The Blog is moving to Reikan Photography...

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So far, my blog has been hosted with Blogger (this site), but I've decided to move to a Wordpress blog.  There are a few reasons for this, the main one being that by hosting the blog myself it allows me complete control over the look and feel (but also the responsibility for backups etc!).

Don't get me wrong, I've been very happy with Blogger - in fact, I've got quite cross with Wordpress recently as the formatting was causing me all sorts of trouble!  But it does seem that Wordpress has a lot more options and capability, and I'd like to get some experience in both using a different engine and hosting it myself.

So, you can continue to follow my exploits at http://www.reikanphotography.co.uk/blog.  That is, as long as I haven't broken anything :)  All the posts I've done to date will be there (the import utility is great).

Ireland 2010 Days 4 & 5 - Clare and the Cliff of Moher

The next part of photos and journal from our family trip to Ireland, this bit is mainly about our visit to County Clare and the Cliffs of Moher.  It started as part of a bigger post, but I kept adding more information about the places we visited, so I've left it as just these 2 days...

Sunset at Beal, County Kerry, Ireland

Sunrise at Hengistbury Head (...and a bit of afternoon too)

It's been a while since I dragged myself out of bed stupidly early to go out with a camera and tripod and photograph something, but it's such a beautiful time of day and it's getting slightly more sensibly timed so I decided to this morning.  Sunrise was at 0615, so I set my alarm for 0500 and got going very quickly (without even a cup of coffee!), driving from home to Hengistbury Head.

Hengistbury Head Beach Huts

Ireland 2010 Days 1-3 - Travelling, Ballybunion and the Dingle Peninsula

This next set of posts on the blog are going to be a dump of my favourite pictures from our holiday to both sides of Ireland in August 2010.  We went for a week in Ballybunion (County Kerry) and then a week in Enniscorthy (County Wexford).  This is a kind-of photo journal of the holiday, so lots of various pictures and some waffling too :)

Harry - Excited before we left, he wrote "Holiday Ireland - Yahoo!" on his hand!

Hampshire and Dorset Fields (and a Bridge!)

It was ridiculously hot on this particular day (at least for the UK) - a little over 30 degrees at lunch time when I decided to drive out to Beech Hill and take some shots in the fields around that area.  There were lots of wheat fields, and the sky was nice - blue with enough clouds to give some interest:

Hampshire Field

Milton Abbas, Hilton and Bulbarrow

I may have already mentioned this (ahem), but I did a 100 mile cycle ride for "charidy" in early July which involved cycling through lots of Dorset (you can read about it here if you've really got nothing better to do).  While doing it, I saw some absolutely beautiful areas, a lot of which I'd never visited before despite living less than about 20 miles from most of the places.  So, I decided to drive back out to some parts of the route one evening and get some shots.

Dorset Field Sunset

Sunset at Tarrant Keyneston

On this particular evening, I wanted to try and capture something in or around Wimborne.  The sky wasn't looking too promising - there was a lot of cloud near the horizon which tends to mean that as the sun gets close to setting it is obscured and the lighting goes very dull and uninteresting.  But I have learnt a few things over the years, and knowing that (a) conditions change, (b) I love being outside with the camera, and (c) if you don't try you won't get anything got me out!

Tarrant Keyneston Sunset I

Sandbanks Bay and Poole Park

The weather has been fantastic recently in the UK for landscape photography.  The sky is generally a cheerful blue with a few wispy clouds to give some interest, and the sunsets are fairly colourful.  I've been getting out a fair bit recently in the evenings - sunset is around 21:15 so to be out with the camera at least an hour either side of that give an opportunity to capture a wide range of lighting conditions in the shots.

Holes Bay Boat

An Evening in Hamworthy

This is another journal style post about an evening out a few weeks ago to take sunset landscape shots.  The original intention was to go to the beach somewhere between Sandbanks and Bournemouth as I wanted some sea, sand and beach hut shots, but a quick play with The Photographers Ephemeris (a brilliant and free tool: http://stephentrainor.com/tools) showed that the sun would be setting behind the cliffs and I think the beach would just be in the shadow long before sunset.  So when I went out with a friend on this evening, we headed towards Hamworthy to see what we could find.

Sundown at Hamworthy

Shots from Goodwood

Thanks to Lotus, I got some free tickets to the first Moving Motor Show at the Goodwood Festival of Speed on July 1st this year.  I've never been to Goodwood FoS before, and although the Moving Motor Show day was geared towards manufacturers exhibiting products and using the track for test drives, it was a great day with so much to see.

Back to Landscapes

Although I've had an interest in photography for more than 10 years, it didn't really get serious until I bought my first DSLR in early 2007.  Since then, I've tried many different types of photography and over the last few months have spent quite a bit of time shooting people and trying to get a feel for using shallow DoF in images.  Recently, though, with the beautiful weather in the UK and late sunset times, I've been out with tripod, graduated ND filters and remote release - back to what is probably my favourite type of photography.

Coffe Arithmetic

A bit of maths with coffee:

Lasers

I have always had a keen interest in lasers - to be honest with light in general, but the purity and brilliance of laser light holds something special.  My uncle (who is no longer with us) spent years working with lasers for all sorts of reasons - everything from a few milliwatt (Helium Neon) up to 2W Argon Ion lasers which on one occasion led to him accidentally cutting his tie in half! - and I spent a lot of time learning from him.

I've owned quite a few lasers - I was gifted a 2mW HeNe laser first off, and I've had quite a few standard laser pointers (all red diode lasers).  But in the last few days I've finally got hold of a couple of diode lasers that are a bit different from the norm - a 20mW green, and a 205mW red one.

7D Macro - Summary after several shoots

I've spent several hours out now taking macro shots with the Canon 100mm f2.8 (non-L) lens on my 7D, and I wanted to showcase my favourite images and give a bit of technical detail about how I've taken them.

Macro shots - Insects with the 7D

I went for a wander at lunch time today with my 7D, Canon 100mm f2.8 macro and 430EX.  Most of the shots were taken with the flash mounted on the camera, but a few were with the 7D acting as flash master and the 430EX in slave mode, hand held in various positions.  I'm pretty pleased with the results - I don't have a lot of time tonight so I'll just put a dump of the pictures (all were Manual mode, 1/125s, various apertures, but most at f/11, with some down as low as f/2.8):

52 Weeks - Week 6: "Flowers"

This week has been all about photographing flowers, and to try and avoid another post with the excuse that I was too busy, I have made a bit of an effort here!  Unfortunately, it's been more in the taking and processing of images than the pruning, so there may be a bit of an overdose, but hey, at least it's better than the last couple of weeks.

Latte and Espresso

Time for a couple of coffee drinks!  My wife loves a nice Latte, and I like Espresso.  I had the camera handy and took a few shots of preparing the drinks:

Pamphill Bluebells

Pamphill has a "secret" woods which springs up with thousands of bluebells in April/May time.  I went along a couple of weeks ago and only a few were flowering, so I had hoped to get back last week during some lovely weather.  As usual, things got in the way, but I did manage to get out and take a few shots under a fairly overcast sky.  All shots are taken with 5Dmk2, 17-40, Hi-Tech 0.6ND grad, tripod, mirror lockup and remote shutter.

52 Weeks - Week 5: "Chocolate"

My Wife has been setting my weekly photo topics generally, and she's just figured out that it might be in her interest to suggest things she likes - like Chocolate!  Unfortunately, for the 3rd week in a row I've not really had the time that I would have liked to spend on the photos, so here's a few picked out for the theme of Chocolate:

(5Dmk2, Sigma 50mm f1.4 at f1.4m 1/500s at ISO 400)

52 Weeks - Week 4: "Morning"

Once again, I was desperately busy this week and capturing shots for my topic wasn't really much of an option.  I've picked a few out from the week that work for Morning:

(Canon 7D, Canon 70-200 f4L IS at 111mm, f4, ISO 160)