to photography. I am seeing more interesting shots than before that I don’t think I would of taken. One of my favourite shots is the pier, I love the symmetry in this photo.

Below is the rest of the collection of images from Yorkshire. Enjoy and until the next time

Picture of the two lighthouses at Spurn Head

Underneath the pier. I liked the symmetry and arch to this picture.

An old boiler washed ashore with a tanker in the background.

Pictures of norman chruch taken from Skipsea Castle. Use B/W to bring out the brickwork.

Tags: holiday, Photography, yorkshire
Posted in Photography | Comments

Butterflies & Closeup filters

Monday, August 10th, 2009

I recently purchased some Closeup filters to go with my Nikon D40x. Closeup filters are an inexpensive way of getting good macro pictures of plants, insects etc. The other option is to buy a dedicated macro lens which start from £150. These closeup filters only cost me £12 from Ebay and fit on to your existing lens to produce a similar effect.

A limiting factor in any lens when you try to take macro (closeup) photos is the focusing distance. A 55-200mm telephoto lens is very good at bring distant objects closer and in more detail but they generally have a minimum focus range of 1 metre.

When I apply a closeup filter to my 55-200mm lens it shifts the focusing range so that I’m no longer able to focus on infinity (distance objects) but I am now able to focus much closer than 1 metre. Applying the +1 filter allowed me to focus down to about 20 cm, which is a big difference. Now the set that I bought has a +1 +2 +4 and +10 filter. As you can imagine the higher the number the much stronger the filter will be and the closer you can get to your subject. You can get to the stage where your still focus only 1cm away. But… as with many things, there is a drawback. The drawback with applying a stronger closeup filter is that your depth of field (the amount that is in sharp focus, click here for more information) is limited.

Here are some pictures that I taken in my garden showing how affective a closeup filter is and what results you can get from them.

Enjoy and thanks for reading my article.