Family frames

Stranded in the same house as me at Christmas, there was no escaping my Frames project... a huge thank you to Grandad, Dad and Mum for obliging.

Here are the results...

Three more to go...

Festive custom bokeh

As you already know, I love me a bit of custom bokeh :)

Here are some festive shots I took this evening with my nifty fifty, a couple of sets of Christmas lights and some new slides for my makeshift hood...

It's easy as pie; read my custom bokeh tutorial and have a go yourselves!

You've been framed...

Two more obliging models for 'Frames in conversation' - Alec and Vicky - thanks both :) xx

Frames in conversation - progress...

So, I started my 'Frames in conversation' project this week... and much to my surprise, I have fallen a little bit in love with it :)

I think the reason I love this project so much is that the models who have sat for me so far are some of my closest friends - and the next phase will involve my nearest and dearest family members. It has become a very personal project and I never necessarily intended it to be.

Here are the results of the first couple of sittings earlier this week (thank you Emily and Ruth for being so wonderful):






I discovered a similar project this week called '5 second faces' by Danny St and Fleecircus. This is a street photography project which aims to capture the various characters that roam the streets of Singapore. Armed with an illustration board for a makeshift background, they approached strangers with distinct faces, asking "Can we take your picture? It'll just take 5 seconds..."

I love this idea - it's something I might follow up on in Manchester after the course has finished in the spring. If anyone would like to help me out - I need someone to hold the boards at least - holler :)

Second project theme: Street photography

I've been musing over what to focus on for my second project theme for some time now...

This weekend I have finally decided on street photography, party because I've spent a prolonged amount of time gazing out of the window at the soggy streets of Manchester, watching people battle the wind and rain and thanking my lucky stars I didn't have to contend with it myself...

Time to get my hands dirty!

I want to go for something quite different to my portraiture theme but am after another challenge; another area I haven't had much experience with for whatever reason... in this case, the reason being I am too timid with my camera in public - I always feel like I've no right to point it at strangers in the street and also worry that someone will come and lock me away for acting suspiciously (!)

I'm definitely going to have to look into the boundaries of what's OK and what's definitely not OK - I took some photographs on the Moscow underground once and got a stern telling off from an oversized guard with an equally oversized gun.

So, in search of some inspiration I did a bit of research into street photography/ers... here are my 'best bits'...

Danny Santos tends to focus on a single subject in his street photography, featuring them head on and throwing the background street scene out of focus - visit his Flickr stream to see some other super examples in the same style. He even has an album entitled 'women being beautiful'; we like this man... we like him a lot :)

'Where the girls are' by Angela Vicedomini - I really like the composition of this shot and the way the photographer has captured the spirit of friendship between the group on the bench. They look like they're up to mischief! This has given me some ideas around groups of friends at bus stops etc... watch this space...

Olivier Raffy took this from the city walls in Dubrovnik; so clever. I've seen shadows manipulated like this before - Steinmetz's famous camels are just brilliant. Really love this effect.

My absolute favourite! An incredible shot by Fulvia Menghi. Priceless timing.

So there you have it. I'm not sure I'll manage to match the calibre of these photographs but they have certainly provided some fantastic inspiration - can't wait to get started!

Poetry in motion

This week's theme is poetry. I used an old favourite from my bookshelf and took a few photographs creating bokeh from the words, highlighting my favourite lines and manipulating lights in the background of the shot to create a festive glow. I used my nifty fifty lens, set the aperture to f/1.8 to achieve a short depth of field, took the ISO up to 800 and set exposure compensation to -1.