Yes, I know, I’m late with my next Project 52 photo. Pbbbbbthbt.
Anyway, I went to Kew with my friend Anne, who wanted to learn about apertures and depth of field. This is the sort of shot I wanted to show her to illustrate shallow depth of field:
It's nearly Spring
(Camera: Canon EOS 450D. Lens: Tamron IS 18-270mm. Aperture: f/6.3. Exposure 0.004 sec (1/250). Shot on aperture priority, outside, on a frankly manky grey day).
For my sins, I gave Corel my e-mail address when I installed Paint Shop Pro X2. Actually, they’re not bad, and don’t send me masses of e-mails. However, they’ve just launched Paint Shop Pro X3, and e-mailed to tell me about it, and one section of the e-mail made me laugh.
That grudging “works with Windows XP” stuck on the bottom, like they’d been forced to make it compatible with Etch-A-Sketch™ or chisel and slab of rock…
Goodness me, I apologise for the mess in here, it’s been a while, hasn’t it?
Sorry, been too busy taking photos to actually blog about it. Anyway. I’ve decided, due to pathological laziness, that a Project 52 might be a better plan than a project 365 (a photo a week for a year, as opposed to a photo a day for a year).
Normally they won’t be as frankly and appallingly narcissistic as this one, but I’m quite pleased with this self-portrait*. Normally, I hate pictures of me, for a whole variety of reasons. I hate self-portraits even more, as all that faffing with holding camera at arms length results in double chins or squinting (and often both). Not good.
But I no longer have to faff, for I have a tripod which is taller than me, and a cable release. And a slidy kitchen door made out of frosted glass, to soften the light behind me, and the result is this, which isn’t bad.
1/52 - Self-portrait after a new haircut
*And thanks to the ever-helpful Steve for his pointing out that it was a bit on the pink side. He was right. So I set to and played with colour balance in RAW, and learned something new, hurrah.
(Camera: Canon EOS 450D. Lens: Canon EF 85mm f1.8. Aperture: f/1.8. Exposure 0.02 sec (1/50). Shot on aperture priority, inside, with no artificial light. Colour balance and minor blemishes corrected in Paint Shop Pro).
Not terribly photogeeky, this one, mainly because photos were not allowed at many of the things I was at over the weekend, but my other blog is locked temporarily whilst the Wibsite people upgrade the site and move us over to a new blogging platform, which is also WordPress-based, yay!
I have had a slowly-growing devotion to John Henry Cardinal Newman for a while. Nice chap, convert, writer, preacher, counsellor and educator, pastor, Oratorian, and servant of the poor, and all round Good Egg.
He’s currently on the track to sainthood in the Catholic Church, with his beatification expected some time next year, subject to the Vatican’s processes, which will make him the first English non-martyr to be beatified since the Reformation. As part of the beatification process, the Vatican requires that bodies are exhumed, and this was done in October of this year – you may know that the grave was found to be empty of physical relics of the Cardinal, but there were various things found in the grave, such as brass fittings from the coffin, the Cardinal’s pectoral cross, and “fragments” of vestments, which may yet prove to contain remains of the body – it is a slow process, picking through three boxes of textile remains.
The Cardinal’s relics were put on display for veneration from Thursday evening until Saturday evening last week, prior to solemn Mass for All Saints and the translation of his relics to a side chapel at the Oratory.
And I, not quite sure how, but I’m putting it down to Cardinal Newman’s intercession, got a ticket to the Mass, despite applications having closed about a week before I discovered I needed a ticket.
There was something deeply moving about the relics that were on display. His breviary and his rosary stood in mute testament to a life of prayer, the beads of his rosary worn and darkened with age and long use – as his eyesight failed in his old age, and he could no longer see to read his breviary, he switched to the old custom of saying the rosary in place of the breviary, with each Hail Mary representing a psalm he could no longer read. His pectoral cross was a silent witness to his obedience to Christ’s injunction “take up your cross and follow Me,” for in converting to the Catholic Church when he did, he was committing an act that was quite beyond the pale – it cost him his job and many of his friends.
One of the Cardinal’s last wishes was to return to the dust from which he had been formed, and the silver-topped glass vial, containing soil from the grave, stood as a sign that this wish had been granted by the Lord in Whose service his life was poured out.
The Mass on Sunday was incredible. Oratorians have not lost the ability to do a Solemn Mass with the dignity and reverence which it deserves, and, the two hours that Mass took simply flew by. Yes. Two hours. I can still smell the incense in my scarf and jacket, and feel the immense sense of trusting faith in the intercession of those who have gone before us. I had not realised how much I missed the Latin Mass, which was what I attended when I first came into the church. Methinks I must start going to the London Oratory more often.
I did take some photos over the weekend, since Techgirl and I were at the Botanical Gardens, I need to sort through them and get some up on flickr.
Oh, and there is a strongly-worded letter even now winging its way to Barclays customer services department, in which the phrases “cash machine ate my debit card,” “stranded in a strange city with no money,” “having to borrow money off friends and relatives,” will feature largely.
I’m nearly ashamed to write this post.
On Saturday, the first official UK Utata (if you’ve no idea what I’m talking about – it’s a flickr thing) meet was held at Lacock Abbey in Wiltshire. It was chosen because William Fox Talbot, one of the fathers of modern photography, lived there and conducted many of his experiments in photography there.
We had a lovely time, including wading up to our ankles in a stream, with umpty-squillion pounds worth of camera equipment round our necks. It’s so nice to be out with people who don’t mind you stopping to take photos every two seconds because, oh, look, they’re doing the same thing.
And the near-terminal geekery?
Lacock Abbey window
This window is the subject of the oldest photographic negative in existence.
And I can’t tell you how excited I was to be standing in the same place as William Fox Talbot, and peering at a print made from the negative.
Does anyone have a spare life they can let me have? Clearly I need to get one.
I will not be illustrating this post. My friend would kill me to death.
I wanted to play with the 50mm prime lens, and everyone says it’s excellent for portraits. So I bribed a friend with a bottle of Marks & Spencer’s pink prosecco, and trotted off with the camera bag.
Nice sunny Sunday morning, out into the garden, camera on tripod, “why isn’t it letting me take photos?” Because I didn’t have a memory card in…
Sigh.
Camera off tripod, memory card in camera, camera back on tripod, camera at widest aperture (highest f-stop number) and take a series of portraits, closing the lens down in one stop increments until the smallest aperture is reached, which, on the 50mm, is f1.8.
Other disasters: I’d forgotten to reset the white balance from tungsten light to daylight, so the first photos came out with a nasty blue cast to them. Always put your settings back to default when you’re finished!
The portraits aren’t brilliant because we weren’t doing it as a proper portrait shoot, I was just snapping away as Golightlycat was talking, they weren’t posed or anything, so there’s a variety of unflattering facial expressions. But as a series, it’s a really good illustration of apertures.
Anyway – this is one of my orchids, taken at f1.8.
orchid
I was reviewing my flickr stream the other day, thinking about the cameras I’ve used, and how technology has advanced in an incredibly short space of time.
There is almost exactly three years between the top photo (taken on 3rd July 2005) and the bottom one (taken on July 4th 2008).
This picture was taken with one of my first ever digital cameras, a borrowed 3.2MP Kodak.
Hill Top Farm
Next I was given a camera of my own, a 5MP Canon (clearly camera preferences are like whether you can roll your tongue or not, handed down through the family line – my father has used Canons all his life)!
phalaenopsis
Having been bitten by the photography bug (and deeply, deeply relieved that I no longer have to pay for film processing), I then acquired another Canon, the 10MP G7, which could do all sorts of clever tricks such as selective colourisation in the camera itself (saving messing about on PhotoShop, hurrah)
yellow
And now, Canon’s latest SLR, the 12.2MP 450D, which I love to bits already.
flames
Now I just need to practice practice practice!
Yes, this is my second one. However, my first one is supposed to be about my journey as a Lay member of the Order of Preachers (Dominicans, Black Friars), although it’s actually more ranting about London Underground at the moment.
So I thought I’d set up a separate one as I learn how to use my new digital SLR.
Hey ho. Lay Dominican, obsessive photographer, grammar Nazi, inveterate witterer.
Rosa mundi is a rose, in case you were wondering.
days of wine and roses
