Abstract flower shot

Another abstract flower macro

Abstract snail macro

Abstract flower macro

Abstract Geranium macro

Abstract Lavendar macro

I recently purchased a set of macro extension tubes for my camera. I’ve been interested in macro photography for a while but I’ve never had a macro lens so I thought I’d give it a try!

I shot all of these images on my 5D MKII with my 50mm 1.4 lens at its maximum aperture. They all have one incredibly sharp point which quickly fades out of focus because of the incredibly shallow depth of field, I find that this gives them quite an abstract feel.

Landscape photograph of a field and forest with a cloudy sky overhead

This is one of my favourite landscapes I’ve ever taken. I love the contrast between the out of focus field and the sharp trees and sky, I always enjoy working with wide apertures and shallow depths of field to create effects like this.

I’ve been useless at posting to the photoblog this past month. I’m gonna try and make up for it with lots of great posts this next month! Shot of Lavendar taken in my back garden at the weekend.

I have a ‘thing’ for photographing grass(es) I did a mini-project on it once (see it here on flickr). I’m not really sure what the attraction is. I like it’s abstract and random nature and enjoy the ability to portray it differently using varied lighting and angles.

I thought about posting these as 3 separate blog posts with the same theme but I decided that they belong together as a group. 3 images from around the house of no subject in particular but containing interesting textures and light.

This is the last post with the theme of square crops, off camera flash and vivid colours (for the moment!) A bunch of bananas in the kitchen, as you can see I placed the flashgun almost directly behind them. I used the flash in wide angle mode (14mm) on manual at 1/32 power and dialed in -2 stops of exposure compensation. I’ll definitely be revisiting this theme. I find that off camera flash is a great way to add a little sparkle to an otherwise uninteresting photograph.

The next few shots have the same theme of square crops, off camera flash and vivid colours. This is the first in a series of 3 posts with this theme. I liked the lighting in the previous post so much that I’ve used it in most of the shots in this series using off camera flash to create a clean white backlight which also produces some lens flare. The subject here as you can see is a pineapple which was sitting in the kitchen.

The clean and bright lighting in this shot was created using a single off camera flash, which you can see in the background to the right hand side of this shot. The flash firing within the frame of the image created a slight lens flare on this photograph, I really love lens flare when used on purpose. Sometimes it can completely ruin an image, other times it adds the extra colour and vibrance that it needs.

I got busy taking photos around the house last night so there should be plenty of content for the next week or so once I’ve got them all through post processing. This is an Ibanez RG321 MH electric guitar, it doesn’t get anywhere near as much use as it should! Pretty simple setup for this shot, the guitar was laid on the floor (laminate) with a lamp on in the background. I used the 50mm 1.4 wide open to create a very shallow depth of field.

I’m feeling bad again as I haven’t updated in a few days! Here are a couple of shots from the Randomness collection. More of my good old 50mm f1.4 here, definitely my favourite lens. I’ve shot an entire wedding with one of these before and ended up with nothing but fantastic images. It’s a little more difficult on a full frame camera as the depth of field can be even more shallow when wide open (relative to the same image from a crop sensor) so I find it slightly harder to use at F1.4. These shots were both taken with the lens wide open, so we have lovely background blur for all to enjoy!