orange. blob. blog. » Black and White Spider Awards 2011

Black and White Spider Awards 2011

Tim — Mon, 22 Aug 2011 01:26:54 +0000

A good email to wake up to this morning – my photo of Les Eclaireurs Lighthouse won a ‘nominee’ placing in 2011′s Black and White Spider Awards. This is a black and white conversion of the photo taken in the Beagle channel at the ‘end of the world’ at the southernmost tip of South America…

It’s supposed to be the most photographed lighthouse in South America, but it took us a couple of attempts to get out there – the first couple of days the boat trip was cancelled due to the awful weather. Check out the original post on Les Eclaireurs Lighthouse for more background to the image, and the lighthouse.

Popular Photography Magazine Runner Up

Tim — Sun, 02 Jan 2011 00:12:54 +0000

First up – Happy New Year!

Had some good news the other day – a couple of photographs that I took were recognised as runner ups in the Popular Photography 17th Annual Readers’ Photo Contest…

You can view all of the winners and runners up over at the Popular Photography Photo Contest page. There are some great images in the gallery!

The two photographs are Park Avenue in the Rain (taken in New York City, with a tilt shift lens) and the Guggenheim Museum in New York (also taken with a tilt shift lens). Park Avenue was a runner up in the Travel/Places category, and the Guggenheim was a runner up in the Architecture category.

Both photos were originally part of a series of photographs of New York that I took, called ‘Manhattan – A Closer Look‘. The series looked at famous buildings and views in Manhattan, and were all taken with a tilt shift lens. You can take a look through the related blog posts to see more info about each of the photos, including the other photos in the series.

International Aperture Awards 2010

Tim — Mon, 06 Dec 2010 09:13:28 +0000

I had submitted a couple of photos to the International Aperture Awards 2010 – this one was selected for a Bronze Award…

It’s a photo of what seems like it should be a seat, in La Recoleta Cemetery in Buenos Aires, Argentina. The striking green of the neat hedge contrasted well with the surrounding marble, and added a patch of welcome colour in between the mausoleums.

The original photograph is below… and there is an older blog post about La Recoleta Cemetery too.

International Photography Awards 2010

Tim — Wed, 13 Oct 2010 03:26:56 +0000

I arrived home the other night to a flat-pack envelope…. interesting… unless con-ed have upgraded their billing notifications, I thought it was probably something worth opening!

I was pretty chuffed to find out that my series of Patagonia images (of the Perito Moreno Glacier) in Argentina was awarded 2nd place in the ‘Travel and Tourism’ category of the IPA 2010. I entered the International Photography Awards the year before also, and managed to get an honorable mention for my photo of the County Hall in London. The series of images selected are shown below:

The Perito Moreno series was a selection of photos that I took at the end of last year while traveling around Patagonia in Argentina. Truly incredible place, and I still find myself looking at the images and reminiscing! All the images were made with a tilt-shift 45mm lens which I took on the trip along with a Canon 24-70mm lens.

The Winners Gallery for 2010 is definitely worth a look through – some more great images in there. To find the Patagonia series, head down the very bottom of the page, under the Travel and Tourism category. Or you can shortcut directly to the Perito Moreno Series page.

I hunted around in the envelope for an Oscar-like statuette too, but sadly it looks like the 2nd placers don’t get one. Maybe next year…

For a detailed look at all the images in the series, check out my blog post on the Patagonia Gallery of Images, which has links to posts about the background to each photo, and some random facts about blue ice!

I also managed to pick up a few Honorable mentions this year – with Park Avenue Rain, Perito Moreno Glacier Trek, and La Recoleta Cemetery.

A big THANKS! to the judges for picking out my images for a placement this year in the Travel and Tourism awards!

Patagonia Gallery of Images

Tim — Fri, 24 Sep 2010 21:06:26 +0000

Finally got around to creating a dedicated gallery of landscape images from my trip to Patagonia in Argentina. It’s a relatively small gallery of 8 images, showing a few of the best images…

Feel free to click the image above to to to the gallery online, and you can also take a look through the individual blog posts about some of the photos:

ICE
Crampons
Grouse on the Glacier
Les Eclaireurs Lighthouse
Perito Moreno Glacier Trek
Moreno Glacier Argentina

Crampons

Tim — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 01:24:20 +0000

Ice Crampons hanging at the preparation point before heading onto the Perito Moreno Glacier in Patagonia, Argentina…

To make things easier to clamber over the Perito Moreno Glacier on an Ice-trek, we threw on some crampons for the trek. Ok, technically we sat back while the guides threw on the crampons for us. I guess at least this way everyone avoided that ‘tying shoe laces for the first time’ feeling. The crampons sit on the ground, you put your foot (with your regular hiking boot) onto it, then lash it into place with the straps.

Walking around with the crampons takes a little getting used to – it feels more like ‘stomping’ around the glacier rather than trekking. The technique I settled into was putting each foot down firmly and relatively flatly, so that all the spikes did their bit. Going by the steep hills and valleys that we tackled on the glacier, everyone seemed to get the hang of it.

The ice itself was the main attraction – the deep colour blue of the ice was incredible, and looking down into gulleys where meltwater had carved a deep crevice was mesmerizing. Why blue? The red (longer wavelengths) part of the light spectrum is absorbed by the ice – the further the light travels through the ice, the more blue it appears.

In some places where there were large flat areas of glacier surface, meltwater had pooled, but underneath was still areas of solid ice. From the surface it looked like an infinitely deep pool of water, but you could actually stand with your feet on the ice, a tiny bit below the surface of the meltwater. Totally freaky feeling. And highly recommended. Just make sure there is actually solid ice underneath first!

Even after finishing up a Grouse with fresh glacier ice, everyone made it through the remainder of the trek back to dry land. According to another website, the answer to ‘Does Glacier Ice last longer in drinks’, is actually ‘yes’. Apparently because the ice crystals are larger, which in turn melt more slowly. After an energetic hike though, I’m not sure anyone had a chance to notice the extra ice-melt time.

Canon EOS-5D Mark II
1/3200 sec at f/2.8
ISO 100
45mm

New York Times – A Moment in Time

Tim — Wed, 12 May 2010 00:00:33 +0000

The New York Times’ Lens blog built and launched the interactive gallery for all of the different pictures collected for the ‘A Moment in Time’ project…

They launched the interactive gallery over at their ‘The Moment You’ve Waited For’ blog post. Clicking on the graphic launches the gallery where you can click on piles of photos, stashed around the world. It’s an intriguing way of presenting all the photos… and hard to ‘hunt’ for something specific, but it seems like a great way to make sure that people spend time browsing all the different photos and countries that took part.

The image that I blogged about at ‘A Moment in Time – Grand Central Clock’ appears in the gallery at the link here:
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/05/03/blogs/a-moment-in-time.html/#/4bdf87450bca253c3600046e

Also noticed a couple of other photos of the clock – this one included. Out of curiosity, I checked through the photos that I took, and saw one from a couple of frames earlier where the person has his hands up ‘holding’ the clock. It looks like they switch places a couple of frames later, and in the picture above, the photographer is leaning up against the Information booth on the right hand side of the photo.

Moments in Time… almost collided I guess.

There are loads of great pictures in the collection from around the world (I’m not even going to pretend to have looked at even a fraction of them) but there was one from the New York region that grabbed my attention here. Something about the V shapes, and the blown out tree, with the slight blur of the NYPD car.

Canon EOS-1D Mark III
3.2 seconds at f/4.5
ISO 100
45mm (tilt shift)

A Moment in Time – Grand Central Clock

Tim — Tue, 04 May 2010 03:04:41 +0000

Part of the project by the New York Times’ Lens blog… “A Timely Global Mosaic, Created by All of Us”. The idea is that all the participants take a photo at 15:00 hours GMT (UTC) on 2nd May, 2010…

People around the world would then submit the photos taken at that ‘moment in time’, to the New York Times Lens blog. NYT then create a mosaic of all the different photos they collect – I think it will be interesting to see how they manage to present so many photos.

The photo above was taken in Grand Central Terminal, at 11am local time, with the aim of capturing the hustle and bustle of moving people, as well as the isolated clock in the centre of the station, showing exactly 11am. I took the photo using a tilt-shift lens (45mm ts-e) which allowed me to create an artificial depth of focus. In this case I wanted the clock to be perfectly in focus, while throwing most of the surroundings out of focus.

As they don’t let people set up tripods without prior permission (I’m not even sure if that’s an easy process or not?), I opted for the balcony which has a thick wall with a slightly curved surface – perfect for angling the camera, with the help of my metro-card holder to wedge one side.

I also added a 3-stop neutral density filter which meant that I could open the shutter for a lot longer – and get the exaggerated blur of everyone moving around. The added bonus was capturing the person in the foreground who just happened to take a photo with her flash!

Check out the link over at the New York Times Lens blog for more about ‘A Moment in Time’ project.

Canon EOS-1D Mark III
3.2 seconds at f/4.5
ISO 100
45mm (tilt shift)

Grouse on the Glacier

Tim — Sat, 17 Apr 2010 19:55:02 +0000

According to Wikipedia, In Scotland – 300 drams of the Famous Grouse are drunk every second. In the case above, we had a brisk drink after doing the ice-trek on the Perito Moreno Glacier in Patagonia, Argentina…

As we rounded the last ice-corner on the ice-trek, we found a wooden table set up, with a number of cases of Famous Grouse Scotch whisky. Need ice? No problem, turn around and hack a chunk off the glacier and dump it in the ice-bowl. There’s even an ice-clear mini river of glacier water flowing through the ice in the background to wash the glasses.

Taken with a 45mm tilt shift lens which I focussed on the Famous Grouse bottle label. The ‘Est. 1800 Perth’ moulding in the bottle is also visible above the label. In the background, other hikers are also chilling after the ice-trek, still with their crampons on.

I have to admit it was the freshest ice I’ve ever had in a Scotch!

Canon EOS-5D Mark II
1/3200 sec at f/2.8
ISO 100
45mm

Earth Hour 2010 – New York Empire State Building

Tim — Sun, 28 Mar 2010 02:36:42 +0000

I can’t believe that another year has gone by, and another Earth Hour has come around. Earth Hour 2010 took place on 27th March 2010 at 8.30pm local time. It’s the time of year where an increasingly large number of people, businesses, buildings and monuments switch off their lights for an hour…

Last year I wrote about the event in my blog post about Earth Hour NYC. This year I headed back up the Top of the Rock building in New York City to try out a couple of different lenses for the view of the switch-off.

You can learn more about Earth Hour at the Official Earth Hour Site. The idea started in 2007 in Sydney, Australia – but it wasn’t really until last year that I picked up on it when over 4000 cities around the world took part. Going from 371 cities taking part in 2008 to 4000 in 2009, things are looking promising for 2010!

I think I still prefer the photo that I took last year below – the cloud cover seems to add a lot more drama and makes the dark Empire State Building really stand out during Earth Hour, against all the light pollution reflecting back off the clouds.

Other landmarks included in the 2009 switch-off were the Las Vegas Strip, NY’s Brooklyn Bridge, the Empire State Building (above), Chrysler Building, UN headquarters, and Broadway theater marquees, Golden Gate Bridge, Seattle’s Space Needle, Sears Tower, Thomas Edison’s New Jersey laboratory (the birthplace of the light bulb), the Great Pyramids of Giza, the Acropolis and Parthenon in Athens, St. Peter’s Basilica in Vatican City, Big Ben and Houses of Parliament in London, Paris’ Elysee Palace and Eiffel Tower, Beijing’s Birds Nest and Water Cube, Symphony of Lights in Hong Kong, Sydney’s Opera House and Christ the Redeemer statue in Rio de Janeiro…

The photo above shows someone else braving the freezing cold temperatures on the ‘Top of the Rock’ observation deck. The weather forecast says it’s just above freezing, but with the wind-chill, it soon left me with not much feeling in my fingers! It was a huge difference from last year, where the cloud cover provided some much-wanted warmth. The downside of the cloud cover was that last year everyone only had about 10 minutes to take their photos after the lights went out – the whole thing was then shrouded in thick clouds.

Top picture:
Canon EOS-1D Mark III
1/3 sec at f/2.8
ISO 800
45mm (Tilt shift)