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.

It's A Square World - An equilateral view from an obsessive snapshotter

I wondered why I always take shots in the normal format chosen by the camera, and then crop, drastically sometimes, and I thought I would try an experiment. Had a trip out with Thena, and took a few shots as we wandered around around London.
Had a few definite aims, but not doing anything that I would call serious photography. In the company of family I find it best to just snapshot, which is actually what I do anyways, just taking longer to compose etc.
So it came to looking at my tally from the day, chucked out most of them straightaway in Lightroom, which is now my preferred workflow (don't you love that term, sounds so professional), as the duds "never the see the light of day", though I did keep the whole take before, I must admit, filling up hard drives. Now going through these now, but that is a boring long term thing, though turning up some surprises, as new techniques and visions have come into play.
So I "synched" a 1 x 1 crop in Lightroom on all the ones I was trying an edit, and then on the individual processing I was able to fine tune the crop to how I wanted it. What was astonishing was how the real estate of the shot was cut down, I would have done mostly portrait crops, as that seems to be my favoured format, so a lot would have gone anyway.
As an aside I seem to enjoy the process of taking photographs rather than processing, though having "Taken A Wider View" and making the looks I like, with less regard to how things should look in a pure way, it is now more fun. This experimentation is sometimes successful, at least it seems so to myself.I will be setting up the square format on camera definitely...
So what did I get ? A selection of these are below :

Alone Together

All Aboard

A Little Art Deco

Zaha Hadid Serpentine Gallery Close up

A little Art Deco

The Big Tree

Yard Sale Dancers, Granary Square

Zaha Hadid Curves

Florin Court Detail

Just Waiting

On the Water

Blue and White

Moved Out

Italian Gardens

Remaining I hope

At a Stretch

Tasty Treats

Don't Use In the Rain

"Put On That Red Dress"

The Milliner at Work

A few shots from Coventry and Melbourn

Took a trip to Coventry on Tuesday, with a couple of hours to see a few targets I had wanted to view.
Not a bad trip, but I felt rushed and that has shown in the output from the day.


However, will go back for a longer stay, as it is an interesting city, very friendly too.


I bit the bullet and sold my treasured RX100 so as I could get my hands on the RX100 II, with the tilting screen and new sensor. It arrived today, so in between showers of rain, I leapt out (well slowly sauntered) into the garden for a few minutes.
At frst sight it is a treasure too, the articulated screen will make so much difference in the variety of shooting viewpoints. I really missed the camera in Coventry, as I found the small camera so user friendly in taking incidental shots, quirky scenes, etc.

Purple Haze (had to be)

Tinkerbell - a delicate white Fuschia

Mirrored

A straightforward information shot showing old and new Coventry.

Photography Motto

These two guys wanted their picture taken

Blocks of Blue - Belgrade Theatre exterior

Love the Hair

Bagmen