You all know about lockdown. All I want to do here is share some things that I have done whilst I have a bit more personal time.

The main thing I developed was a bit more patience. Some images took a couple of hours of shooting and editing, some I took the images over a series of days, and for my Swim, Bike, Run I spent almost an entire day taking the images, and then a bit more processing them into the final shot.

Macro

The first thing I did was some macro shots. I borrowed a macro lens from my friend Steve just before lockdown – smart move! The first images I captured were ‘straight’ macro, and this one of a dandelion is the one that I particularly liked. No artificial light, just evening sun.

Focus stacking

Having started Macro, I rapidly moved onto Focus stacking. This involves talking a whole series of images, each with the focus slightly further away than the previous one (we’re talking millimetres), and then selecting the in-focus parts of each image. I bought a focus rail to do this, plus some LED panel lights. This image is about 30 separate ones stacked in Photoshop.

Self portrait

So I had an idea for the camera club “Portraits” competition, based on the only willing subject I could find – me! Taking Triathlon as my inspiration, I created three separate images, each of which was a significant exercise in itself. I started with Bike – a single flash and the camera slightly below me, and hours of taking one shot, getting off the bike, review, adjust get back on bike and repeat.

Next up was Swim. In the hot tub I had several ideas for using the water to splash, ripple etc but in the end nothing worked properly, so I went for the “goggles”. Karen helped massively here to shortcircuit a lot of the shoot & basic review loop without me getting out of the tub every single time. This was lit with a flash on either side.

Final effort was Run. I set up a black backdrop in the Log Cabin with two flashes – one on the left in a softbox, the other up high with a simple diffuser. I then went for a 5k run. I went hard to ensure I looked suitable knackered, and set my best time for about 1 year, so yes very authentic. Again with Karen’s help it was all about the right pose, and tweaks to lighting.

Then I had to make a single image from each of the three, which was mainly a case of layout, and then a couple of lighting adjustments to balance the three images. I’m very pleased with the final image, although in the club competition, it was marked down by traditionalists as they felt it was not a portrait. I tend to disagree.

Field Studio

My trip to Iceland and Slovenia were with the well known nature photographer Niall Benvie, who also promotes shooting wildflowers etc in situ, using what he calls a “Field studio”. I had to adapt this to a “Garden studio” using the materials I had to hand, but trying to respect the intention of the process.

The cornflower is immediately outside the back door, and has been overlooked in previous years. I set up with back and front lighting using the equipment I had, and shot an array of images of various states of opening. Merging these into a single image is relatively simple technically, but requires a lot of artistic decisions.