Panorama play

Well, its been a busy week for me, doing an extra shift at work which really knocks me around.  As a result, I haven’t done anything on my website this week 😦 but keep your eyes on it, as I will be continuing to work on it.

I also haven’t had a chance to do much photography, but on Saturday afternoon I took a new tripod out to Bushland  Beach, North Queensland to try it out.  My original tripod didn’t have a method to lock it so it could turn horizontally for landscape photographs.  It was a horrible day for taking photos at the beach, as it was windy, getting a bit late, and there is a lot of smoke around, but I just wanted to have a play.  The resulting 3 photos were not great, but I still wanted to have a play with creating a panorama.  They couldn’t be put together using my Adobe Elements 13 as it couldn’t match the two sea edges, so I did it manually.  It is nowhere near perfect and took me a while to do it, but I’m pretty happy with the result anyway.  I like the challenge of doing something myself which is normally done automatically.

Hopefully next week I’ll have something more interesting to share.

My New Website

I’m a little bit excited because I have created a new website.  Its still a work in progress, and will take me a while to set it up properly, but please feel free to have a look at http://www.dbisleyphotos.com and leave me a comment (mmm, will have to see if I can set up a comment section on the website so you don’t have to come back here).  There are links from the website to my facebook page and also this blog. Once I have worked out how to do it, I will have photos for sale on the site.  I’m having difficulties at the moment working out how to get the website to appear on google and bing searches, but hopefully I’ll resolve that issue soon.

Other than working on the website, I spent most of the weekend at home and went through some of my Anderson Garden photos.  I found the Bush Stone-Curlew above under some bushes and it just crouched there looking at me for ages.  I think it was hoping that I hadn’t noticed it, so I got the chance to take a few photos.  Because it was under the bushes, it was low light and I didn’t have a tripod, so I was happy that this one worked out so well.  I also got a few flowers that I’m happy with which I have put onto my facebook page.

Please enjoy looking at my photos on my facebook page and watch the transition of my webpage.

Afternoon at home

No chance to get out and about this weekend, so I spent Sunday afternoon going through some of the photos I’ve taken recently.  A couple of photos of some old buildings in Townsville turned out OK, including the old Railway Station.  I just love this building.  It was where I had my first train ride when I was about 10 years old.  A photo of the platform in particular turned out just how I wanted it, I think it gives a feeling of isolation.

I also spent some time playing with some different effects for a couple of my flowers.  This is a new area for me, so I’m experimenting, but pretty happy with the results.

Please go to my facebook page to look at these photos ( http://www.facebook.com/DBisleyPhotographer ).  I hope you enjoy them.

Day at Anderson Gardens

Spent a great afternoon with my sister at Anderson Gardens in Townsville.  There were a good variety of water birds there who were very co-operative and allowed me to really try out the Sigma 150-500 lens which I haven’t used for birds before.  I’m really happy with some of the photos, including a couple of ones of an Ibis in flight.  It’s not perfect, but its the best I’ve managed so far and I’m totally ecstatic.

After we finished with the birds, we went for a walk around the park and found some beautiful flowers to photograph as well.

I still have a few to go through, but most of them are now on my facebook page if you’d like to have a look … just go to http://www.facebook.com/DBisleyPhotographer and have a look at the Photos Sept 2015 Album.

Update

Hi, its been a while since I’ve posted anything.  Unfortunately, I’m out of free photo space, so until I can afford a higher subscription, you’ll just have to click the link to my facebook page to see my latest photography efforts.  But, I can keep you updated on what I’ve been doing via this blog.

Recently I started a new job, and it’s taken me a while to learn to manage my time and energy, so my photography has taken a back seat.  I did manage to do a portrait shoot with my friend Stacey, so we have done 3 portrait shoots now and I am definitely improving with each one.  Some of the portrait photos have done quite well on the competition site Viewbug (http://www.viewbug.com).

Last weekend my sister, Kath, went with me to take some photos of the city along Ross River and we also did a impromptu portrait shoot while we were there.  Then after a small shopping spree, we just had to do another one on the Strand and I’m really happy with the results.  I’m still processing the portrait photos, so there will be more to come on my facebook page as I get them finished.  We’re planning another shoot soon with her new bike … really excited about that.

I’ve put a few photos onto a stock photography site called Shutterstock and have sold a few through there.  They’re just stock photos, so I’m not making much money from them, but its exciting that people like them enough to buy them.

But the really exciting news is that I have also put some of my fine art photos on a gallery site called Saatchi Art (http://www.saatchiart.com/dbisley).  Some of these are from the Ross River excursion.  I will just be beside myself if someone actually buys one of these.

You can now contact me via a new email address (in addition to the Contact Form on this blog).  The email address is DBisley_Photographer@outlook.com (its not case sensitive, I just like the capitals lol).

Dan Gleeson Memorial Gardens

I finally managed to get away from home and do some photography relating to something other than my cats (are they cheers I hear?).  I went and wandered around Dan Gleeson Memorial Gardens on Thuringowa Drive, Kirwan for a while.  I haven’t been there for years, although I go past it regularly.  I used to live not far from there and often took my dogs for a walk through the gardens.  It was so beautiful and shady and cool, I loved it.

I was feeling a bit adventurous today and took a few shots that I’m not sure whether they have exactly worked or not … you can be the judge:

   

I liked the way the trees sort of fell towards the clouds (and no, my middle photo is not crooked … the tree has a lean).  The end photo was a landscape photo, but there was a massive big sign that just dominated it, so I cropped it.  My main goal was to get the water fountains anyway, so this worked really well I think.

Now here’s a different one for you.  This is an inversed black and white image of the pond and fountains.  I just love it, but it probably won’t be for everyone.  I would love to hear what you think about it.

And then there were flowers, some of them so beautiful.  The only one I knew was the Desert Rose, so can’t tell you what the others are, just pretty flowers.  I’ll make a gallery of them for you to scroll through (hopefully):

More Cats

Unfortunately I haven’t had the chance to get out and do much photography lately and I must say, I’m really missing it.  So, my poor cats are being harassed instead.  I thought I would play around with some post processing.  I took some photos out at the Ross River Dam late one afternoon recently when there was heavy cloud cover and was really disappointed by how noisy the photos were (actually, upset would more appropriately describe my emotions).  I thought I had all my settings right and was devastated that the photos were so bad.  But after doing a bit of research, it seems that I’m always going to have some difficulty with my camera in low light situations because it is an entry level model and a few years old.  So, armed with that knowledge, I went in search of ways to improve these photos as best I can and volunteered my black cat Alex for the task (much to his dismay I may add).  Here are the before and after post processing photos:

 

The photo is not as clear as it could be as I was hand holding the camera in low light, but the exercise was to see how well I could post process a photo which was noisy.  This was taken with ISO of 6400, f/5.6, 1/8 sec exposure, which with my camera produces a very noisy photo and I think it has come up really well.  I won’t go into the details of how I did it, as there are some really great tutorials on-line, you just need to search for how to fix noisy photos.

Last night I spotted Nellie asleep on the lounge, so of course had to take a photo of her (she’s just so cute).  I decided to use the opportunity of getting rid of the stripy cushions behind her to work on my clipping mask and changing colour.  I’m not particularly good at it yet, but here is the result:

Nellie is very co-operative for photos which is very helpful for me practicing my focusing abilities, which are improving I think.

Staying In

I’m sitting at home just playing on the computer and I think, what photo can I play with instead?  I decide I want to improve the cropping I did with the photo of the neighbour’s cat, so here is the original I posted:

Then I went for a whole head look (because she is a really pretty cat):

Just look at those beautiful ears.  That is pretty much the photo I took, just a little cropping and post processing of the background.  But I really wanted to create an impact with her eyes, thinking poster style you know, so here is my latest attempt:

I think I’ll stop at this one as I’m really happy with it.  Would love to hear what you think.

Cockatoo Afternoon

So just sitting in the living room about to check fb and I hear all this screeching outside.  I walk outside and there sitting in the trees out front are a group of white cockatoos.  I raced inside and grabbed my camera and couldn’t believe my luck because they were still there when I got back outside.  They didn’t seem to mind me coming close to the trees and just went about their business.  After taking a fair few photos I decided I needed a tripod.  Back inside again, and set the tripod up before I took it outside so as not to scare them off.  Again, I couldn’t believe they were still there when I came back out.  What a brilliant opportunity.  After taking heaps of photos, they screeched and squawked and flew away.

I hope you enjoy this selection.

 

   

The whole time I was taking the birds’ photos, my neighbour’s cat was following me around wanting some attention.  She’s a sweet little thing, but was not particularly popular when she was rubbing against the legs of my tripod.  So, after I finished taking the birds’ photos, I took one of her as well.

Photo Processing

Still struggling energy wise, so stayed in today and went through the photos from the portrait shoot last weekend.  I’ve recently submitted some photos to a stock photo website but most of them were rejected due to not being sharp enough.  I was disappointed obviously, as I carefully selected the ones that I thought were my best and clearest photos.  It seems that because my screen is not all that big (its not small, but, you know, its not huge), I need to examine my images at 200% rather than just 100% to ensure they are sharp enough.

So, armed with this knowledge, I started looking at my 295 or so photos.  Wow … what an eye opener.  Focus is obviously an issue for me, and is something that I’m going to concentrate on now for a while.  Out of all the photos, there were about 35 that were really sharp.  There were a lot that were “ooohhhh soooo close”, and look great when they’re small, but they just didn’t make the cut when you brought them up to 100, and especially 200% resolution.

Out of the photos I processed today, I really like these:

 

… and this is my favourite.