I have to confess that this week’s Photo Friday theme – Foreign – has caused me some problems.

Foreign is a simple enough word, but when I came to think about how I might interpret it photographically, I got stuck. Foreign to who? To me? I live in a predominantly Asian area of our town so I could have gone down to our local shops and taken pictures of Okra, or Asian dress materials in the local shop, or any number of other cultural items ‘foreign’ to me. But, for some reason, that didn’t appeal. Part of the problem is to do with multiculturalism, i.e. these are people who live here – they aren’t, in some important way, foreign to me. Yet this isn’t to do with political correctness, rather it’s more to do with me not being able to get my head straight about what the term means in this context.

Anyway, I decided to take a different tack altogether. The picture I’ve used was taken when our youngest daughter was 26 days old. And while it may seem slightly odd to consider a baby ‘foreign’ I do think there’s something quite extraordinary about their emergence (for want of a better term). Now she’s ten months old she seems perfectly a part of the world, but in those first few weeks (as with our other daughters) she did seem quite other-worldly ... almost foreign.

I took this picture this afternoon (east-south-east from our bedroom window) and while I did do some work on it it’s reasonably faithful to the original scene. The structure in the centre of the picture is Emley Moor television mast, the tallest unsupported structure in the UK (1083 feet). This one – the third mast on this site – was constructed in 1970 after its predecessor collapsed in March 1969. The second mast was cable-supported (and collapsed through a combination of strong winds and the build up of ice) but the latest version has a steel core encased in concrete.

In this picture it looks quite delicate, but close up it’s a massively impressive structure that dominates the landscape for miles around. If you ever travel on the M1 you may have noticed the tower near to the junction for Huddersfield.

A friend of mine used to work for BT and once did some work at the top of the tower. Apparently there isn’t much by way of a guard rail and his estimate was that the tower was swaying by approximately eight feet. Perhaps that’s why it looks a bit blurry in this picture ;-)

Either way you look at it, technically or artistically, I don’t think that this image is anything all that special, but I quite like it. I took it on the way home yesterday afternoon at around 4pm. The M62 isn’t exactly the prettiest motorway in Britain (I think that accolade would go to the Northern end of the M6), certainly not the section captured in this image, but this picture looks ok, and does capture some of the movement and vibrant colour of the evening. It was hand-held (obviously) which resulted in a shutter speed of a fifth of a second. I haven’t done much to this image other than increase the saturation and add slightly to the overall bluriness.

Given that I drive over the Pennines several times a week I have speculated (not all that seriously) about installing a tripod on the dashboard of my car, but I suspect that would probably be rather ridiculous ;-)

This image, which was taken on the same trip as my previous entry, was constructed using a broadly similar approach; i.e. creating a new layer using the main image, Gaussian blurring this image by eight pixels, then setting the blend mode to Overlay. The Overlay mode seems to increase the contrast within an image by lightening the light areas and darkening others. Mid-tones seem relatively unaffected.

With this image, my major problem was preventing our daughter’s dress from losing all detail; i.e. it was fairly high-key to start with and, in some earlier attempts, tended to lose all detail, including the small pink flowers. Unlike my previous image I didn’t change the colour balance quite so radically, other than to desaturate it slightly. I did try matching the overall effect to the previous image but it wasn’t effective in this instance.

In an attempt to improve my digital imaging skills I recently bought a copy of Adobe Photoshop 7.0 for Photographers by Martin Evening. I looked up Blending Modes, and found that he describes the Overlay mode as one method of superimposing an image on top of another:

Overlay blending mode is usually the most effective, superimposing the blend image on the base (multiplying or screening the colors depending on the base color) whilst preserving the highlights and shadows of the base color. Blending with 50% gray has no effect (p. 291).

Screen and Multiply blend modes are described as follows:

[screen blend mode] multiplies the inverse of the blend and base pixel values together, always making a lighter color, except where the blend color is black.The effect is similar to printing with two negatives sandwiched together in the enlarger (p. 290).

[multiply blend mode] multiplies the base by the blend pixel values, always producing a darker color, except where the blend color is white.The effect is similar to viewing two transparency slides sandwiched together on a lightbox (p. 289).

So, in short, the light bits get lighter and the dark bits get darker. I can’t pretend that I really understand quite how Gaussian blurring the Overlay blended layer creates the ethereal, diffuse effect, but it does seem reasonably effective for this sort of picture. That said, while I do like this image I’m not as pleased with it as my previous attempt, mostly, I think, because the effect I used is less subtely controlled in this effort.

When shall we three meet again?

I’ve spent some time over the last few days trying to take something on the theme of Gatherings for this week’s Photo Friday, and either I’ve been uninspired or the pictures I’ve taken have just been crap, or both. So, on the basis that I decided that I’d enter something each week – regardless – I trawled through my archives looking for something suitable.

The picture I finally decided to use was taken in July 2001 near the summit of West Nab (one of the highest points within striking distance of where we live), and while the original was moderately interesting this reworked version better captures something of our daughters’ conspiratorial playfullness – or at least I think so.

The original was taken with my old camera, a Fujifilm FinePix 40i, and this image is the result (mostly) of i) creating a second layer, Gaussian blurring this layer (with a setting of 8 pixels), then setting the blend to overlay, and ii) colourising the image and setting the opacity of the colourised layer to around 85%.

This picture started out as a semi-serious attempt to take an ‘arty’ self-portrait but, for want of some decent lighting and a better idea of what I’m doing, it didn’t quite work out. So, as with a number of the images in this blog, I ended up messing around with Photoshop to see what I could come up with.

The image presented here is the result of three relatively simple steps. The original was desaturated, posterized (Levels: 5), then both elements of the image (the background outline of me, and the camera) were selectively colourised.

On the whole, I’m quite happy with the result, mostly I think because it’s a radical departure from the last four entries (the lily entries). With those, my aim was photo-realism, i.e. capturing the last possible detail and faithfully reproducing the originals – at least as I envisaged them. With this image I suppose I was aiming for a pop-art feel – a minimal colour palette, a lack of fine detail, and an interpretive rather than literal interpretation.

As with all of these images I’d be interested in any comments, whether positive or (constructively) critical.

I suspect that I could carry on taking pictures of lilies for some considerable time to come – they’re wonderful flowers to photograph – but I think, after this one, that it’s time for a change.

Like the first two images in this series this picture is mostly a faithful reproduction of the scene. But, as with the first image, I blurred the background slightly as the cloud pattern was rather distracting. Other than that though, the image was the result of the usual Levels change, some slight Curves and Saturation adjustment, and a very minor amount of sharpening.

In some ways this is my favourite of these four images. The first is a bit predictable, the second (while I think it's technically the best) is rather ‘harsh’, and the third high-key image required too much post-processing for me to be entirely happy with it. This one though, for me at least, goes some way towards capturing the delicate elegance of these flowers.

This is the penultimate lily picture (even I’m getting a bit bored with them now) and I wanted to produce a high-key image rather than take another standard shot. For the most part I think it worked out reasonably well (at least at this resolution) but there are two problems that I noticed:

First: the plane of focus is about two centimetres further back than it should have been. Second: while this was spot metered I should have also over-exposed the image (probably by about one and a half to two stops). In other words, the original wasn’t as high key as it could have been which necessitated somewhat more post-processing than I would have liked.

All that said though I do think this image works, though I think it’s more to do with the inherent beauty of this flower than it is anything to do with me. Taking pictures of beautiful objects in reasonable lighting, unless you’re completely hopeless, should result in a pleasing photograph.

As with the previous entry this image required very little work. As this started out as a RAW image I adjusted Levels, Curves and Saturation (and used a minimal amount of sharpening), but other than that I didn’t need to make any changes.

What struck me about this image thought is that the lily looks less ‘delicate’ (for want of a better term) at this level of magnification. This was taken in macro mode and has drawn out aspects of this flower that you might not ordinarily notice. In particular I was struck by all the small extrusions from the petals (I’m sure there’s a name for whatever these are) that I don’t think I would have seen had it not been for this image.

One other difference I noticed between this image and my previous attempt is that it seems much easier to throw aspects of the image out of focus by using a wider apeture in macro mode and, in this case, I suspect that macro photography is probably a bit easier with a compact digital than an SLR (where depth of field in macro mode ofter required the smallest possible apetures).

And, finally, I think I prefer this image to the previous one. While it isn’t as stereotypically pretty, I do think it’s better executed. In particular, despite this one being hand-held and the previous entry being taken with a tripod, this image seems much sharper and required much less work to get it looking reasonable.

One of the things that always seemed difficult when photographing flowers with an SLR was gaining sufficient depth of field. More often than not some component of the flower would be unintentionally out of focus, spoiling an otherwise reasonable picture. With this camera the opposite seems to be the case. This was taken with an apeture of f2.0 – i.e. wide open – but I still had to blur the background. I guess this is a feature of compact digital cameras and think I remember reading that there isn’t a one-to-one correspondence between an apeture value for a compact digital and an SLR; i.e. an apeture of f2.0 on my camera is the equivalent to a much higher value on an SLR.

That said though, I’m reasonably happy with the result. This version of the picture is more tightly cropped than the original. I originally left a border around the entire flower but, when I came to look at the image, there was just too much empty space. I suppose this is one of the problems with staging shots such as this; i.e. it’s difficult to get something that doesn’t look artificial.

Under ordinary circumstances I don’t think I would have posted this image, but I decided that I’d make the effort to enter the Photo Friday challenge each week and this was the best I could come up with. This week’s challenge theme is Work (which is ironic given my entry for last week’s theme, Downtown – which would have been a much better image to submit for this challenge), and I’m not convinced that this is all that good an effort.

I suppose the main difficulty I had with this challenge was finding something to photograph. While ‘Downtown’ was a theme that seemed to permit a great deal of interpretation I didn’t find ‘Work’ all that inspiring – nothing new there then ;-)

As I mentioned last week, I’ve started teaching our older daughters some of the basics of photography and we’re using the Photo Friday theme as our weekly topic. We’ve now set up another blog so they can showcase their efforts.

It was mentioned that my previous entry might look more impressive in black and white, hence this entry. I’ve reversed the image, and upped the contrast slightly (it always seems as though reducing an image to monochrome lessens the contrast, at least perceptually) and I’m not really sure whether I prefer it or not. It’s different, obviously, and the image appears to be a little ‘colder’ and perhaps more clinical, but I’m not sure that it’s either better or more impressive.

I’d be intersted in anyone’s comments, not least because I’m planning a series of similar shots (urban/industrial artefacts etc) and would like to adopt a consistent visual theme for the series. Clearly black and white is easy, but I did like the colourised version of this image too.

This is yet another image from our trip to the bus station for the recent Photo Friday challenge (see my previous two entries). This one, unlike the previous two, has been manipulated a little more thoroughly: the background was too sharply focussed so has been blurred slightly, and most of the picture (exluding the blue ‘triangle’ in the bottom right) has been colourised and desaturated. It’s also been cropped quite tightly from the original which was shot in landscape format, not least because all the images that preceed this one are either square or portrait format. I thought it was time for a change but the original image was far too cluttered and unbalanced.

I’m reasonably pleased with the result though would have preferred to have de-emphasised the background a little more thoroughly – particularly in the bottom right of the image – but every attempt to do this ended up looking obviously (and not very skillfully) manipulated, so I decided to stop before I ruined it entirely.

As with the previous entry this was also taken in our local bus station. The image didn’t require much by way of post-processing other than some levels and curves adjustment, no change to the saturation, and some minimal sharpening. The only real change between this and the previous image is that I’ve removed the wide aluminium frame from around the image. I’d like to be able to say this was intentional but I only took a couple of shots of this poster and I cropped both a little too tightly; i.e. there wasn’t enough of the frame left in the original to include.

The sharpening technique I’m using at the moment involves converting the image to LAB colour and then using the following Unsharp Mask settings on the Lightness channel: Amount (160%), Radius (0.6 pixels), Threshold (8). This sharpens the monochrome channel of the image and, therefore, doesn’t affect the overall colour balance of the image, nor does it introduce any unwanted colour fringing.

When I posted the previous image I hadn’t looked at this one. What’s much more noticeable in this image is the distortion to the reflections. I guess I’d assumed that these posters were covered with glass but, having worked with this image, I would suspect that it’s perspex of some sort, hence the distortions (particularly noticeable in this image down the left edge; i.e. the reflection of the bus).

While this image looks like a montage it’s actually a straight shot (with some levels and curves adjustment in Photoshop and some sharpening). It’s a poster (with a ten inch wide etched aluminium frame) in our local bus station that I photographed this morning.

Our eight and nine year old daughters are home-educated and I’ve recently started teaching them some of the basics of photography. We’ve combined this with the Photo Friday weekly challenge – not least because it makes it much easier to decide what we’re going to go out and shoot.

So today we spent an hour wandering around the bus station, and the multi-storey carpark above it, taking various pictures. This one was taken towards the end of our visit and I’m quite pleased with the way it turned out, particularly in terms of the ways in which elements of the poster blend with the reflections from the bus station itself and various passers-by.

At some point in the not too distant future I’ll set up another blog so our daughters can enter the challenge too.

This is one of the images I used to accompany my main blog prior to creating this one, and when I initially included it I was reasonably pleased with it.

On reflection thought, I don’t think it’s all that great. Part of the reason I initially liked it is that I’ve spent the last couple of years using a Fujifilm FinePix 40i – a reasonably good point-and-shoot digital camera. Having made the transition to a Canon G5 though, I suppose that I’m still at the stage where the ability to control something as simple as the shutter speed is a bit of a novelty – hence this picture.

I think the main problem with this image is camera shake. I had assumed this wouldn’t be too much of a problem as there wasn’t a static background, but it is quite noticeable (and distracting) and I should have used a tripod. Having said which, if you look at the first comment that accompanies the entry I made in my main blog regarding this image, you’ll see that a tripod might not have been politically expedient ;-)

Oh well, it’s reasonably colourful.