Hobbies and Crafts

Yes, it is nice to know someone appreciates your photos as you say and it was a shot taken in our local Bouskell Park, which is quite an interesting place and has an old ice house as it was originally the grounds of the Hall next to it! Part of it is the site of a Mediaeval village, but there are no visible traces left. It adjoins The Long Walk, which is a narrow strip of pine trees that have squirrels and woodpeckers. Sadly, as seems to be the case everywhere, they plan to build houses right up to the pine trees both sides. It will be 'goodbye wildlife' then I expect.

Four of Von's photos on the photo blog

Does anyone else use their photographs to create calendars?

This is the second year I have and it does save many present problems.

I use mainly local landscapes, plants, flowers and animals. This year it definitely influenced some of the photographs I took.
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I haven't done but our daughter in law made calendars with photos of the children for several years. they are lovely but our neighbour always gives us a calendar as a present and there is a limit to the number of calendars you can hang so I wonder if my recipients would have the same problem.

Can you please pm me a link to the photo blog Ann?

I will do it tomorrow Ann as I am on my IPad and the address is upstairs on the desk top. (They don't always seem to talk to each other) :-D

If I forget please remind me. :-)

Thank you Ann. :-)

And the last one to bring back up.

Do your local papers run photography competitions? Ours has one currently with the topic, 'curves and lines'. One of the entries is a great photo taken from the bridge of the local railway station at sunset with the sun reflecting off the straight and curved railway lines. I never seem to get that sort of inspiration!

A lot of it is down to inspiration as well as technical knowledge and being in the right place at the right time. Back in the 80s when we lived in Bedfordshire i belonged to. A Camera club for a short time. I did enter a newspaper comp and got highly commended. Do you know I can't for the life of me remember the photo I took. It would have been film and on a Minolta camera.

I have decided to stop going to the camera club. I spend many nights when I lie in bed thinking of the photos I could/might take for the special topic. Not conducive to sleep. The subject for this coming Monday night is "Composite". I did think I could photograph a daisy as it is a composite flower but I doubt if that is what they mean. I wont be going anyway, no time now to get any photos printed and set up on hard board with a frame around it. I will be out tomorrow (Sunday) meeting an Aussie cousin near the airport. She flies in tonight and out again tomorrow afternoon. Naturally I will have my cameras with me.

You can't do it all Huia and the pressure of having to present a particular photo might eventually spoil your hobby for you. You do take lovely photos. :-)

I like photography can you please pm me a link to the photo blog.

Likewise - Thanks :-)

Kay

It's been a long time,

Can this thread make a comeback?
Has GR got evan more people that like photography?
Will they get on this thread & chat, give advice/tips, help eachother?
or if enough people are interested, start a GR camera club?

Well it's up to you

It is a struggle!! :-D

Hi

I still do photography and go to the local camera club. I didn't do much last year as the themes our club choose really didn't appeal to me and this year isn't much better. Maybe I will have to ask for some advice on here for ideas on things to do. The summer is here so I will have to make more of an effort to get out and take picture.

I have a couple of pictures of fairy's and frogs (ceramic ones) that I took recently so I will have to see if there are any I can work on to enter the competitions with. I thought I might have a go at bokeh and combine that with my fairy's. Its worth a play. Any hints and tips on how to do this would be really welcome.

I also wanted to have a go at putting a picture in a glass globe but haven't managed to do it yet. Any tips would be really great.

I have other projects I would like to work on but I think I will concentrate on these two for now.

Enjoy

Jane

Interesting Jane, I have seen Bokeh, but didn't know that was what it is called so I looked it up. and I have copied a bit for anyone else interested.

What is Bokeh?
Basically, bokeh is the quality of out-of-focus or “blurry” parts of the image rendered by a camera lens – it is NOT the blur itself or the amount of blur in the foreground or the background of a subject. The blur that you are so used to seeing in photography that separates a subject from the background is the result of shallow “depth of field” and is generally simply called “background blur”. The quality and feel of the background/foreground blur and reflected points of light, however, is what photographers call Bokeh.
The subject will be in focus and sharp (which means that it is inside the depth of field), while the background is out of focus (which means that the background is outside the depth of field). The small or “shallow” depth of field is the result of standing relatively close to the subject, while using a large aperture. Round circles of different colour on the image? Those are light reflections and they are circular because that’s how the lens rendered them. Good Bokeh is when the circles are ‘soft’ While some photographers argue that bokeh is just about the quality of the circular light reflections, many others, including myself, believe that bokeh is about the quality of the entire out-of-focus area, not just reflections and highlights.
Good and Bad Bokeh
Remember, bokeh is rendered by the lens, not the camera. Different lenses render bokeh differently due to unique optical designs. Generally, portrait and telephoto lenses with large maximum apertures yield more pleasant-looking bokeh than cheaper consumer zoom lenses. For example, the Nikon 85mm f/1.4D lens produces exceptionally good-looking bokeh, while the Nikon 18-135mm f/3.5-5.6G DX lens produces poor bokeh at the same focal length and aperture – all due to differences in optical designs of both lenses. Again, I am not just talking about the background blur; all lenses are capable of producing out of focus blur, but not all lenses are capable of rendering beautiful bokeh.
So, what is a good or beautiful bokeh? A good bokeh pleases our eyes and our perception of the image and therefore, the background blur should appear soft and “creamy”, with smooth round circles of light and no hard edges
Bokeh shapes
The shape of the reflected light in out of focus areas depends on the lens diaphragm. Many older lenses such as Nikon 50mm f/1.4D have 7 straight blades in their diaphragms, which results in heptagon-shaped bokeh :

Most new lenses, now come with 9 rounded blades, which render round bokeh (Nikon 105mm f/2.8G VR):
How to get good Bokeh
So, how do you get a good bokeh in your images? As I have pointed out above, bokeh depends on the type of lens you are using. While lower-end consumer zoom lenses will yield unpleasant bokeh, fixed (prime) lenses and most professional zoom lenses with fast apertures yield good-looking bokeh. Do you know if your lens produces good bokeh? Try this: focus on an object from a very close distance (as close as the lens will allow, keeping the object in focus), making sure that there are no objects at least 5-6 feet behind it. Make sure to be on the same level as the object itself, so that you are not looking down on it. Do not use a plain wall as your background – try to find a colorful background, preferably with some lights on it. A Christmas tree is a perfect background for a bokeh test. Once you find a good test subject with a suitable background, set your camera to “Aperture Priority” mode and set your aperture to the lowest number. On most consumer zoom lenses, the lowest aperture is typically f/3.5, while on prime and professional zoom lenses, it can be between f/1.2 and f/2.8. Once the aperture is set to the lowest value, take a picture of your subject and take a look at the rear LCD of your camera. The subject should be in focus, while the background is blurred. If you have a good lens, the bokeh should be soft and fuzzy, looking pleasing to the eye as shown in the example above. The circular reflections should be round and soft, with no hard edges.
5) What lenses create great bokeh?
There are many lenses that create great-looking bokeh. Most fast prime lenses with round-blade apertures such as Nikon 85mm f/1.4D or Canon 85mm f/1.2II USM create exceptionally good-looking bokeh. The lower-cost version of the same lens – Nikon 85mm f/1.8D and Canon 85mm f/1.8 USM also produce beautiful bokeh. One of my favorite lenses for beautiful bokeh is the Nikon 50mm f/1.4G, but be careful about the older Nikon 50mm f/1.4D or the 50mm f/1.8D, since they both produce heptagon-shaped bokeh as shown above. There are too many lenses to list, so I recommend doing some more research on different lenses, based on your photography needs.


So it obviously depends on your camera lenses. What camera do you have will it produce good bokeh? Have you ever tried it?

Are the camera club competitions all arty these days Jane? There used to be subjects like the colour wheel, humour, patterns, food and drink.

I have just looked on line and have seen suggestions like

Movie titles,
Summer Begins!
Reflections
Purple
True Love
New Beginnings
Summer Rain
Summer Celebration
Seasonal Showers & Inclement Weather
Seasonal Color
Funny People Pictures

Water Droplets
Creativity
Wild Color
Weather
Holiday Greetings
Clouds
Peaceful
Contrast
Showing Motion
Sooooo Funny!
Technology
Street Photography
: Green with envy
Let's eat!
Fun in the Sun
It's all there in Black and White
Sharing
Action
Vintage
Expressions
Bokeh or Beautiful Blur
Seascapes
Rivers and streams
Cityscape
Astract
A stitch in time
Music
Astrology
Cars
Close calls
Fungus
Mirrors
Newborns
Red
Patrioticshadow
Shapes
Streets
Smoke
Wild places



Might give you a few ideas. I love this time of year as my favourite subject to photograph is nature, flowers, leaves, trees, butterflies, birds etc. however there are quite a few ideas there I might have a go at. Looking forward to our holiday in the Lake District as that is a wonderful place to have a camera.

Are you taking digital or film photos? colour, black and white?

HI

I have a Nikon D3200 which take digital photos and I mainly take colour photos although I do have a look to see if they look better in black and white.

The camera club themes for prints are:-

Abandoned buildings
Black & white
Horses
People at Work
Portraits
re-enactments
Trees or woods
Views
Wildlife
Yachts, ships or boats

For PDI's

Autumn
Birds
Celebrations
flowers or parts of flowers
Graphic shapes or patterns
Looking-up
Movement
perspective
Reflections
Wide angle

For next year we have picked, Celebrations and movement for the PDI competitions and Portraits and Yachts, ships or boats for the prints.

The boats should be quite easy as I live by the Solent so there are plenty of boats around here. But this could also be seen as a problem as everyone will be taking pictures of boats on the water so they will have to be exceptionally good. So I plan to do something different. There is a boat on Portsdown hill so I may try taking pictures of that. Another idea is a ship in a bottle, which might be a bit different. My favourite idea at the moment is to make paper boats and have a child holding it or playing with it. Although I don't have a young child so that could be a problem.

I don't like doing portraits so I will probably give that one a miss. For the celebration one I am struggling to think of something a bit different. I think most people will do weddings, Christmas or birthday parties etc.

As for the movement one I have no idea what I can do for that. Then there are all the photos for the open competitions where you can enter anything you like.

I have to go for out of the ordinary subjects to stand any chance of getting reasonable scores in the competitions. My camera skills are not very good. I intend to try and learn a few new ones this year which is why I thought about the Bokeh and putting objects in a glass globe. I haven't seen anyone else do things like this so it should be quite interesting to see what the judges say.

I am in group B and dare I say It I am quite happy in this group. there is no way I can compete against the people in the A Group. Most of them have years of experience and are very good at Photoshop.

Right I think I shall go and play with the fairy's and see if I can get a good photo to work on.

All the best

Jane