Sandy Macdonald's photostream

I've been having some fun recently teaching myself how to use Cinema 4D to render CGI images, and this is my latest render, a gum ball machine. Would you have guessed it wasn't a real photo?

It took about 12 hours to render on my ageing iMac (at 32 bit, 14 megapixel, maxed out anti-aliasing).

The credit for the idea goes to Nick Wilson at Greyscale Gorilla, a site with some fantastic Cinema 4D tutorials and a range of lighting and texture packs for Cinema 4D.

The link for the tutorial is below if you'd like to give it a go yourself.

greyscalegorilla.com/blog/2011/11/how-to-model-texture-an...

Also, check out my website at sandyjmacdonald.com/photography/ to see more of my photos.

I've added a new section to my website. A blog. Previously, I've used Tumblr, but was always a bit frustrated at not being able to find a template that I was 100% happy with. So I designed my own.

I'll be blogging about photography, science, technology, movies, topical news etc.

I've already added a couple of movie reviews and a tutorial on photographing butterflies.

Check it out here: sandyjmacdonald.com/blog/

I'll try to add new posts to my Twitter feed as I upload them.

I've revamped my website.

There's now no Javascript to be seen, only sweet, sweet HMTL5 and CSS3.

And after a few comments about the function that I had that resized the browser window automatically, I've redesigned it from the ground up with a flexible design that should scale to any size window.

I've also added a few new photos, and added a blog section (more on that soon).

Check it out here: html://sandyjmacdonald.com/photography/

A short clip that I put together, to test the video on my Sony A33 and to try out Final Cut Pro X.

You can see more of my photography at www.sandyjmacdonald.com/photography/

Watch this video on Vimeo. Video created by Sandy Macdonald.

When I was in town today they had a display with four owls - two little owls, a barn owl and this one, a European eagle owl, that you could have your photo taken with.

I took this with my bargain Sigma 70-300mm lens. I've never had a bad shot with it, and it's the cheapest I've got.