Jamarem's photostream  

A bitterly cold day today in Bradgate Park. The water was starting to freeze over and the Black Headed Gulls were closing their eyes against the wind. The sun was shining though, and lighting up their red legs from behind.

A bitterly cold day today in Bradgate Park. The water was starting to freeze over and the Black Headed Gulls were closing their eyes against the wind. The sun was shining though, and lighting up their red legs from behind.

A brighter day today so just stood my block of ice up against the kitchen window to be back lit by the sun, and then flash to the front.

I must admit I felt a bit cruel encasing these tulips in ice :(. I'd seen something in a magazine doing this using a lightbox. I don't have a lightbox so I improvised with a cornflakes box. Cut the back out and replaced with baking paper, then shone a halogen lamp through it to backlight the ice. Used on camera flash to front.

I think maybe my layer of ice in front of the tulips was a little too thick, and maybe my light isn't even enough so is a bit grey, but it's a technique I might try again - pehaps using filtered water next time.

I'm doing a Picture a Week via the View 52: A Year in pictures Group.
www.flickr.com/groups/view52/

For my View 52 I have decided to do a different theme every four week For Weeks 1-4 I am concentrating on “Close-Up”. My other aims this year are to use Manual Exposure so that it becomes second nature and to understand more about lighting.

For my Week 4 shot I wanted to shoot something as close as I could possibly get and I figured for me this would be my Canon 100mm macro lens and all three Kenko extension tubes (12mm, 20mm & 36mm). Before deciding what to shoot, I took a test shot of the TV listings to see how close that would be. The image below shows the area within the red square that filled the frame, and this was 12mmx9mm. Hmm!! I had a number of problems trying to shoot this close. Firstly I thought I might do a portrait oriented shot, but the lens combination was unwieldy, and the tripod plate wouldn’t hold it that way. Secondly I had to focus by moving the subject forward and backward and it’s very difficult to maintain the composition you want when doing that on a such a small scale. Thirdly it magnifies every tiny spec of dust not even visible on a normal shot, meaning I had a lot of cloning to do, and I’m not sure I’ve been very successful in some areas.

Shot by south facing window, natural light, and also reflector used. I had a sheet of white paper under the subject as well. ISO 200: f/22: SS 8.0: Partial Metering: White Balance: Cloudy.

So what do we have here? Well after scouting around the house for subjects I settled on needlework pins. I don’t have a pin cushion, so I stuck them in a soft cat toy, and that is the red colour you can see reflected back on the pins. For the background I’ve used yet another cat ball, this time a green sparkly one.

The rest of my set for View 52 here: www.flickr.com/photos/janflicks/sets/72157628699611025/