[dontdopeas]

A rather poignant message left of the door of a restroom in a city centre coffee shop…

I was ill a little while back and the doctor wanted a urine sample, a fresh morning one so I had to take a tube and bag home with me.
As I was "filling up" the next morning I thought it quite funny and a little disturbing to see the words "BIO HAZARD" and "EASY OPEN" next to each other…..

So I came into possession of a Star-6 Hoya filter and had a good old play with it on my 50mm 1.8D.

While I was in my girlfriend’s car I thought it’d be interesting to see what I could capture, so after a couple of unsuccesful moving shots of streetlights going passed I got bored and just started to fiddle around with the focus until I got shots like this.

It’s completely out of focus but the filter gives it a little something, I don’t know what. There’s something sort of peaceful about them…

I ended up taking about 30-40 of these ‘brokeh’ [sic] shots.
This and a few others were the best of the bunch. I might upload them later.

Maybe I shouldn’t have titled this image and seen if anybody could guess what it was

In Birtle there is this barn in the middle of a field.
The first time I ever came here the friend I was with told me a story that I have never been quite sure about.
Apparently it’s a hanging barn. Or was.
A long time ago, it’s sole purpose was for the hanging of criminals.
It’s long since been forgotten about as you may be about to make out from the hole in the roof.

The barn is on private property so I’d never been closer to it than this shot.
Until recently, when Meg and me hopped over the fence and made our way over to it.
When we got to the barn it was obvious it had been abandoned. Half of two seperate walls had collapsed leaving the entire barn exposed to the elements.
I took a look inside and found…….

nb: my first sepia shot so I’m not sure what people think of the processing. It wasn’t a silhouette either, there was some adjustments with Levels and the Burn tool.
I was influenced by a strictly sepia based landscapes group on Flickr.

This is Meg with a handful of flowers.

We went for a walk a while back because it was a nice day and along the way she picked flowers.

The sky was getting a little overcast and light was pretty poor so drastic measures were taken and I had to use the onboard flash because I really wanted to capture this image that I had in my head at the time.

I took a few other shots without flash and the background had some nice even light to it but what with a sub 1/20th second exposure it was extremely difficult to get a nice sharp shot at ƒ/10!

It was a good evening and I have this shot to prove it!

p.s. sorry i know it’s more flowers…

As promised: Something a little different!

I picked up this technique online of making things look all wee and tiny.
It’s called tilt-shift. Well a form of tilt shift.
I had to hang out of my girlfriend’s bedroom window to get this shot. I spotted the colours of the Ukrainian flag painted on the neighbours walls and felt as though I was being called into taking the shot. So I obliged.

We found this old typewriter in my girlfriend’s cupboard when we were having a little clear out. I took a couple of shots from a few angles and this is one of my most preferred ones. It was dull weather and light was poor so onboard flash was required (though I try not to use it as often as possible).

I was using my 50mm 1.8D which got me a fairly “close-up” feel.

In hindsight, I should have probably used a smaller aperture and gotten all the keys in focus instead of attracting attention to just a few.

This womannequin was from the Josh shoot at University. We were setting up the lighting and using the dummy as a stand in model. I think we worked well together and she threw a couple of nice poses that I think work well.
A little bit of post using curves to bring back in some of the darker areas and I was happy with this shot.

Snes! Awesome. This is my girlfriend’s. It’s awesome.
This is a close up. Using my 50mm 1.8D. So I guess it’s not really a ‘close up’ but still…
Ideally I’d want to shoot this again, on a different surface, maybe without so much wire clutter.

This sweet old sign is on a 500 year old bridge in a little village called Ringley.
I had to stop and ask a gentleman what a perambulator was. I’ll admit I felt pretty foolish when he told me it was just a pram. Still, old signs are really quite cool, across the bridge which this sign stands are some old stocks, but they are behind a fence and rested on the ground so a photo opportunity didn’t arise….