Images of Eden

Rag Week 2010, St Andrews’ Got Talent

CJ Davies — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 21:39:40 +0000

This is going to be a long post, so apologies for loading times.

12th – 20th February 2010 saw Rag (Raising & Giving) Week return for another highly successful year & amongst the events this year was St Andrews’ very own version of Britain’s Got Talent. Acts ranged from singer-songwriters to dance groups, bands, beat boxers & even a magician. There was a seated audience, so I couldn’t get up close to the stage with a fast prime, so instead I sat to the side with a 135mm f2.8 & turned the sensitivity up a bit.

Singer songwriter to kick the night off.

This is the second time there has been a harpist & I’ve been on the wrong side to get a good photo!

If the competition was judged on trousers, these guys definitely would’ve won.

Some dancing to mix things up.

One of 2 acts that a certain Luke Hodgman performed in.

The magician was rather impressive.

He produced some twenty odd umbrellas from somewhere.

And covered the stage in confetti!

A rather well-practiced band up next.

The fancy-pants band back again, as their microphones weren’t working properly the first time round.

Drum kit abuse at its best.

This guy had one seriously impressive voice.

Scotland’s under 18 beat box champion.

Finally, the Rocksoc band!

Sash doing what he does best.

Then busting out a solo.

Some American rapper who needs to buy a belt.

And his beat box accompaniment.

This guy was certainly brave.

And the audience loved it!

I think these guys were the overall winners, but can’t remember for definite.

Rather cheerful looking pianist/singer.

One last acoustic cover to finish the night.

Kinnesburn Flooding, November ‘09

CJ Davies — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 20:21:37 +0000

Going back a few months now, a few days of torrential rain resulted in the Kinnessburn river, which runs not far from my flat, flooding in quite spectacular fashion. Almost impossible situation to photograph though, as it was extremely dark, raining & very hard to get close without getting rather wet feet!

Here I am using a 12 watt LED torch to try to show how high the water level is compared to the bridge – it’s usually about 6 feet beneath the bridge!

Trying to get artsy, didn’t really work.

Upstream side of the bridge, lovely collection of flotsam collecting where the water has risen too high.

Hideously exposed photograph, but gets the point across.

This gent with the umbrella hung about on the opposite bank for a while, but I couldn’t get into a good position to get a nice silhouette without sacrificing the dryness of my socks.

Lights at the Halloween Bop

CJ Davies — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 18:08:46 +0000

These are from way back around Halloween, I went to crew the Halloween Bop in Venue 1 & thought I’d try & get some nice light trails from the moving lights.

These were all shot with the kit lens, hand-held with ~2 second exposures so I’m quite surprised any of them came out at all.

Definitely going to take a tripod one day & attempt this properly, maybe leave the body on interval shooting or something.

The venue doesn’t always have the scary face hanging down the back, it was just a Halloween thing.

All of these lights are controlled from the Pearl 2000 you saw in yesterday’s post.

I wanted to try & catch some of the beams in the air with the haze, but because the kit lens is quite slow (3.5-5.6) I had to crank the sensitivity up to 3200. Haven’t tried putting them through Noise Ninja yet, need to find a way to integrate it into Lightroom because opening the image in Photoshop just to use Noise Ninja is a bit long-winded.

U2 Rattle and Hum anybody?

Venue 1’s Pearl 2000

CJ Davies — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 21:29:45 +0000

A quick shot of the Pearl 2000 lighting desk I use in the Union during Bops, etc.

Bokeh?

CJ Davies — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 11:00:34 +0000

New Sigma has some ridiculous bokeh when shot wide open at it’s minimum focussing distance! Is taking photos of my revision counted as procrastination?

New Kit~

CJ Davies — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 16:03:45 +0000

I never did a post when I got my new dSLR, but today I took delivery of a new lens so I figured it was worth showing you what I shoot with. This here is my Pentax K20D with the Pentax D-BG2 & my brand new Sigma 28mm F1.8 EX DG Aspherical Macro (quite a mouthful I know). I wanted a ’standard’ fast prime like the 50mm f1.7 is on 35mm bodies, but on the K20d with its APS-C sensor the crop/zoom turns it into a 75mm equivalent, which is too long for a standard walkaround lens. The 28mm works out as 43mm, which is just about perfect :)

Don’t really have any time to test it out though, because it’s slap bang in the middle of revision/exam season here. But after exams I’ve got a full 20(!) days before semester 2 teaching starts, so hopefully there will be lots of time to play. From what little I’ve used it, it seems to focus perfectly without the reported front/back focus issues that have supposedly plagued the newer HSM Sigmas (this older model uses the screw focus) & the minimum focussing distance of 20cm is rubbish – the thing focusses so close you can almost have the hood touching the subject!

Nighttime Snow

CJ Davies — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 22:48:17 +0000

Had to go to the lab to collect something before it got closed for the Christmas/New Year holiday (the only time in the year it ever closes) & figured I would take my camera with me to see if the kit lens could handle low light at all after some coaxing through Lightroom with high-contrast black & white conversion. The answer is not too well it seems!

Live Bands in the Union

CJ Davies — Sat, 12 Dec 2009 21:36:50 +0000

This was sometime last month, but I didn’t have any time to go through the photos & upload before now. I went along to see one of the bands that I like sound check, turned out they had canceled & I somehow ended up staying for the entire night… These were all shot on the 50mm f1.7 without flash, making great use of the vertical grip – really transforms the handling of the camera. My Etymotic ER20 came in very handy too, as with them in I could stand right up against the speakers to the sides of the stage to get a good angle on the musicians without risking a splitting headache or ruining my hearing.

Played around with a few senstivities but stuck to 800 for most of them – anything higher wouldn’t necessarily get too noisy, but wouldn’t capture the lights in a very realistic fashion.

The depth of field at 1.7 is so small I ended up with loads like this – instrument is in focus, but his face isn’t!

Everybody loves silly motions to go with the song!

Pity the colour of the guitar never came out quite right.

Got really lucky for this one, the spotlight pointed at him just happenned to come on at the right moment. Love the way the microphone stand is leaning at the same angle too.

The mic stands were a big annoyance for the most part though, as they would consistently get in the way of the shots, but there’s not really much to be done about that! This two in particular are rubbish, but fun just to see them hung in the air like that.

The harp was beautiful, but it was impossible to get a good shot of the harpist because she was ‘behind’ the harp – I couldn’t have gotten a nice shot of her from the right without climbing up on the stage.

Tried to get the guitarist through the strings of the harp, but could’ve done with closing down the apeture or focussing on further away.

This was about the only time I actually saw her face above the thing!

The t-shirt read “sex drugs & sausage rolls”.

Not a very good one, but proof that there were bagpipes :)

Full on fiddle solo~

Another gratuitous harp shot to end.

Not massively happy with most of what I took, still got a lot to learn about the new body, particularly with the old manual lenses. Still, practise makes perfect right?

Good Smile Company 1/8 Unity May

CJ Davies — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 23:06:20 +0000

Not an in depth review I’m afraid, as like always these days I’m short on time. Collected her from the Post Office a few days ago but have been so busy I’ve only today had a chance to unbox her. Purchased as an impulse in HLJ’s Christmas sale with free EMS shipping. Very impressive overall, the fluid pose is beautiful though I’m slightly worried about leaning as she’s only attached to her base by a single metal prong in her left foot that doesn’t extend very far into her leg.

I need to invest in a better tripod, as both the cheapo ones I have now aren’t sturdy enough for my new camera, particularly in portrait mode (that’s why none of these photos are portrait!). Also need some sort of dedicated lighting for figure photography, but I’ll probably make that myself. Cut a hole in the bottom of an aluminium bowl, mount a bulb & attach silk across the top to diffuse the light or something.

These photos were shot with old manual Pentax lenses from my 35mm SLRs, a 50mm 1.7 & a 100mm f4 macro. With the crop/zoom of the APS-C sized sensor in the K20D, those work out as 75mm & 150mm lenses respectively, which are great for figure photography – with the 100mm in particular though it feels a little weird taking such close up photos from several meters away!

I should be collecting Alter’s 1/7 Fate T Harlaown Shin Sonic Form from the Post Office on Tuesday, which is the one I’ve been waiting for since the summer (originally meant to be released at the end of August I think, she only actually shipped at the end of November!). I’ll try to upload a few quick photos when she arrives, but hopefully I’ll have more time later on once I’ve gotten a better tripod & lighting to take some decent photos of all sorts of figures.

Setup timeline

CJ Davies — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 20:17:16 +0000

Thought I would move the timeline & all the images to this website, rather than having them spread out across Photobucket, the Computer Science webservers, etc.

Rugby, August 2006

Aberystwyth, October 2006

Aberystwyth, December 2006

Aberystwyth, February 2007

Aberystwyth, April 2007

Aberystwyth, May 2007

Rugby, July 2007

St Andrews, September 2007

St Andrews, November 2007

St Andrews, December 2007

St Andrews, January 2008

St Andrews, April 2008

St Andrews, May 2008

St Andrews, June 2008

St Andrews, October 2008

St Andrews, November 2008

St Andrews, January 2009

St Andrews, February 2009

St Andrews, June 2009

St Andrews, August 2009

St Andrews, October 2009

St Andrews, February 2010

St Andrews, June 2010