Blue and Blonde (Westy 52)

Back to the Portraits this week..

This is a quick grab natural light portrait of my friend and work colleague Faye.

Taken with the D300 + 17-55 2.8.

The 'studio' is a front door step - I positioned Faye so that she was just inside the door as the soft light fell on her face.

Spot metering on her eyes threw the background into darkness, as well as giving me the 'high key' feel I was after.

The background has been burnt slightly to make it even darker and eyes and lips sharpened a little.

I love the contrast between the almost porcelain like skin tones and deep blue eyes and dress.

Storming Ahead (Westy 52)

This week's image is another three shot HDR image taken with the G9.

This time I am a little closer to home (River Ouse in Bedford).

The shots were combined in Photomatix - Then imported into Photoshop.

I applied a grad layer to dark the sky the little (although it didn't need much!).

Fly the Flag

Fly the Flag
Originally uploaded by Westy Photography

Thought I would revisit the 'Polar Coordinates' actions that I made in photoshop.

Great way to make 'marbles' - The effect works really well with colourful images (like this Peugeot 207 rally car).

Colour vs B&W (Westy 52)

A macro shot this week, taken with the D300 and Sigma 105 2.8 Macro.

This was taken during a visit to "Wild Britain", at Wilden in Bedfordshire. (More details on Wild Britain are HERE)

I really liked the way the striking Black and White of the Tree Nymph Butterfly contrasted with the colour in the flowers.

The Macro lens at f4 really threw the background mainly out of focus, but still kept enough detail to give the feeling of being in 'the wild'.

I still struggle with focussing with the Macro - In this case I went to manual focussing, which seemed to work much better than auto for this kind of image.

The Butterfly kept nice and still too, which helped!

The image is slightly sharpened in photoshop, with the corners 'burnt' to emphasize the central focus.

Wide-angle Rally

This was taken at the Forest Rally Stage at Goodwood.

A nicely panned shot... The reason I posted it here though was the fact that it was taken with a 35mm wideangle lens!

This shows just how close to the action you are at Goodwood, but more importantly demonstrates what is possible with VERY affordable glass.

Brilliant little lens.

Easy Rider

This is actually Peter Fonda, re-united with the Harley Chopper that he road in Easy Rider.

Taken at the Goodwood Festival of Speed - D300 + 70-200vr, handheld.

Lift Off (Westy 52)

A really tough choice this week - I took loads of shots at Goodwood, many of which I was really pleased with.

In the end I decided to go with this shot of a Bowler Rally Raid racer at full chat;

The shot was taken using the D300 + 70-200vr, coupled with a 1.7 teleconverter, giving me a range of 119 - 340mm.

The Teleconverter does make the image a little soft, so I sharpened slightly is CS4, and applied a tonal curve to give the 'gritty' contrasty look I was after.

The full Goodwood FoS gallery can be viewed Here