Still Life – Selkie’s Photography

HNC Photography

It’s all over. Officially. The certificate arrived in the post (much like the Higher one, although this one actually made it to the right address this year) and my former class mates are off onto the HND. I’ll do mine next year once I’ve worked a bit and paid off a few bills.

So I thought I’d do a bit of a collection of the different work I’ve accumulated over the year of work. So the year started with the still life unit, so there was some studio work but we went outside with lego for It’s a Small World. Then I took it further as the unit ended with the tiny model railway people re-enacting Hands, Face, Space. Some of the other work from the Still Life unit appeared in my more general Autumn post.
New year, new lockdown and we did most of Portraiture in our own homes and I ran a little short on models. The final term was Documentary photography and my final project was Unsafe Spaces. In which I discovered that Photoshop could really use a spell checker function. The Applied Photography unit showed that there was more than just taking photos… The infrared or ultra violet were pretty different although quite easy to do on a basic scale. A more practical application of the infrared was the trail camera. Watching Indy at night wasn’t exactly riveting but it was something I wanted to try for a long time. Finally there was an accumulation of work in an over haul of the Portfolio and the way this site looks.

So it’s just a matter of wait and earn… and hope they let me back in next year…..

Hands… Face… Space…

The final creative project for my still life unit in college. A recreation of the government’s Covid-19 advice graphic using my favourite tiny railway model people.

Hands – Hand sanitiser swimming pool complete with Baywatch lifeguard.
Face – A discarded face mask ski slope. Has various levels of difficulty.
Space – Get your health and safety signage painted by our elite crew of painters. Don’t worry they do clean up after themselves.

All done as set ups on my desk top. It’s one of the easiest things to do. The fight I had with photoshop at 1am to put the work together however…..

Autumn 🍂 🍁

I’m missing the gold and orange tones of autumn already, as we start the downhill slide into winter and the festive season.

Meanwhile college continues on both in and outside. The studio is fun and I wish I could spend more time there but we’re out here dodging a virus….

I don’t normally get to play with flash but there’s actually a whole world out there waiting to be manipulated with light. But back to why we are actually here……

Some natural light. Autumnal colour and life is out there. It’s been a kind season for my photos. I miss going roung museums and the city catching people but they are all in hiding. So I am fungi hunting and looking for interesting nature while walking in the local park. My back needs a break from my camera bag though. Hopefully Santa will bring me one with decent shoulder straps and enough space.

Lucky in love? Seal it with a padlock. It’s an odd tradition that started in the real city of love, Paris, and can be found almost anywhere now.

It’s a Small World

Today’s college project. Learned that the model train figues are a little too small to be taken outside into the wild. I’ll probably keep them to desktop set ups where they can be carefully placed and secured. But lego figures…. now there’s a scale that works well in the wild.

Capture Christmas Competition

Before Christmas Wex, that purveyor of fine camera equipment, taker of wages, and destroyer of credit cards, ran a competition. There were 3 categories; food, family, and festivities. Here’s all the winning photos.

Well I sent this in as an entry in the food category and it, somehow, magically, came first. I know I’m still slightly speechless. This is actually the first time a photo of mine has won anything. It was a slightly ridiculous set up in my bedroom to capture these tiny model railway road workers. What made me laugh was the number of models that were not actually doing any work. The dude with the clipboard is clearly the foreman though.

What it looked like from behind the camera

So with my camera on the tripod, which was more of an after thought actually. I spent 2 packs of chocolate coins getting the stacks right. They were meant to be for my nephews but I did replace them. These tiny model people don’t stand so well by themselves so they are often stuck to the ground with glue dots or parts of them.

As for camera settings, with a tripod you can get away with massively long shutter speeds. So ISO 100 and a tiny aperture to get a depth of field. I might have gotten slightly better results with a macro lens but the 24-105mm f4 lens does have a macro setting. Next time I’ll try focus stacking with Affinity photo. So there’s sharpness from the front all the way to the back. I settled the focus point on the face of the work foreman, in case you are wondering. No post processing either. It came out just the way I wanted it, with a bit of practice.

I did another set up but it wasn’t as effective. Although the guys are standing around not working very hard here.