John Coveney Photos' photostream  

Another moonshot planned with Photographers Ephemeris - taken on 6 Nov last at 7.15pm. I used the Canon 10-22mm at f11, 10 mm and ISO 200 for 110 seconds. Although it was a dark sky in the camera, I used the white balance and saturation tools in Lightroom to bring out the blue tones that remain in the sky with a near full moon (80%) as well as Photoshop to clone out streaks on the water – from slowly moving bits of rubbish I think. I also got a strange colour shift the first time I uploaded it to Flickr - I've seen this a few times before - so I had to make the colours look a little off in Lightroom to get it to look better on Flickr!

Another shot of Andy from Peter’s portrait session, this time in profile. When we were setting up this one I intended to light the near side of his face but I accidentally took a shot with just one light on the other side and, realizing it had potential, I went on to do a series of them with this one as my favourite. I also used a reflector to put a little light on the near side of his face but I think having his ear and the back of his head in shade emphsizes his features. The camera settings were, as before, 1/160th of a second, f7.1 (it was intended to be f8), ISO100 and 55mm using the Canon EFS 17-55 lens. Apart from cropping and dust spot removal - on his dark clothes and not the sensor for once! - the main adjustment in Lightroom involved partial desaturation of the skin tones and playing around with split toning. I used this to give a golden tone to highlights and slight brownish tone to the shadows – to me, at least, this gives an impression of evening light from a window. If I wanted to be really pretentious, it might even qualify as chiaroscuro, defined by Wikipedia as clear tonal contrasts . . . to suggest the volume and modelling of the subjects depicted. There’s a useful 3 minute video tutorial on split toning, after an advert, here.

Press L to view on Black. This shot of Andy is from a recent studio lights portrait session organized by Peter as part of Offshoot’s Walk With Me program where experienced members demonstrate their techniques to groups of 3 or 4 people. Peter showed us how to use his Elinchrome mains powered flashes that were controlled using a radio trigger similar to this mounted on the camera’s hotshoe. The flashes were mounted on light stands such as this and diffused with softboxes at approximately 45 degree angles to Andy to give depth to the portrait by outlining his facial features with shadows. This shot was lit with the main light on the front left, a reflector on the front right to soften the shadows on the left side of his face and a rear light to the right to light his hair and to separate his head and shoulders from the black background. The amount of light was decided manually by using the camera’s histogram and fine tuned by moving the flashes back and forward a little. The black ball was bit of good luck in that it got knocked out from a shelf in the hall we did the shoot in – with his black outfit I immediately thought it would add interest to the shot. I also asked Andy for some aggression in his expression to add a bit of presence to the shot. The camera settings were 1/160th of a setting, f7.1 (it was intended to be f8), ISO100 and 55mm using the Canon EFS 17-55 lens. The main adjustments in Lightroom3 was tighter crop and a black and white conversion along with some work on the contrast and brightness as well as a little work to highlight the eye area.

Best viewed on Black - press L. Following on the Errant Massey-Ferguson shot , I headed out for a walk around the water tower at Triskmore above Glenderry on Kerry Head to get this dusk view. It’s almost the same as from my sister-in-law’s kitchen (!) but going to the top of the hill separates the three whale-shaped outer Magharee Islands from the Brandon range in the background. Once again I used the Canon 100-400mm f4-5.6 lens at f8, at ISO 100 for 0.8 of a second at f11 and 210mm – on the tripod.

Best viewed large - L. The inspiration to shoot Pigeon House Moon came from Chris Power Smith – in contrast I shot today’s post on Kerry Head last May, long before I saw Breff’s recent quixotic silhouette, but it immediately reminded me of my shot. I liked it at the time but I didn’t get around to posting it – so blame Breff if you don’t like it :-). I took it handheld with the Canon 100-400mm f4-5.6 lens at f8, at ISO 200 for 1/320th of a second at 400mm – the joy of image stabilization! I was in my sister-in-law’s house at a family event when I noticed the evening suddenly brightening after an overcast day. I looked out, saw the tractor on the horizon and both it and the glow lasted just long enough for me pull out the gear and get a few quick shots.