Weeping Angel in the tomb of Chapman H. Hyams in the Metairie cemetery in New Orleans.

The crypt itself was actually locked, so to take photos of the angel within the crypt, I had to lean through the only open slit-window in the side. I took a few other pictures also, courtesy of a napkin wiping the glass on the front doors.

Canon EOS-1D Mark III
1/100 sec at f/4.0
ISO 400
35mm

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A random way to introduce the ‘Blogs I read’ section on the right of the blog here. It contains a load of links, of sites that I visit regularly. Some are news-updates, some are other photographers’ blogs. One of which is ‘Camera Porn’….

It’s ok – it’s work friendly, as long as the url gets past the filters, and a while ago Ryan was running a competition as explained below:

Anyway, check out the original files, and the details behind the project here:
www.cameraporn.net/2008/01/13/cameraporn-project-1-revisi…

What I wanted:

To me the towers seemed ominous and almost foreboding, sitting in place where you’d expect to see small beach huts or palm trees lining the ocean, so I wanted to reflect this in the mood of the photo.

What I did:

1. Took the original files and (yes, cheating I know) HDR’d them in Photomatix to get a baseline HDR that I liked from the 3 original RAW file exposures.

2. Used tone mapping to get to a base HDR that I liked the look of without playing around too much with making it look ‘spiked’.

3. Took it back into the safety of Lightroom (yep, you can guess what I use normally now!) and bled out most of the colour. Removed spray spots. More spot removal. Did I mention spot removal already?
I then boosted the fill light slightly, tweaked contrast, brightness and other levels settings, and darkened the overall picture to get the moody look. Cropped the picture slightly closer at the top to emphasize the depth of the picture and cropped on the left so that the view is straight into the towers. Added vignette.

Please let me know what you think, and if you want the original files or want to have a go at Ryan’s project, please see his ‘Submitting Your Entry’ section on the link above.

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This is an even older photo – but still one that I love. Taken long ago on a trip to Cuba outside the Hotel Nacional in Havana. It’s one of the pictures that made it to the randomly generated header photos for the blog too…

This old Chrysler, beautifully kept, was a stark contrast to some of the other cars and buildings nearby. Known to some as ‘Yank Tanks’, some of these pre-revolution imports look to have weathered more than this incredible car.

Canon EOS-20D
1/50 sec at f/4.5
ISO 200
40mm

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Taken in Maine on a dreary day. We were outside taking pictures of the water and boats, before I saw the piles of fish heads on the floor. Slippery? Yes. Smelly? Yep. This bucket stood out because of the old leathery look.

Canon EOS-20D
2 sec at f/10
ISO 100
25mm

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So this is it – I’ve finally stopping umming and ahhing about creating a blog, and signed up with WordPress. Hope you enjoy it – the aim of the blog is to share more pictures with everyone, and to let everyone know a little more about what goes on in the making of them.

There’s an about page with stuff about me (really?), and also links to a contact page. Next up is the portfolios section which links back to my main site, with some updated galleries.

Hope you enjoy it, and thanks for visiting!

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