So I wanted to talk about some photos I have taken recently. Talk about my thoughts at the time.

Private Road

This reminded me of a song ‘Bent – Private Road’. The dark and dullness of the road and the fact that even in rush hour, Berlin I managed to get the road clear. Some people that know the area are wondered if I used some magic shutter speed trick to delete the cars. No I was lucky!

It’s a fine example of how a photo walk should work. You don’t look up but also down and around you making sure you take everything in. When I crossed this street I noticed that below there was an autobahn entrance so I took the shot.

Later I added the vignette and changed the image to grayscale.

Panning Returns

If you friend of mine since the very beginning when I would try very new things out with my Fuji S5700 this whole image will look familiar. I revisited a street corner where I first tried panning. This time I took the shot with my Canon 450D.

There is nothing spectacular about it other than revisiting some techniques I had forgotten. Something maybe is worth doing.

This image was left unedited!

Heavenly Tower

Bad shot turned good. Ok it’s not the most pleasing photo I have ever taken. But there is something about this. The clouds, the blur and the incorrectly configured white balance – everything was wrong but then it worked.

It retained this retro old school Polaroid look for sure.

This image was left unedited!

Sharp Building

This building is not far away from Alexanderplatz. I was inspired by the Italian Photographer Gabriele Basilico.

Here is Gabriele Basilico image.

Although I love his style, this particular photograph bothered me.

I felt it was incomplete. I mean I know the building and have pasted it a number of times and I felt he missed what the building was. Its height, its randomness and eastern Berlin scars.

So I took this shot in an attempt to bring the building into a new light. I have not failed in that regard but I don’t think I managed it!

The image was originally taken in color and I moved it into grayscale.

Grabbed this one between rain showers – an old Multi-Storey Car Park, well past its prime. Did concrete ever look good?

The light was bad – I had to use High Iso’s to maintain a decent shutter speed when shooting hand-held, so lots of these shots were grainy and a bit soft.

This was taken near one of the University buildings, on my way back to the ferry. I didn’t realise it, but as I was lining up the composition in my viewfinder a queue of pedestrians had stopped while I took the picture – I jumped a mile when I looked away from my camera and saw them all patiently waiting!

The main reason for Portsmouth’s existence – The Royal Navy Dockyard. This is Ark Royal and Illustrious, two small carriers designed to carry Harrier Jump Jets, as seen by the Ski-Jumps on the bows of both vessels.

You can catch up with the rest of the set on my blog, and I’m planning to return to Portsmouth soon, maybe on a day with some well-defined clouds in the sky for dramatic effect…

Cheers, Rob.

W = White Balance. Go into your camera’s settings menu and make sure you’re set to Auto, so you don’t end up trying to take landscape photo’s with an incandescent setting….

I = ISO. Make sure the ISO setting in your camera is nice and low, preferably at the lowest level your camera will allow, maybe 64, 100 or 200. There’s nothing worse than coming back from a shoot to find all your pics are noisy because you shot them at ISO 800.

F = Focus. I always check that my camera is in auto-focus mode, single focus (rather than continuous, which reduces battery life), and centre focus, rather than multi or area.

E = Exposure. This is all about checking how your camera “meters” the scene for light. I like to use “Multi”, and knock down the exposure by 1/3 ev using Exposure Compensation. I also make sure my camera’s in its “Fuji-Chrome” colour mode. You’ve got to check your photometry because if you’re in spot metering, you’ll find that lots of your photos will be over / under exposed and you won’t know why.

I hope this helps in your pre-shoot camera checks, and if you’d like to hear a little more about my shooting routine, check out Podcast 17 on robnunnphoto.com.

Cheers, Rob.

About a quarter of a mile from my front door the area called monks walk starts – that includes a wooded area that runs adjacent to the Royal Navy’s armament depot, only frequented by dog walkers and the local wildlife.

As I head east, towards the harbour, the trees thin out and you get the first views of Priddys Hard, home of numerous yachts, The Hardway Sailing Club, and a few old Royal Navy Warships awaiting the scrap yard.

I’ve then got to take a short cut through a small industrial estate, through Hardway Village, then down the slip-way to Priddys Hard, where there’s a better view of the destroyers.

A little bit further up, past the Sailing Club, you can get a better view of Priddys Hard, and it makes a great scene for photographs, especially if there’s some dramatic clouds around.

Sadly one of the biggest scrap ships, an old Assault Ship, either HMS fearless or Intrepid, has been moved, but it always used to be one of may favourite subjects.

About five minutes further is the Explosion! Museum, dedicated to the weapons used by the Royal Navy through the ages.

The end point for my walk, unless I want to carry on into Gosport Town itself, is the Forton Lake Bridge, a great vantage point for watching warships being moved around the harbour, and a nice subject itself.

So, that’s one of my favourite photowalks – no matter how often I go back, I always notice something new, or the light / weather are different – I never tire of it.

Cheers, Rob.

If you install Google Earth, you can download the .kmz file I created today with my Qstarz GPS Photo Tagger, follow my track, and have a look at some photos I took too.

Download my .kmz track file for Priddys Hard, Gosport.

Cheers, Rob.

Scrubbing the silicone sealant off my hands, I grabbed my trusty Fujifilm S5700 and headed off out into the Autumn Sunlight…

Lamplight

I’m a creature of habit when it comes to my morning strolls, I like to walk along Priddys Hard, which is the part of Gosport that backs onto Portsmouth Harbour.

It’s usually quiet during the week, and I can bop along listening to my ipod, grabbing shots of anything that catches my eye.

Communication

Its always a little tricky to get started – I almost have to force myself to get my camera out of its bag and start shooting, but once I’ve fired off a few frames I’m into the groove and looking for the next scene.

Spot

For the Black and Whites I strip the colour out using a Hue / Saturation adjustment layer in Photoshop Elements, and play around with colour channels to darken or lighten different parts of the photo. I also apply a levels adjustment layer to add more contrast, and experiment with different blend modes for that layer, usually Overlay or Multiply.

Clouds

As we add more posts you’ll see The Laddie and I using Geotagging, where we use GPS Photo Taggers to log the lat / long of our shots, so you can see them on a map, and even follow the paths we took when we create Google Earth .kmz files.

Slipway

It was a nice little photowalk this morning, I enjoyed the exercise, and hope there’s some more sunshine tomorrow!

Cheers, Rob.