When I first bought a canvas I was pretty hesitant, the cost can be quite steep and I had little to no idea of the quality I was going to get. After looking around I decided to go with Hello Canvas. I sent the photo off and a week later a magnificent canvas came through the post. A great ridged frame and the printing stayed true to the shades of the photo.

When I ordered my D7000 Jessops offered me a free canvas as part of the package. I chose my photo and got it printed, eagerly awaiting is arrival. It arrived and to my dismay it was set on a relatively thin whimsical frame and the colours just weren’t 100%; none the less it still had the magical canvas feel.

I have now accumulated another 4 canvas’s all varying sizes, all from Hello Canvas. Their superb print quality and thick robust frames put them heads above others and customer support is great. One of the prints I ordered arrived damaged during the shipping. I got in contact with the Hello Canvas team who sorted me out even though I was missing the order number (dad deleted the email with it in).

I would recommend to anyone with a half decent shot in their library to get it printed on canvas by Hello Canvas. Because HelloCanvas are super nice they have given me a 15% off code for you to use when you buy a canvas from them.

Coupon: “hellormasperofans”

I always found this shot interesting, but when I uploaded it to Flickr I didn’t expect it to garner as much attention as it did. I thought I would share its story…

I’m a countryside person, used to rolling hills and  my own personal space. Visiting Hong Kong where people walk at “city speed” and don’t understand personal space was quite a shock. I found myself often making a cradle around my camera to avoid people knocking it.

To take this shot I steadied myself on a lamp post to avoid being walked into and held the camera up in the air to get a good vantage point. I used live view to get an idea of where I was pointing it, waited until the lights went green and snapped a couple shots trying to fill the scene with as much as possible. In post I cooled down the white balance and helped the yellows pop.

The reason I initially took a warming to this was because it is one of the few shots you can look at time and time again and spot new details, someone smiling or a sign that you don’t recognise.

Living in a rural area you don’t tend to get the opportunity to take many shots of traffic a night, but my recent trip to Hong Kong seemed like an opportune moment to try something new. I was staying with a friend that didn’t live to far from pretty busy roads which looked ideal. We waited till about 10-11 by which time it was as dark as it was going to get in a city full of lights and headed off to a bridge to get a good vantage point.

To do light trails you should be looking at extending your exposure time for as long as possible. The best way to do this is to drop the ISO and close up the aperture to a high f-stop. One factor I hadn’t thought about was the background light; nearly every sign in Hong Kong lights up, all the shop have their lights on and street lighting covers the rest. this meant even with my ISO at 100 and aperture at 22f I couldn’t get an exposure of more than 10 seconds, meaning my light trails were weak, so we called it a night.

A couple days later we thought we would try again, but this time chose a busier road with less background light. The images definitely came out better this time, but needed some serious work in Aperture to get them to a good standard. A couple tweaks to the curves and changes to things like the colour temperature, I managed to achieve something that was half decent.

With this experience in mind I decided it was time to order a neutral density filter for my camera. From past experience I had learnt that buying filters can become expensive, especially when you have more than one lens of different sizes. So I took the decision to order a Cokin P series holder and some filters to use with it; the idea being I will now be able use all my filters on all my lenses. This along with my recent move to a house that conveniently has a bridge that crosses a dual carriageway only 100m down the hill means that I might just be having another crack at making some light trails soon.

We were all sat on a couple of benches around a tree in the school grounds and two of the girls were holding hands after having met for a just a few minutes. In the truest sense of the phrase it really was a “hand of friendship”. The whole environment felt so natural and hopefully that comes through in the photo.

It is a simple B&W conversion in Aperture, I played around with a couple combination so I could keep the detail in the white hands yet bring the darker hand out from the black background. I actually found that B&W conversions were by far the most effective way to evoke the most emotion out of some of my shots. Having said that I also found the vintage filter in Aperture a great starting point to accentuate the richness of Uganda and its people.

One thing I have found on trips with groups of people is it offers the most spectacular opportunities to take portraits of people and your often able to catch them unawares as their attention is else where.

I have so many photos I would love to share, but here are just some of my favourites and a video that I made for the project to sum up the trip in a few minutes.

I have done this for the past few years and it has always proved to be very popular, I think mostly due to the insufferable pain anyone buying for a geek goes through. In end having to submit a list in advance so people can choose what to get me as it makes life simpler. Here are some ideas that people might enjoy this year.

Harry Potter or any other triple play BluRays – This is a great option for a geek that wants their content anywhere. Not only do you get a movie but with the triple play you get it in BluRay, DVD and download format.

The Magic Charger – A neat solution using inductive charging. Inductive charging isn’t really widely available yet, but its implementation here would save every having to think about batteries.

The Magic Bar – Another inductive charging solution for those wire free geeks, this time for your keyboard.

The Magic Wand – This one is an idea for those who have a computer in the kitchen or attached to the TV. It joins your Keyboard and magic trackpad together. It is perfect if your the kind of person that finds yourself not sat at your desk using a computer.

PlugBug – We have seen those wall plugs with USB ports in for charging but most of us aren’t going to go around and change the plugs in our house just to have a USB port. This adapter from Twelve South fits onto your MacBook /Air/Pro charger and allows you to charge any usb device as well. The rest of their products are well worth a look.

Lowkey Stand – These guys offer some great desk solutions for laptop and desktops that are worth a look.

I ? Math – What nerd would be complete without a nerdy T-Shirt? This one really is nerdy, but just search the internet and you will find thousand with witty remarks.

Canvas Print – Hello Canvas offer a great quality product and they are super cheap. Speaking from experience I have 4 of their prints and love the quality of every one.

aJays Four – Another favourite product of mine, you have no idea how hard it is to find reasonably price good quality headphones with inline controls that work with your iPhone. These work seamlessly with my iPhone and look great. They don’t offer the same comfort as full in ears, but they also sell a more expensive in ear version.

Holga iPhone Case – A little geeky camera case for your iPhone great for anyone who uses Instagram or similar apps.

Past suggestions:

2009

2008

Yet another shot taken during the summer, this time from my trip to Vietnam and Ha Long Bay. I almost didn’t make it to Vietnam due to visa issues. Trusting as I am, I left the organising to my step mum. Unbeknown to me and her we needed visas to fly Vietnam and we missed our flight, however we where able to get a flight a day later with visa’s in toe. This lateness in turn meant we were meant to miss our two day boat trip to Ha Long Bay. Thankfully the company that run the boat trips were kind enough to move us onto a boat a day later.

Ha Long Bay is not an ordinary bay, It is full of steeply sided island and spotted with floating fishing villages. Our first stop on the boat trip was to one of these fishing villages. After arriving at the village we were offered to take a ride around on some of the local propulsion and so this photo came about

On the walls of the boat we were staying on were sepia prints of old photographs of Ha Long Bay. I couldn’t decided if I really like the look of the scenery in sepia, but what I did like was the shades of brown the water went; giving it a viscous consistency. I noted this for when I came home hoping to have a go at replicating some of the styles I saw in the prints. This is my attempt, it is a basic sepia filter and some playing around with highlights, shadows and contrast too get a good balance.

The blog has had a redesign which hopefully improves it usability and cleans it up a bit. The plan is to incorporate my photography more into the blog. By posting photos and explaining them in more detail and telling their story, as well as some brief posts about other interests of mine.

I had been planning this trip to Uganda for roughly 2 years but I have been planning this shot for even longer. Ever since seeing a shot by Michael Mistretta from his visit to Africa I have been keen to get a similar shot. In the original shot I had just been feeding a couple of the kids some banana, the girl had mess all around her mouth and a hair. I opened the shot in Photoshop and used a combination of content aware fill and spot heal to clear it up and remove some of the mess. I then imported it into Aperture where I sharpened it up and ran the skin smoothing tool over her face.

When I do black and white conversions in Aperture I like to start with one of the presets as it is an easy way to compare the differences and then I tweak it to suit the image. I struggled to keep the detail in her hair but not make her face to similar to the background. What I really love about this image are the way the eyes are so black and have bright white reflections in them.

I am not going to lie to you, you get what you don’t pay for. It has an align images feature which in my case made the images worse and a strength slider. The app is not feature rich, but it is simple.

Example created in Photomatix

HDRtist attempt at aligning it

HDRtist final HDR

HDRtist’s attempt brings out a lot less detail than Photomatix’s does, but you do get the HDR feel from the image. Other Posts about HDR:

• Photomatix Desaturate
• Photomatix Pro
• How to HDR

Kit

You will need a camera that can do bracketed shots, most cameras offer a bracketing option but if you don’t have that you can adjust the exposure compensation in Manual mode. A tripod is a very good idea but not necessary (but keeping the camera still is a must) and a shutter release is preferable but not required.

Method

It is best to take 3 or more shots, the more the better as you will be able to see more detail. Now you have the images you need to combine the images to make and HDR, such software as Photomatix, Hydra and Photoshop (photoshop can create HDR’s but not tonemap which is what gives you the HDR look). I am going to use Photomatix Pro 3 to demonstrate how you create an HDR.

First step is to import the images and to do this you go to the process menu and click Generate HDR (shown right). Now follow the simple steps, if you did your shot by hand it is best to try different types of alignments to see which one gives the best result. Now go back up to the Process menu and select Tone Mapping. Now you will be presented with a dialog box and a preview of your image adjust and play around until you are happy with the results.

Click process and save out your image and you have your HDR photo. A tip for anyone who is doing this for the first time try not to go over the top and make your images look to processed.