f.Light Photography

Recently I have manged to get out a bit more than usual and take a few photos in London on a city photo walk. My main objective was to get photos of St Paul’s Cathedral. It was an overcast day, but I still managed to get a few good shots in. I also took a few shots on another day while walking along the Thames near Putney Bridge. The flowers were still very much in bloom and so the temptation to take some more flower shots overcame me and I decided to give in. I guess one can never have too many good pictures of flowers, right? Oh well, I guess these turned out pretty well, so it made sense.

I am very happy about some actions I created from tutorials that help me to fix contrast in my pictures really quickly. I may post them soon if people are interested. I am also planning on finally making a few tutorials if I find the time. It’s always nice to give back to the community, and I’ve learned tons from other people’s tutorials.

Another thing I practised was making a fake model from a photo of St Paul’s Cathedral. I’ve uploaded that to my gallery as well. It turned out nicely (I think!) and I’m really impressed with all the things that can be done with Photoshop and similar programs. Being a photographer is that much more fun when you get to do the post processing yourself. With film cameras I was always so reliant on what the labs did with the processing. Now I get to do the “lab work” and it’s really rewarding. So, here are now my latest shots! Enjoy, and remember: comments are always welcome.

Yesterday and today I was playing around with some props and fruit and eggs, and took a few photos. The setting is pretty much the same for them all, but I think they turned out really well and I am quite excited about venturing more into concepts and arranging elements for photography. I think I might be interested in learning more about food photography, as that is an area where you can play around a lot and can achieve some great results.

I have uploaded my new photos to my gallery, so have a look!

I have always been fascinated by fish-eye lenses and the whole distorted perspective that can be achieved with certain filters in software like GIMP and Photoshop. A while ago I came across an image that depicts a planet, created from a photo. I have seen several of them around, but this one was done very well and inspired me to try and create my own. Someone gave me a link to a Create your own planets tutorial that explains the process in detailed steps, so yesterday I tried my hand at creating my own “planets”.

All you need are the following:

• A panorama photo (it doesn’t have to be a panorama shot necessarily, but the width must be at least twice the size of the height). For stitching panorama photos, view my post about panoramas where I talk about an excellent program to use.
• A graphics program like GIMP (which is free) or Photoshop

I won’t go through the whole tutorial, as the other tutorial does a wonderful job of explaining the steps. I like my results though and will probably do quite a few in the future.