Summer Storms

Hey Surfers!

It's been incredibly hot where I live recently so I've been spending my lunch breaks relaxing by the riverside and soaking up some vitamin D.  

All of that sunshine, however, prompted an enormous thunderstorm last night which lasted until the early hours of the morning. Before I went to bed curiosity got the better of me; I wanted to see if I could capture
the lightning in a photograph. We've all seen the amazing pictures of lightning storms online and I had to try my hand at it.

It took a very long time, a numb arm and a hundred pictures of blank sky before I managed two shots of lightning; however on their own they weren't particularly impressive...

.. so I decided to combine them, along with another picture I took that evening, to make a better image. 

I followed the tips on this Youtube video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lgLkE_Rl6G8 by Lynda.com and  managed to create a photograph of this beautiful summer storm.

Summer storms...

This was my first attempt at a composite/layered image and I'm excited to try more in the future. I definitely recommend Lynda.com on YouTube if you, like me, use Photoshop Elements.

Taking photographs of lightning takes a vast store of patience but the end result can be really quite striking.  I have a much better understanding of how to capture the image for the next time there is a storm, but let's hope that isn't for a while! I'd like as much sunshine as possible please :)

Enjoy your summer everyone!

Love E

Someone did not like the storm...

Side note: If you're going to try taking pictures during a storm make sure to be safe and don't go anywhere where there would be a risk of being hit. I took my pictures from the front door.

Night Owl

Hey Surfers,

Today's post is going to be a short one as I am feeling slightly under the weather. I didn't really know what I wanted to shoot this week but, as I had a long nap during the day, I found myself wide awake at about 12 am...so I took my camera into the garden and had a play about with some slow exposure photographs.

As far as concepts go I didn't really have one, but I did have some fun experimenting with light and darkness. Hopefully next time these pictures will have improved. :)

I like the way this one looks like a little creature returning home.

Can we say light pollution :P

I used the torch on my phone to illuminate the foreground and also for the light painting. It wasn't nearly as straight forward as I had initially thought...

 These "escaping genie" pictures are my favourite. I had to be a bit creative to get enough light in the image. After drawing the line of the genie I had to put my hand over the torch, then just before the camera finished capturing the light, I'd flash the torch over the whole scene so that the tea pot would be visible.I had to take the picture quite a few times to get the result I wanted.

Taking these pictures was a lot of fun, but you do need to have patience. I'm hoping to try again soon when I have thought of an interesting concept.

Thanks for reading. You can now follow this blog on Bloglovin, just type in Lit-Lilyx :)

Make sure to check out this new blog: Memoirs of a Philistine! It's a refreshingly witty take on the arts, link at the top of the page :)

Love E

She wouldn't stay still...

A photographer always has muddy jeans...

Afternoon Surfers,

After a long week I've been enjoying a lazy weekend :)

Yesterday I thought I'd experiment with the manual mode on my camera. I confess that I am usually quite lazy and keep my camera on auto. The few times that I have used manual mode my pictures have come out terribly...but since I was at home I had the time to figure it out.

I went out into the garden to take a few snaps and they all turned out like this...

I went back indoors after a bit and checked my photography guide to refresh my memory on aperture, shutter speed and white balance. I use the one below, its taught me quite a bit. 

The book definitely helped as the next few pictures turned out much better.

Other than bees there wasn't very much in my garden to photograph, so I decided to take a walk by the riverside to get in some more manual practice.

These two pictures were shot using the selective colour function on the camera. I'm really not sure why there was a chair just sat here on the path but it was an interesting shot.

The sky was beautiful as I walked past, but as it was quite bright I had to play about with the camera settings so that the sun beams and clouds would show up. This meant that the river and trees became silhouetted but I was happy with the over all result.

The title of this post came to my whilst taking this picture. I saw the baby bird swimming toward me and the only way to get a good picture was to kneel down in the grass. It has been raining quite a bit recently so the grass was sodden and the path was churned mud, I wrecked my jeans but the end result was worth it :)

This is one of my favourite images. I was still working out the dials on my camera and, as I didn't have the aperture as high when the sun peaked out, the camera left the background very black and highlighted the leaves. The dimensions in this image make it very striking.

This was another selective colour image, the plant was growing on the underside of a bridge on the riverbank, so I had to angle my camera over the water, knelt in yet more mud :)

I had gone to the river with the hope of seeing some interesting wildlife, I've seen herons there before, but there was nothing really around. I was getting a little bored, so took off my pocket watch necklace and decided to play around with a few shots on the bridge.

Where are the fairies?!

I had to take this picture several times to get the lighting right. It has been photo-shopped to darken the background and enhance the colours. Quite happy with the final image.

Another selective colour image

 Another image which makes it appear to be close to sunset, it was actually very bright out.

I walked for over an hour before I decided to head home. I think I have a much better grasp on manual mode and how to use it to make a picture look the way you'd want. I still have more practice to do though.

See you next week!

Love E