Sunday, March 22, 2009

Northern Shoveler / Slobeend

Northern Shoveler / Slobeend

It has taken me years but yesterday finally I spotted a Northern Shoveler. Reminded me of Daffy Duck and I imagined it having a speech impediment: "You're despicable." :-)

Thursday, March 19, 2009

Multi-exposure and automatic EV adjustment

sexy Richmond bridge Playing around with the advanced features of my Pentax K20D, in this case the multi-exposure and automatic EV adjustment. This bridge in Richmond in the photo above was never without buses, cars, cyclist or pedestrians, at one point even horses passed. The constant stream of traffic was very distracting and wouldn't make for a nice photo. I put the camera on my tripod and selected a multi-exposure of 9 shots and selected the option to automatically adjust the exposure for the number of shots selected. The result is a bridge without traffic. This is of course nothing new, photographers have been using long exposures for ages to make passing distractions disappear, however, it has never been easier to do and doesn't require ND filters and the like. Exactly the same technique can be used to make photos of streaming water obtain that silky flow.

Wednesday, March 04, 2009

Freeze Frame

The Scott Polar Research Institute at the University of Cambridge made lots of fabulous photos available of Scott and other arctic explorers. See here.