andrea palmer photography nottingham

Night Photography, Using available light sources

Posted on December 16th, 2008 by Palmer

The scene A cold wet night in Battersea London, to wet to be out with an expensive camera. No tripod at hand so quite difficult to take a sharp image.Never the less, still plenty of opportunity to get creative, using the frame of the hotel window to steady the camera, i took a series of images. Not a very interesting subject you might think, and you’d be right but, by flicking the camera up wards while having the camera set on bulb you have full control of how long you want to expose for, and what effect you want from the available light sources. If you don’t have bulb on your camera, try shooting in manual mode. Open the aperture as wide as it will go, then setting the shutter speed for around 60 your ready to experiment. If you have street light, or light from vehicle head lights, its easy to make the light look interesting by moving the camera while taking the picture.Here’s the original image, to follow are two examples of the same image which have been enhanced in photoshop. A chance to get even more creative. The next two image examples, I used hue and saturation to enhance the colours, levels to lighten them up, and curves to enhance the buildings in the backgroud .

Tags: Landscape Photography // Add Comment »

Posted on October 6th, 2008 by Palmer

Once the image was opened up in Photoshop it became clear that i wanted to transform the image into black & white. Using the hue & saturation tool i moved the sliders to remove the colour. The image needed more contrast, so the Levels tool sorted this problem out, by moving the centre arrow i was able to improve the contrast. However this created too much darkness in the top of the image, so into tools, and using the brush tool I painted away some of the contrast from the top of the image. Now i wanted a little movement in the trees, i went into filter, distort, swirl, and used the slider to create as much movement as i needed. All thats left to do now is sharpen the image and I’m pleased with the results.�

Tags: My favourite images, Uncategorized // Add Comment »

Photoshop Tips

Posted on October 6th, 2008 by Palmer

This image was taken while on holiday. It had been a dull week so far and I really wanted the sun to come out so I could capture some interesting shadows. However, this was to be my lucky day the sun streamed through the trees casting creepy shadows amongst the forest floor. It was a good chance to go for a long walk with my camera.

Not a hugely interesting shot, so now is the time for a few actions in photoshop.

Tags: My favourite images, Uncategorized // Add Comment »

A different perspective

Posted on August 8th, 2008 by Palmer

A different Perspective

Here are just a few tips on how to make your landscape photographs more interesting.

So often we take landscapes photographs of a beautiful scene and think it will make a good photograph, more often though it really doesn’t capture the moment, somehow something is missing. So how can you make it look more captivating, so much so that it will look very different from the way we look at it through our own eyes, and hopefully make for a much more interesting piece of Art.

Try these few tips.

1) Think about using the camera lens as a frame look at what you can see through the lens, and ask yourself is this an interesting frame for the photograph.

2) Choose a focal point, something to focus on, to direct the eye to, and so make the viewer think beyond what he is looking at.

3) So now you have the frame and the focal point, now you need to think about angle. Try lying down, getting the camera a low as possible, see how the objects near to the camera become very large compared to the landscape your photographing.

4) Alternatively, get up high to take the photograph, you will get much more detail of the area your trying to photograph.

Try these tips and see how you get on.

These photographs were part of a collection of images for my exhibition, Urban Sanctuary

By getting as low down to the ground as possible with my camera the grass and canes appear to be much larger giving a different perspective to the image, The sky was an important element for the image, by taking the camera low more of the sky is revealed. I really wanted to give the feeling of space and freedom, showing that life at the allotments was a place of peace, beauty and freedom.

Tags: Landscape Photography // Add Comment »

Photographing Into The Sun

Posted on July 25th, 2008 by Palmer

Try photographing into the sun to see what interesting effects you can achieve.

One of the things you will have probably read is not to photograph into the sun. Often lens glare can occur, giving a rainbow type effect across the image, or part of the image can be blown out causing loss of detail. However, in my view rules are meant to be stretched or even broken. These two photographs taken in Whitby, Yorkshire are good examples of how photographing into the sun can turn a simple landscape into an interesting and thought provoking image.

Playing around with a wide angle lens adds interest to the image, and as you can see in the example above opening up the apeture wide and focusing onto the sculptural plant, creates a point of focus. The blown out effect causes the eye to focus on the shadows formed by the sun shining through the trees and fence. Ultimately the eye is drawn to the path and thoughts of where it may lead to.