Ice Angel again...!

During the latest cold snap unbelievably the Winter Ice Angel at the local caves returned!

Not quite as spectacular as in January but I think you'll agree pretty impressive all the same!

Here is an image that I took on the 3rd of December.



Like i said not quite as impressive but not bad, here is the image from January 2010.



With a bit of luck she'll be back again.

St Neot Cycle Ride

Well done everyone who rode the on Sunday 26th September from the London Inn in St Neot to Jamaica Inn. At the last count around £550 was raise for Jeans for Genes.

There are a few shots here...

http://www.nyphotographic.co.uk/Image_Gallery/?openfolder=Events/Fun%20Ride/&openfile=IMG_0008.JPG

Digital SLR's Movies and bows and arrows.

I had the pleasure of shooting an archery event at the weekend. 'Moscovy Archers' my local club which i was a member for a number of years held a field archery event in the woods not far from were i live.

A great opertunity to use my camera i thought and maybe get to test out its video recording.

DSLR's video looks completely different to your average camcorder.
Camcorders have almost everything in focus all the time and tend to make the image look flat, a camcorder will always look like a video which there is nothing wrong with but it will never look classey, a Digital SLR on the other hand records an image which looks like a traditional 35mm film camera as used by film makers the world over.


There is a big shift at the minute for indi film makers to use DSLR's as the 'look' up until now has been reserved for big films with even bigger budgets! To get anything close in the motion picture camera range would cost you 20K plus!

Then along came a camera called a Canon 5D Mark II with its Full HD 1080p resolution and 24p (fps) frame rate. Digital video was transformed overnight and now they are everywhere, being used for low budget music video's to major TV productions like 'House' which the seanson finale was film exclusively on 5D Mark II's.

So whats all the fuss about?
To try and show the 'look' which you get i have included a 'still' which has been taken from a movie clip i took at the weekend. (I haven't finished putting the movie together yet)

As you can see the subject pop's out of the frame and looks as if it had been taken from a DVD/film. The camera has done such a good job of gathering light it almost looks as if some extra lighting or reflectors had been used but it was all natural light and as it was taken under the tree's there wasn't much of it.

On the technical note this clip was taken at 200mm with the camera set to ISO6400 which is a very high sensitivity and normally reserved as a last resort in dark conditions, however the 5D Mark II is incredibly good at producing detailed images in really very poor light and ISO6400 is really not a problem and even ISO12800 can produce very good prints.

At my next wedding, time permitting i will definately record a few clips.

You can see more images from this shoot by clicking here.

New Camera time!

It's that time again. A bit like buying a new car, which do you go for, the only blessing is camera's only come in black and the make is pretty much desided by your lenses! and you don't part exchange either the old one become another backup.

I had been debating on which body to go for for ages. Do I update my current camera with a Canon 7D, 18MP, great for fast shooting, crop sensor which means your lens act as if they are longer than they actually are (great for sport and wildlife) or do I go for a 5D Mark II, 21MP fullframe sensor and regarded as one of the best wedding camera on the market, fantastic low light image capabilities.

Ultimately it came down to image quality, photography for me is about producing the very best images i can, so for me there was only one real option.

So for 2010 the 5D Mark II it is. Am i please with it? Oh yes, the images it produces are superb and full of detail. Matched to my 24-105L lens it performs superbly, and my 85mm prime is just a dream.

Spring is in the air

At last the weather seems to be warmin up a little. We were outside at the weekend i heard the firmiliar call of one of our resident birds, the Green Woodpecker. I haven't heard him shreak for a while so it made me smile at the weekend.

This year i must try and get some proper photographs of some of the birds which visit our garden.

More Photoshop

Not all Photoshop edits are so subtle... in this recent example i was asked to create some custom images to replace the original HSE pictures for a set of hard hitting actual work place related posters, the theme, "Simple mistakes shatter lives..."


This image was created from 2 originals, the actor on the ground was actually standing in another picture. http://www.nyphotographic.co.uk/blog/hse_poster.jpg

This image was created from 4 originals. http://www.nyphotographic.co.uk/blog/hse_poster3.jpg

Photoshop has not only enabled me to cut out, move and rotate the actors it has also enabled me to add shadow so in the first he now looks as thow he was actually on the ground and the second the broken parts look as if the have rotated.

The only real limitation to the editing possibilities in Photoshop is your imagination.

Photo editing in Photoshop

I get asked all the time if I edit photo's with photoshop, the answer on some is yes, but photoshop can do more than just remove the odd skin blemish or take out things like litter.

When it comes to enhancing an image Photoshop is simply amazing... as a photographer it enables me to enhance an image to enable others to see as i do, it can also recover images and in some cases do both!
Sometimes modern camera's have difficulties exposing correctly for certain situaltions, in this example (a friend asked it i could recover this image that was taken by them whilst on holiday) below the original image is very underexposed (dark) due to the bright sky.

http://www.nyphotographic.co.uk/blog/photoshop_before.jpg

A little photoshop later and the image is trasformed. The second dog has been removed, the forground been darkened, the subject has been lightened, the sky has been enhanced, the image has been cropped to improve its framing and finally the image has been converted to black and white with extra grain added and contrast boosted.
http://www.nyphotographic.co.uk/blog/photoshop_after.jpg

5 minutes in photoshop.

Favourite images

I've been asked many times if i have a favourite image that i have taken, the answer is yes but i have many, images are different and mean different things to people. When it comes to wedding images every wedding is unique but one image which i have taken really does stay with me.

Allot of images have that "if only" about them but this one to me is pretty much perfect.

They say every picture can tell a thousand words... so true in this one.

St Neot Players Panto 2010

Panto at the ok corral. This was the second year i have filmed and photographed the pantomine. Last year i recorded it on the first night only, this year we recorded on both the first night and the last night as the last night is renowned for being a more 'fluid' production.
The Saturday nights peformance was recorded from the sound booth high above. It always amazes me the amount of effort that goes in to these productions so much of which is unseen. Great work guys and girls.

You can see more images of the production here http://www.nyphotographic.co.uk/Panto2010
I will post a couple of small videos to show a couple of the differences between Tuesday's and Saturday's performance.

Ice Angel

This was a chance encounter if ever there was. It had been very cold for quite a while and i had stopped at Carnglaze Caverns a couple of times to see the icicles. On the monday it had started to warm-up a little, i was driving past and I stopped to take a few pictures, i only had a couple of minutes so i didn't take that much notice of individual icicles. It wasn't till later when reviewing my images did i see her!

This is a crop from the full size image.

As featured in the Telegraph and on the St Neot website.

You can see some more images here

East Cornwall Hunt 2009

Just before Christmas (19th December 2009) I had the pleasure of shooting some images of East Cornwall Hunt as they gathered outside the local pub (The London Inn in St Neot). The horses and hounds are such characters.

It was a funny old day with the light being very strong then the sun went and the snow fell. For the photographers out there this shot was taken at 105mm F4 1/250sec ISO1600.

You can see more of the images here. http://www.nyphotographic.co.uk/eastcornwallhunt/

Blast from the past

While searching the net i thought i'd look up my old camera's.

There she is... a picture of the first camera i ever used. The Kodak 25 instamatic! It was a camera like this i shot the Red arrows with in 1976.

After the Kodak we had a 110 filmed camera, the model i can't remember largly due to the fact the image quality was really bad! looked like this though.

My first SLR, 1988. A Praktica B100. I thought this was the best camera in the world when i first bought it. 35mm film was so much better than the old 110! I remember taking some of my shots to college to show one of the leturers... he was less impressed with the image qauilty than me!

A short time later i decided i needed a change so i started saving for my first 'Auto focusing SLR' the trusty Yashica 230-AF. I really wanted a Canon EOS but they were priced out of my reach. I remember working for ages to save up for this one. Optically the lenses were pretty good, the 70-210 lens was very fast focusing and produced great images. 1.7 fps was real slow but the automatic shutter release when something came in focus was a nice touch (trip focus), eat batteries as i recall. I remember buying a 10mtr cable release so i could take pictures of birds at a bird table, it cost a fortune... i think i used it once!

This lead me to the Canon EOS range, namely an EOS100 The view finder wasn't as large as the Yashica but the build quality and feel was so much better and 3fps as well more than made up for it. In the digital age Canon is where i've stayed.

You've got to start somewhere...

Hi All

To keep my website more uptodate with new content and make it more interactive i have decided to open a blog. Hopefully i will be able to upload the latest images and thoughts quick and easily, you'll also be able to comment on them too!

One of the main drivers for this is i have taken many images of general village life which up until now i have not been able to show as they do not fall into the main areas on my website.

Hopefully this is the first of many posts and you will all enjoy seeing the images posted.

Nigel