Seed Heads

seed-head, originally uploaded by Markonmersea.

Well, not sure at all what these are from, but I thought they were most eye catching. Again taken at Mark's Hall in Essex.

It's a great place in the autumn for the nature photographer.

There are Fallow Deer around the area too, only saw a very small glimpse of one yesterday, before it ran off through the woods.

Mark's Hall has a good visitor centre/Coffee shop, which sell some nice home made cakes :-)

Smoke Mark II

Smoke, originally uploaded by Markonmersea.

This is another shot of the smoke session, expect to see some more. I think I will upload some with the black BG.

Would just like to mention that I was inspired by this:

http://gavtrain.blogspot.com/2009/07/smoke-photography-made-simple-week-62_23.html

Smoke

Smoke, originally uploaded by Markonmersea.

I have been trying my hand at some Smoke Photography. Equipment used:
1 x Incense Stick
1 x Black Background
1 x Canon 40D with Sigma 28-70mm Lens
1 x Canon Speedlite 430II flash with an Elastic band and 2 pieces of Cardboard.
1 x Table light - to light the smoke for the auto focus on the camera

Ok I will describe the cardboard first. With the flash you do not want any spill over of the flash, so you strap to pieces of cardboard on the side of the flash head, so that you direct the flash towards the smoke.

Setting for the camera, F/9.0 Speed 1/160th. Flash was set to 1/2 power.

After shots were taken, I processed in PS CS4, inverting image and then adding another layer and blending in some colour.

This is the results.

Sunset over Mersea

Took a lovely walk last night, down to the sea wall. The weather was pretty much perfect last night, not too warm, but very still.

This is a HDR shot, as I didn't have my ND Grad filters with me last night. Also it's handheld (I must take my Tripod with me more often).

Use Photomatrix to produce the shot.

Hope you like it.

Fish nets.....sorry Fishing nets

Taken on Sunday 15th.  It was a glorious spring day, then sun was shining and the wind was calm.  I took this shot just down the road from where I live on Mersea Island.  This was taken with my Sigma 24-70mm lens (which I really like).  I wanted to show the nets off, so used a shallow DOF, but also wanted to allow the viewer to see the boats for a context in the shot.

New Addition

Well, as it is nearlly my birthday, I have bought a new lens.  It basically replacing the kit lens that came with my old Canon 350D.

Details:

24-70mm f/2.8 EX DG MACRO

Large aperture standard zoom lens provides superior performance both for Digital SLR Cameras and 35mm Film SLR Cameras

To achieve an F2.8 aperture at all focal lengths, it employs three aspherical Lens to provide optimum aberration compensation. Two Special Low Dispersion (SLD) glass elements are provided for color aberration compensation, to assure high image quality.

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Optimised for digital SLR cameras
It incorporates a "Super Multi Layer Coating" to reduce the influence of harmful light caused by reflections from the digital image sensor.

Excellent correction of aberrations
Two SLD elements, one Glass Mold Aspherical plus two Hybrid Aspherical lenses provide excellent correction of various aberrations and a high level of optical performance.

Minimum focusing distance of 40cm
The lens has a minimum focusing distance of 40cm at all focal lengths and is capable of macro photography with a maximum magnification ratio of 1:3.8.

DF (Dual Focus) System
This lens incorporates a Dual Focus (DF) system that is designed to make the lens easy to hold during autofocusing, and yet provides a large focus ring for easy manual focusing.

Petal Type Hood
Since the front of the lens does not rotate, a Petal-type hood and circular polarizing filters can be easily used.