Standing firm

I have been dormant on my website for a while but not in real life. The Corona situation takes over everything and sometimes it's easy to feel like giving up and hiding in a shell until it all blows over. But life has a way of providing opportunities if you look for them.

Just when I was wondering if it was time to hang up my camera gear for good, I was planning a holiday to North Germany and by coincidence saw a Facebook post by Simon looking for a photographer. And so we managed to make a photoshoot that was a lot of work, fun and photos! Here is one of the ones I like so far…

Lucky penny

Last year while visiting a period reenactment at Bridgnorth railway station, my son posed with two gentlemen in American G.I. gear. They were very friendly and we chatted for a short while before going back home. Before we left, the one man gave my son this penny which he treasured as if it were worth a fortune. We got it home safely, but at some point it disappeared. However, (about 9 months later) I found it hiding under a cupboard. I was observing the wear on it and wondered what stories it must hold. Was the wear due to general use or was it somebody's lucky penny?

It was only after I turned it over that I realised the penny was minted in 1920 so is 100 years old! How many times must it have been used to pay for something, changed hands, or been lost and found?

King George

George the Fifth, by the Grace of God, King of all the Britains, Defender of the Faith, Emperor of India.

Coaching

A mixture of salt and vinegar works almost instantly.

Historical reenactment

My son looks shell shocked!

After cleaning

The coin is still a bit dirty, but i prefer a bit of contrast in it.

Britannia

She has seen better days and much of her detail has been rubbed off in her 100 year run. Despite being made in 1920, she could still have been in use until the 70s(?).

Back in the 1920s, people were still blissfully unaware of decimalisation. It was all pounds, shillings and pence that were made up of odd numbers and denominations that nobody can understand any more. However, a penny back then could've bought you a bottle of milk, some bread or a newspaper. Nowadays, a penny is just something to eat your pockets down.

Despite its long history and being afraid what might happen, I decided to give the coin a bit of a clean in some vinegar and salt that brought back the original bronze shine and hopefully I didn't damage it in any way. I preferred the dirty look, but no doubt it will age over time, and change hands many times long after we are gone. Even though, in a couple hundred years, it might be worth a lot to a collector, I hope it finds its way into another boy's imagination!

Hope

I'm no gardener but having lots of time at home and some inspiration from other people lead me to try my hand at growing some herbs and other plants. I hope I live long enough to see this grow tall and strong (it's not basil so will take longer than a couple of weeks).

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Meteor shower

I got a few news articles in my feed about meteor showers during Corona quarantine and decided to take some late night shots with my underused fisheye lens. Is great to see my lens and time were not wasted.

It's just a shame i didn't see any

Lockdown blues

It seems we have been in lockdown for long enough and I'm sure everybody has the blues by now. I've gone through some of the Corona fads to do at home (including dalgona coffee) and here is my take on taking photos of stuff in the house.

Hope everything is staying safe and sane!

Strobist info: one Corvette Stingray under a flash precariously balanced on a light stand from above. Two sheets of A4 paper for reflection. Two pieces of crumpled kitchen foil for effect. Canon 100mm macro set at f16 for increased depth of field.

This beauty is made to be unwrapped and driven far away!

FBM 2019 Cosplay

Frankfurt Buch Messe (book expo) is a massive event full of books, demos and products all for bibliophiles. It is also a meeting place for cosplayers that hang out in some amazing costumes. In fact there are so many, it is difficult to focus on who to request a photo of. Here are some of the amazing cosplayers I met on the day. If you want to find out who these people are, please check my Instagram for the tagged images.

Japan is Tea is Japan (film v smartphone)

There's a lot of talk about how great smartphone cameras are these days - the portability and versatility are deniable but for me large cameras and film have a look that are never going to be beat by something that can fit in a pocket. Just check out the difference in exposure, depth of field, leaf greens and sky blues between the two pictures. One is take on a Motorola One Vision, the other taken on Pentax 645 with RVP 50 film.

While modern technology keeps moving forward, it doesn't always capture what made the past so great.

Japanese tea on the other hand has no competition! ;)

Kodak E100 VS

Kodak Ektachrome E100 VS (Very Saturated) is a film that is unfortunately discontinued but still there's a few rolls taking up my fridge space. I put one roll in my Pentax 645 and found it to produce interesting results but it is probably restricted to landscape photography.

European Central Bank in fog. Slight magenta cast visible at the bottom.

For portraits, the colours are otherworldly and so extreme it feels like they were part of a drug inspired hallucination unless they are toned down in editing. Even for landscapes, the film responds differently to over and under exposure by producing a magenta hue when done wrong-unless that's what you are after. The variation in tones produced by the camera settings when taking the shot is one of the reasons why film has a unique organic feel compared to static film effects produced in digital software. Sometimes, mistakes create the best photos!

Unreal colours for portraits that need taming unless you are the kind of person that likes those super saturated HDR effect photos in your face. (This photo desaturated in post) Pentax 645 80-160 f4 zoom

Street festival performer

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Ogi, Saga prefecture, Japan

Catching up

Recently, I realised I lost momentum on posting pictures and need to get back into the swing of things. It doesn't help that the weather is dreary so my camera has barely left its waterproof cocoon the last week or two.

Anyway, I will try to post some pics more often especially as I'm procrastinating on scanning my film photos from a Japan trip…

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August festival in Japan

Film Vs Digital

One picture was shot with a Canon 6D. The other with a Pentax 645. It should be pretty obvious which is which below. As far as convenience goes, you can't beat a DSLR but I still enjoy shooting film when possible. The only downsides to film are nailing manual focus, getting correct exposures, only getting 15 shots per roll, the time it takes to get pictures back, scanning, editing for scratches and dust, adjusting wb to suit the scene, having to sharpen the scan but never feeling it is as detailed as the actual negative, and generally taking a month to finish a photo that could be done in a day on digital. But after all that, I feel it's still worth it! :)

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Very superstitious

I took photos of a wedding on Friday the 13th September and my cut down photo list ended up at 666 photos… Fortunately, the day opened up a new chapter for a lovely couple (and not a portal to the underworld)!

Window shopping for the Seoul

Seoul is a great place to stop over our visit on the way back from Japan. It has a great vibe, full of interesting nooks and crannies and shops for miles-many of which stay open late. Unfortunately, after only one night we had to get to the airport early which was when I came across a ton of sleeping camera shops just 10 minutes from Seoul train station. I can't imagine the price but the Pentax 600mm and the Canon 200mm 1.8 sure are tempting. Maybe next time!

LED astray

I paid a visit to the Frankfurt Dippemesse on the 5th of May to get some photos of the fireworks and the fair at night. Generally I got some decent long exposures using a tripod and settings with low ISO and 2 to 4 second shutter. There are a lot of bright lights so f stop can be f8 to f11 and even f16 for more starry effects in the bright spots.

glittery white lights

One thing that I noticed when looking at the photos is that most of the lights on them did not produce constant blur lines in the photo. Most of the lines of light are composed of dots when you look at them closely. I have noticed this phenomenon more over the years and finally realised the cause after blaming my technique, camera and other superstitious reasons.

dots are visible at fast speeds

In the olden days, lights were almost all incandescent bulbs or halogen. Nowadays, everything is LED. LEDs are cheap, efficient, don't produce heat like halogens and last longer, so they are now find everywhere in torches, home and automobile lighting and even fun fairs. The downside to LED lights is that they pulse (for cheap ones) at a much slower rate than incandescent lights or florescent tubes. As far as I can tell from reading on the internets an old style light bulb pulses at twice the frequency of the power supply current, while a cheap LED pulses at half of the frequency. This is measured in Hertz. Let's pretend the power supply is 50 Hertz, a florescent light would pulse at 100 Hertz, an LED at 25. Apparently, all lights on AC flicker but the effect is made more prominent with LEDs as photon are not emitted when they are flickering on and off. While a regular light bulb is in an off state it still produces heat and some light. If the LEDs are dimmable, this is achieved not by lowering the amount of voltage as in the case of a light bulb, but by increasing the time the LED is off per flicker cycle.

Digital dots of the break dancer ride

Does any of this matter?

Health-wise, lights that flicker at a slower cycle can cause seizures in some people.  For long exposures, lights with slower flickers on fast moving objects are easy to spot as a series of dots rather than a single line as in the examples here. Photographers have long been aware of the effect of florescent lighting and shutter speed causing issues at certain rates. The LED issue is a newer version of this but I also found recently that if a room is predominantly lit by LED, my Sekonic flash meter doesn't function properly as it thinks a flash has been fired when it is actually the room lighting flickering. It was unable to get a reading at all while the LEDs were on. This even occurred when a regular light was the dominant light source. The only solution was to turn off the offending lights while reading for flash exposures. Seeing as LEDs are not going away any time soon, I guess we will just have to get used to seeing lines of Morse code instead of smooth clean light trails during long exposures in future.

To all the cat people

cute cats

My friends often cat sit and have liked after a number of cute cats. This one was a cutey. Just like all shy models, cats need a while to get used to a camera and I didn't have much time to introduce myself. Even though this isn't the most relaxed cat picture, I do like the cute cat and the look of my 50mm.

Good food

Japanese Kaiseki cuisine at its finest

Last week I got to take photos at Nihon Ryori Ken in Sachsenhausen, Frankfurt. It's an intimate new restaurant hidden away in a quiet street and it's simple exterior bellies the fact that inside the restaurant, there's a Japanese essence to the place, people and food that is hard to find anywhere outside of Japan. If you know what shiso, yuzu and good raw tuna tastes like after being to Japan and feel like you have been disappointed by Japanese restaurants by owners who don't even speak the language, then you must try here. If you do go, a counter seat offers the possibility to view the chef close up and really appreciate the amount of care and attention that goes into each dish. The menu changes monthly too, so there's no fear of running out of flavour sensations.

Everything including the desserts are handmade

Good shots

blood, sweat and tears

​Good shots some times take a lot more effort than can be discerned just by looking at the picture itself. There are a lot of photos on Instagram now by photographers that also include behind the scenes pics or video to give you an idea of just what went into a shot.

I like this picture of Derrick I took recently and even though it's not my favourite from our photo session, it took the most work. I wanted a small rim light to highlight his hair that was in shadow from the main light and although it should've been just a case of turning it on and positioning it, 1) I'd left my spare light stand at home. 2) my flash trigger wouldn't recognise the new light.

Luckily, I had bought the user manual for my Godox speedlight with me as I had tried every possible button combination to no avail waiting a good 15 minutes...​

Once I got the flash working, we found a place Derrick could sit in range of the hair light. However, I had decided I wasn't happy with the main light in a softbox on a regular light stand just lighting him from in front. I wanted to light him from above.  This required extending the light stand to its maximum of about 3.5 metres and balancing it on my right shoulder so that it could reach over him. At the same time, to bring a little light into the shadows, I placed a reflector in front of me and angled it up using my left foot.

I took the photo using my Canon 1ds iii, which isn't exactly light, all while balancing the equipment and steadying the softbox with my spare(?) hand to stop it spinning round under its own weight.

I wish I had brought more equipment with me and/or an assistant to take cool looking behind the scenes photos that don't make me look like a chaotic one man band!

100 Strangers

Making a Mario statement

This suit is made by Oppo Suits and is certainly an attention grabber!

My son is a tiger

I need a bit more practice with face paints but he seemed convinced.