World Photography Day with Olympus at Kew Gardens 19th August 2016

Olympus Uk, who seem to be the most pro-active in organising user days, kindly gave 20 of us an opportunity to try lots of gear, with Olympus experts on hand, plus Olympus Ambassador Marcus Clarkson taking us through some of his techniques. A lovely lunch and copious tea and coffee kept us going in the afternoon.

Really enjoyed the day, grey sky gave us even lighting for the specimen flowers, but Architecture out of the question, as blue skies are necessary for external shots. I also realized that like all areas of photography trial and error is needed to get the shots you envisage.

Tried the Olympus Focus Stacking in camera, but without a tripod proved not too succesful, with my sadly shaking hands, but will try again at home..

I used a trial version of Zerene Stacker to put the shots together, and this works quickly, but if the foreground shot is not razor sharp a lot of stack benefit is lost.

A few shots I like are here, and I will definitely go again, with more ideas on what works, flower beds are not too interesting alone, and specimen shots need careful planning as to backgound colour...

The Olympus 12-40, my cracking staple lens, is a good macro choice, if budgets does not permit a 60mm purchase.

I have found the OM1-D is now favourite camera, as people know I have used a whole range of them over the years, but this feels a part of me, and has many advantages over other brands.

Hope to get more in tune with blogging again, as I have ignored it for so long.

Looking Back For a New Start

One of the things concerning me has been my vast photo library, with duplicates, rubbish and outdated shots strewn across multiple hard drives, so have decided to spend some time deleting, editing some discoveries, and reducing the Lightroom Catalogue to a manageable size.

Prior to Lightroom's introduction it was always do an edit, and then save as something else, so duplicates were made. Culling was always a chore, even with Adobe Bridge, and just didn't happen. My event sets were needed quickly, and then frankly left to their own devices, and the more "Photographic Themes" were scarce. To save Raw Conversion on most of my images I took Jpeg/Raw ( I know, madness now).

Several things have come from the exercise, one being how much rubbish accumulates with duplicates etc, and I can see my main themes have always been with me, Urban, Architecture and Performance. The latter is a time sensitive subject and I probably wasted a lot of time at events, when a different approach would have yielded more, but hey ho, hindsight is a wonderful thing.

So,crunch time in many ways, as my photographic opportunities have become more limited, for various reasons, and I now choose carefully what I like to do. Music is still a major player (sorry about the pun) and I have been lucky enough to be at some fantastic performances, taking and making shots, trying to get beyond a simple record shot.

Locally the Housing Development project is fun, giving some opportunities for a little quirkiness, and involvement with the local community has proved rewarding. Like many places our village is changing a lot and a record of what exists now may be of interest in the future.

Collecting quite a few photo books as I spot bargains, and the latest one Daido Moriyama in Color: Now, and Never Again is huge and a joy to browse, as is Axel Hütte: Fantasmi e Realtà. 

Trading in all my Canon gear now, way too heavy,  and have been trying different setups, ending with Fuji, (low light wide angle) Sony (workhorse A6000 and compact Rx100 II and my main usage, Olympus micro 4/3rd, (Touch Screen, Silent mode for events). Love prime lenses, so have a mixture, the tiny Olympus 45mm is a cracker.