Fire, Fire, Fireworks II

Another photo from the fireworks display.  It was taken in the aftermath of some really nice swirly fireworks I hadn't seen before but I failed to get any pictures of them myself.  My dad got some nice ones on his smartphone, which does go to show it doesn't matter what kind of camera you have, you can still get good photos.  

I was really happy with the composition of this picture because I'd been aiming for something like it the whole night, and I like the way the fireworks come up from the bottom like a bunch of flowers.  The settings are the same as the previous photo (ISO-100, F/16, 4/100) and I also edited it in iPhoto.

I started with boosting it twice and increasing the contrast to let the red stand out more against the sky and I changed the definition to 40 to make the fireworks clearer and to get rid of some of the smoke, although I do like how it looks in this photo.  I then moved the temperature all the way to 100, because I thought the photo would benefit from having a warmer feel to it.  I'm really happy with how much of the smoke I managed to edit out of the picture as I think it looks better and more contrasting this way.

The colours remind me of the neon red and black of The Academy Is....'s album cover for Santi - never a bad thing - and I like how the fireworks seem to range in height.  All in all, I'm fairly pleased with this photograph, especially since my hands didn't shake the camera as much as with some of the others and I actually got the photo I'd wanted.

There'll Be Fireworks Tonight

This was taken at the Peebles Fireworks display last Saturday, which wasn't as good as recent years as they seemed to have problems with the computer system but it was still miles better than the one at home.  It was raining quite heavily (the raindrop smudge on this picture can testify to that) so there was a lot of smoke and I had to keep wiping my glasses and the camera lens to see.

The fireworks did give me a chance to learn more about how to use my camera - I eventually found the fireworks setting - and I had a lot of fun trying out a slower shutter speed, as you can see below:

I was kicking myself for not bringing my tripod, as small as it is, because we were standing at the wall and since I'm rubbish at holding still half my photographs came out wobbly.  For a while I had the camera taking pictures in bursts, because by the time they'd lit the firework and set it off and I'd figured out where to point the camera it was too late and I ended up with a lot of these:

Long story short, I now understand my camera a lot better, which makes my dad happy I'm not taking his all the time, and all the fireworks are squiggly lines, something I actually like a lot.  I didn't get the best photographs but the slow shutter speed is something I'm now really interested in using next time I go out.

For this photograph I edited it in iPhoto, "boosting" it by 3 and adjusting the contrast.  I altered the temperature and tint to increase the green, although I really liked the electric blue at the other side of the scale.  The ISO speed in this setting was 100 and the aperture was f/16, neither of which I set myself.  It was taken zoomed in on a shutter speed of 4 and overall, I'm pretty pleased with the changes I made to the picture.  

Pinhole Camera

A pinhole camera is a camera obscura with a pinhole instead of a lens.  It is probably the most straightforward type of camera, made up of a light-proof box with either a single or multiple pinholes and some film.  

(Teach Engineering)

(Wikipedia)                                  

Pinhole cameras can be made from almost anything, from shoeboxes to a room to Lego.
Light outside the box projects an image onto the film inside, flipped like images on retinas.  The pictures aren't as sharp and the film needs to be exposed for longer than with other cameras as it gets no light in the box.

  Example of an underexposed pinhole photograph

(The Jam Jar)

The idea of a pinhole camera was first explored in the 4th century BC by Aristotle and in the fifth century by Chinese philosophers.  Later it was used by astronomers in the Renaissance, but it was a Scottish scientist named David Brewster who is credited with creating the first pinhole photograph at the end of the 19th century.  He also thought up the term "pinhole" for the camera, which became popular and widely used. 

By the early twentieth century the use of the pinhole camera in art had all but died out due to the mass production of cameras, with pinholes not making a comeback in personal use until the 60s and 70s.  However, in the 1940/50s nuclear physicists took photographs of x-rays and gamma rays with pinhole cameras, some in space.  They are still used on space shuttles today, along with the current revival of pinhole photography.  Contemporary photographers such as Barbara Ess, Jesse Richards and Eric Renner also make use of pinhole cameras.  

World Pinhole Day is celebrated on the last Sunday of April, with increasing numbers of people taking part every year, showing how popular pinhole photography still is. 

World Pinhole Day 2015 will be held on the 26th of April

This year on Pinhole Day there will be a free photowalk in Edinburgh starting at 10am.
For more details visit: http://www.edinburghlofi.com/events/photowalks/20150426.php

 

              Examples of pinhole cameras

                   (Corbis Readymech), (Ina Marie Schmidt), (Found Photography)

Apparently when I was homeschooled we made a pinhole camera when we studied Greece but it was so long ago that I have no memory of it.  I'd really like to have another go and see what kind of photographs I could take, using what I've learned so far.  I really fancy the idea of the LEGO pinhole camera, so I'll have to try to coax my brother away from his LEGO collection and attempt to make one.  I like the idea of using a pinhole camera to create underexposed photos with a negative feel, even though the same effect can be made with editing tools.

Sources used:

Kodak

Wikipedia

Pinhole.cz

How Stuff Works

Pinhole Day
Pinhole Day II

Photo.net

The Tree Above Your Head

This photograph is of a tree by the bowling green in Broughton, when my mum and I went for a walk.  The road leads to a private residence but just before their gate turns off onto a bridge which takes you onto the old railway line, which does have the opportunity for nice photographs.

Since the road is lined with trees and plants I took a few photos (I got my jeans dirty sitting on the ground for it) but I liked this one the best, although I'm kind of sick of trees at the moment.  I quite like how on one side the tree branches almost completely fill the picture and the other is mostly sky and the light of the sun. 

I increased the colour temperature and saturation in WLPG, to make it brighter and warmer.  The aperture was f/3, the shutter speed was 1/90 second and the ISO speed was 100 in auto mode.  Like the other photos so far, I didn't use flash because it was a sunny day and I didn't think it was necessary.

The Bee-Side

This is a bee in the rain at the sensory garden in Lanark.  The sensory garden, a project by Clydesdale Community Initiatives, is located next to Lanark Moor Racecourse just off the A73.  It's very pretty and (as the name suggests) explores the five senses in each section of the garden.  

Despite the rain my mum gamely came with me and I ended up taking around seventy photos between the garden and the loch park - I challenge you to take less - most of which could have been a lot better in nicer weather.

The bright flowers are in the visual part of the garden and were teeming with bees, which obviously made my day(!)  I hadn't used macro yet and I thought the colours were nice so that's why I took this photo.

In Windows Live Photo Gallery I cropped my mum out of the background and changed the contrast, colour temperature and brightness  to make the photo lighter and more defined.  The ISO speed was 400, the aperture was f/3.9 and the shutter speed was 1/110 second.  I used macro which really worked after three or four tries and I turned off the flash because the natural light seemed bright enough (and I didn't want to risk being stung).  

I really like how this came out but I wish I'd managed to make all of the flower as clear as it is in the foreground, even though I was practically shoving the camera in the bee's face (do bees have faces?  Google isn't very clear).