My Crucible ~

Hi Surfers,

I have been so busy lately! I have a huge project that I'm working on which has had me travelling all over the place, not to mention one of my cousins is getting married in the next few weeks so my world is full of dress shopping, family dinners, speech writing and the like.

 I'm sure you can guess that, although my camera has been accompanying me for my project work I haven't been able to shoot anything blog worthy, but still wanted to put up something for you all now that I have a day or so of down time.

The reason that this post is called 'The Crucible' is because it is just that; a melting pot of pictures from different years and cameras which I wanted to share. I hope you enjoy them.

This was taken on my nephew's first birthday party which had a red and black colour theme. I was having a lot of fun with the selective colour function on my camera to really make everyone's red outfits stand out. Some of the little ones abandoned their shoes after we ate and I thought they made a pretty adorable picture.

One of the few times I have been up before the sun, most likely from pulling an all nighter! The fields near me always have this haunting mist covering them in the early hours; that, coupled with the eerie blue tones made this something I just had to get out and capture.

This was one of my early pictures from when I was just becoming interested in photography. I called it 'Vanity' and borrowed my sister's camera to take it. It's quite interesting to look back at this and see how far my work has come :)

I have always been quite proud of this photograph. It was taken on my bridge camera on a trip to London with a friend; other pictures from that trip can be found here. 

One of the reasons that I hadn't posted this previously was due to the disgusting amount of frog spawn which covered the leaves surrounding the water lily and a large fly which was resting on one of the petals. However now that I'm much more proficient with Photoshop I've managed to remove a lot of those flaws and am finally pleased with the final image.

This final one was taken shortly after I purchased my DSLR and was just a test of one of the effects. The colours really jump out at you and I love my cat in the background with her glaring eye.

I hope you enjoyed this post, Surfers. I'll be done with everything come May and can focus a little more on some exciting summer blog posts. Don't forget to follow me on Twitter, Instagram and Bloglovin! All of the information is in the side bar.

Love E

x

Big lenses and Jellybeans

Hey Surfers,

I am finally back with a new blog post! Sorry about the delay, I have have completely stumped for ideas to post so my cameras have been being neglected.

Luckily, one of my colleagues in the office recently lent me a 55-300 mm zoom lens to try out with my DSLR. I was quizzing them about whether I should purchase one of these lenses myself, as I only own a 18-55 mm, and they very kindly offered to lend me their Tamron Zoom lens for a week so I could decide if I really wanted to invest.

Of course I had to take advantage of this new piece of equipment and write up a long overdue blog post!

Comparison of lenses 

The lens felt enormous as I was used to my much smaller 18-55 but I was excited to try it out. One of the reasons I wanted to pick up a zoom lens was due to the harvest moon which was out recently. It was so beautiful and many photographers around the country got amazing pictures; however my little lens couldn't cope and I got terrible shots. After being lent the Tamron  the moon was beginning to wane but I did manage to get the below image.

Waning Harvest Moon

After getting a picture like this I was looking forward to testing the lens out again but the week got away from me and before I knew it I had almost no time left with it! I had honestly given up being able to try it out properly...however, on the way home from work today, I was demolishing some jelly beans when I came across one which had an interesting shape. I was just going to take a silly picture for Instagram but, after getting an image on my phone, I remembered that my colleague had told me that this particular lens had a macro mode. A few minutes later I had set up my camera and tripod and snapped this"delicious" (forgive the pun) picture.

Cat beans

I wanted to try more macro shots so grabbed a packet of colouring pencils left over from my cousin's second birthday party and, after tying them up with my hair band out of fury, got these images.

I really love the soft blur in these images. I had never been able to manipulate the focus so easily with my other lens and it was something which used to drive me crazy! Below is a "behind the scenes" picture taken with my phone so you are able to see the set up and distance I had to use to get these shots.

Now that autumn is rolling in it is getting darker much earlier but I wanted to try out the zoom capabilities again so went into the back garden to try and find something to shoot. I had intended to capture the Red Kites and wild rabbits which live around my house but they were nowhere to be found so I had to make do with what was nearby. Enjoy.

I was using manual mode for this shot but it came out much too light so I have had to use Photoshop to correct the image.

Now for the final image

This last picture, whilst showcasing the Tamron's fantastic zoom capabilities, I found quite boring so

I had some fun with the effects on Photoshop. The field in the picture is actually quite large and from where I stood the cows were pinpricks.

My final opinion on the Tamron lens is this: I was very impressed with all of its capabilities, however without a tripod and self timer on your camera it is incredibly easy to blur these images (which my colleague did warn me about).

 I'm a little undecided if I will be purchasing a 55-300 mm zoom as my next lens as part of me would like even greater zoom functionality, though the price does then sky rocket. The lens I have been looking at (which is a 55-300 mm) is just under £150.00. It may well be a case of getting a smaller  lens and becoming more adept with this type of photography before moving on to something with telescopic capabilities XD

Anyway, thanks for reading, Surfers. I'll be back the next time inspiration strikes; sorry that I can no longer promise weekly posts.

Enjoy your weekends!

Love E

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

The Collection

Evening Surfers,

Today's post is going to be somewhat different than usual; I thought I would share with you all the equipment I use for my photography. Before I purchased my Nikon DSLR I did a lot of research and looking around at different cameras, mainly trying to find pictures taken by the ones I wanted to buy.This post is partially for those who are looking to get their first camera but don't really know which way to go. 

All of these "reviews" if you will, are entirely based on my experiences with the cameras; thought I'd let you know what I found out. :)

I have taken the same pictures, as best I could, with all three cameras and they haven't been edited at all. The pictures of the cameras, however, have been and were all taken with my phone.

I use three different cameras which I'll list below:

 This FujiFilm A170 A180 10.2MP compact was my first camera.

I purchased it from Argos back in 2010 for around £60.00. It's perfect for parties as it fits right into the back pocket of my jeans, and for days when you don't want an enormous DSLR hanging around your neck. It's also a great starter camera, very accessible and easy to master.

 I had a lot of fun with this camera when I was starting out, but did consider giving it away once I upgraded, I'm glad I kept it around though. The one issue I have with it is that it DEVOURS  batteries! so make sure to keep a supply handy.

I picked up this FujiFilm Finepix S2980 14MP camera just after I finished Uni, roughly two years after buying my compact. It was £139.00 from Amazon but came complete with a memory card, rechargeable AA batteries and camera bag. 

When I joined the photography society at Uni I was warned against Bridge cameras, which are bigger compacts with certain functions which are usually found on DSLRs e.g manual mode, but went against the experts and bought one. I do regret it somewhat...this camera isn't great but if you're willing to put in the effort it can produce some fantastic pictures.

It is however a bit more complex to use and I had a lot of issues with blur when using it. It would be good to get if you don't feel ready for a DSLR yet. It does help you get to grips with manual mode and I was able to learn about aperture, ISO and shutter speed.

The final camera is the most recent, I only purchased it in October last year, and is my 24.1MP Nikon D7100 DSLR (Digital Single Lens Reflex). 

I bought this from Ebay for about £750.00, brand new, the lens attached is a simple 18-55mm which was from Amazon for just over £60.00. For obvious reasons this camera produces the best photographs of the three but is MUCH more complex to use. I don't recommend buying a DSLR unless you want to take the time to learn how to use it properly; this includes mastering manual mode, starting to shoot in RAW and going in for the expense of different lenses.

Anyway, I have rambled long enough, for all of the tech specs of these cameras I believe there are other places on the internet who are much better informed than I. Below are the pictures I took to show the capabilities of these cameras, I had them all switched to auto mode.

The first shot is an indoor picture with relatively low light. All three cameras used their flashes initially but I deactivated them as they weren't needed.

Fujifilm A170 A180

FujiFilm FinePix S2980

Nikon D7100

I then took my cameras outside to see how they fared in natural light. It was nearing 7pm by this point so the sun was quite low, but not setting. Also, it became so cold that I had to run indoors and put on my winter coat! Whatever happened to May being the start of summer! XD

Fujifilm A170 A180

FujiFilm FinePix S2980

Nikon D7100

So far all doing well. As the light was fading I decided to test flash on each camera, so I shot a before and after of my key necklace.

Fujifilm A170 A180
Without flash above, with flash below.

FujiFilm FinePix S2980

Nikon D7100

 The Nikon's flash is the only one which didn't completely wash out the picture, but I don't think the others did too badly.

Finally I wanted to get a macro shot, but there was hardly any light so I had to use flash again. I would have liked to have shot more for you but it was getting late and I was freezing...also one of the cameras was beginning to run low on battery, so these are the last pictures.

Fujifilm A170 A180 

FujiFilm FinePix S2980

Nikon D7100

So as overall quality goes the Nikon wins every time, but that was a given...the other cameras however perform really well and I have shot some pictures with them that I am really proud of.

You don't really need to spend a lot to take good pictures, I mean some of the pictures were taken with my phone and they came out quite nicely; my blog banner for example was shot with my Samsung (then had  a little help from Photoshop). Remember it takes time to learn how to take a great photograph, I'm still learning how myself :)

Anyway I hope that you enjoyed this extremely long and different blog post. I will be back next week with something new.

Thanks for reading.

Love E

Nikon

Fujifilm compact

Fujifilm Bridge

For more information on cameras check out DigitalRevTV on Youtube. I've learnt a lot from them.