You want me to do what? No problem!

Things in our house are busy at the best of time but with the recent addition of our new baby daughter Arwen it's just a wee bit busier!  Not that I am complaining though as our kids are the best thing ever.  Though my photography is really important to me it does take a bit of a back seat as Candytuft Cakes is our priority at the moment.  Even though Kathryn is on maternity leave there are still wedding shows to do along with the emails and the admin side.  I don't actively look for photography jobs and so just love it when they just appear out of the blue.  Over the past few days I have been offered 3 jobs and I am just off the phone planning a studio shoot for next week.  My mind has been in overdrive. 

The first two jobs are to do with a charity and I will have blog entries to follow but I am very excited about these.  The third job just came to me this afternoon.  A friend who teaches portraits within photography has asked me to come along and take her class one week to teach on speedlights.  Admittedly she called me a nerd at the same time as asking me.  To be honest I was really flattered by being asked.  My friend has been into photography for years and has a degree and a masters in photography so o be asked my her is a great honor.

I love having projects to plan and dream about.  I know that over the next few weeks leading up to the class I will be constantly thinking about it, thinking of how I can pass on my passion for speedlights and what will be the best things to teach.

I'm away now to dream some more.

Simon

Point of focus.

Any photographers out there may be aware of "tilt-shift photography".  This method can be added using a special tilt-shift lens or in post processing.  The method allows you to focus on a specific point or to simulate a miniature scene.  I have recently been asked to take some photographs during our church services to be used on our new website.  I was able to use the method in post processing to "blur" out the faces of any children in the photos for child protection purposes. 

Today I was in Portavogie harbor with my camera and took a photo of my brother-in-law's trawler.  I then was able to add the tilt-shift effect using the graduated filter function in Lightroom 4. Where the graduated filter is often used with exposure it can also be used with many other settings including sharpness. 

The image before any editing.

The image after editing

 Applying the method post processing in LR4 is obviously not as good as using an actual tilt-shift lens but it does still help to highlight a specific point in the photo.

Be the best you can be.

Do you want to be the best you can be?  Surely everyone wants to be the best they can be?  Mind you there are a few of my students who I wonder if they want to achieve much more than getting out of bed in the morning and to be honest most of them struggle to even do that. 

I think most of us have secret ambitions and dreams and over the past few years I have come to believe that you can pretty much do anything you want if you put your mind to it.  Obviously within reason, as I'm pretty sure I could never beat Usain Bolt in a race no matter how much I trained!  I've mentioned taking part in the Mourne Mountain Marathon in 2011 and 2012.  They proved to be the hardest thing and the best thing I have ever done.  I know I could have trained more but I was happy with what training I did achieve and even more so with the final results.  I learnt from those two events that I can push myself further than I think.

For Candytuft Cakes, I love seeing the business growing but even more I love seeing Kathryn grow and becoming the best she can be.  She works extremely hard and is so critical of her own work.  She spends hours on each of her creation to ensure that once she is finished it is the best she can do.  I really do believe she is one of the best cake designers in Northern Ireland and will be the best if she keeps pushing herself the way she does. This year is exciting for us as we are currently creating a studio for Kathryn but obviously in the middle of it all we have Arwen who will I am sure demand a lot of our time.  Check out progress on the studio at Kathryn's blog, Mrs Candytuft.

I know with our 3 beautiful children we both want what is best for them, all we can ask for is that they do the best they can do.  I would guess though that both Kathryn and I may give them a wee push or two to make sure they achieve their potential :)

As far as my photography goes I want to be the best I can be.  Thinking back to my last blog entry, learn through doing, I have been thinking about projects I can do to become a better photographer.  Hopefully during 2013 you get to see the results of these projects and get to see me grow as a photographer.

Simon

Learn through doing.

I guess I'm like many people in that I love reading and learning new things.  I think as we get older we and get deep into the world of work we start to realise how good our years of learning at school, college and university actually were.  We miss learning.  We miss discovering new things.  If we are fortunate we get to learn new things in our day to day jobs or we take up hobbies.  I am fortunate enough to learn a lot in my job but I also have a number of hobbies, photography being one of my main hobbies.

Over the past couple of years I have developed a ravenous hunger for all things photography and lately in particular lighting and specifically speedlghts.  Nowadays the wealth of information available on everything is vast with thanks to the digital revolution and I guess mostly the internet.  Through the internet I have discovered people like Zak Arias, Jared Polin (Fro Knows Photo), Joey L and David Hobby (Strobist).  These guys have freely posted endless amounts of information on the internet in both written and video media.  Another person and one of my favorites is Joe McNally.  He is a freelance photographer who does a lot of work for National Geographic and Nikon.  I mentioned in a previous entry about a Nikon video I had been watching, A Hands-on Guide to Creative Lighting and Joe features heavily in it.  The video looks at Nikon's wireless lighting system.  This is one area where these guys have a lot in common.  I have read and watched a lot of what they have on offer but I know that to truly learn you must practice.  With my students I could tell them how to do something until I was blue in the face but until they actually get hands on there is little chance of them actually being able to do it.

Recently I have been visualising setting up big shoots with lots of lights, where I can use specific lights to highlight features and people and bring in colours using gels and light modifiers.  Practice makes perfect as they say so I started to think about my workshop at work and how I could photograph some of the equipment using the opportunity to use the wireless system, gels and light modifiers.

The above is a Bridgeport CNC milling machine.  Firstly I placed a speedlight in the background with a red gel on it.  I then fitted a snoot to a second speedlight and directed the light from it onto the tool.  I set the shutter speed to 1/250 to kill the ambient and closed down the aperture to F14 which gives the nice star-burst effect on the gelled speedlight.

I finally added a third speedlight with a blue gel to add some colour to the body of the machine.

I was really rather pleased with the outcome, being able to try out several different techniques I have been watching and reading about from the guys I previously mentioned.

One thing I did learn at my cost, don't place gels directly onto the lens of the speedlight as my red gel now has a large whole in it!

Thanks

Simon

Lance is pants!

I have actually not spoken to anyone about this except a passing comment to my wife.  Even as I and type this I still don't really know how to put into words what I really think about it.

I read Lance Armstrong's book, "It's not about the bike" a few years after it was first published.  As you will know from some of my previous blog entries I enjoy sport and I guess I love pushing myself.  Reading Lance's book which covered his fight with cancer and then his come back to cycling and resultant 7 Tour De France wins really inspired me.  I love cycling and mountain biking and road cyclists have always inspired me due to their amazing endurance and stamina.  I loved the book and recommended it to other friends of mine.  I think I even gave my copy to my brother.  I know Lance didn't have a brilliant reputation as far as women went but for his sporting ability and achievements I was in complete awe.  I ignored all of the accusations in the press of his drug taking and doping, I guess I just put it down to jealousy.  People are never happy when other people do well and love to find ways to bring them down.  We can easily put people on pedestals and not want to listen when we hear stories about them that are not good.  Its like when you were a child and putting your fingers in your ears and shouting "I'm not listening!".

 I guess if I'm honest when the truth came out I was upset and even more so when I saw some of the interview he gave and how he showed little or no remorse, basically just justified it because "everyone else was doing it".

For flip sake, what age are you Lance!

Simon

A little bit of baby.

Like I need an excuse to use my camera!  I am afraid Arwen is going to be in front of my camera a lot.  I've been looking to get a baby shoot done for my portfolio for a while so who better than my own daughter :)  Guess I must get onto pinterest and do some planning.

Winter has arrived!

How your life can change in the blink of an eye.  My wife and I arrived at hospital at 01:29 on Sunday 13th and at 02:23 our beautiful wee daughter arrived, Arwen Winter Hodge!

Lack of sleep is just wonderful! Thankfully I get 2 weeks off from work at such times like these so there was no question of me going into work.

Talking about sleep, that sounds like a great idea so I'm out of here for now.

Oh and I'm sure you already guessed, the name Arwen is from Lord of the Rings :)

Simon