My first photography book

I've just published my first photography book.
Check it out at: http://www.blurb.com
Its a book recording through photographs the journey my wife and I have made from the conception to birth of our first child.
Please go on and have a look and let me know what you think!

My latest photoshoot

I had the priviledge of running a proper [albeit small] photograph shoot at a friends house last week. The little lad, Ben Sheppard, was adorable but tricky to shoot. He didn't smile much making it difficult to get a good keepsake for the folks. Never the less, I bagged some good ones and my favourite is above.

I definitely am developing my fondness of people photography and am going to develop this further. I think it might be my strongest aspect of photography and one that I am keen to improve on. My next purchases are going to be in this direction. I am hoping to buy a support system for backdrop fabric [its such a pain to constantly get someone to hold up fabric for you], buy a batter grip to aid shooting in portrait mode, buy a reflector to help eliminate those nasty shadows and then maybe some studio lighting!

Lake District again

A couple of weeks ago I was in the Lake District for a family holiday. My wife and I enjoy low level walking and with the arrival of our new baby girl, we had to stick to easy to manage low level walks. This however didn't prevent me from sampling some wonderful places to photograph.

My favourite I think is Rydal Hall where I was able to photograph some lovely waterfals. Have a look at these and let me know what you think.

Extension tubes

I've finally got my Kenko extension tubes and am really pleased with them. I have had a go with them this afternoon for about 15 mins and really like the effects you can get, especially with flowers and small animals.
I will post some pictures here soon of what I've achieved!

Colour space in Lightroom

I have had trouble getting photos exported from Lightroom to look the same as the photos displayed in Lightroom. The images seemed to lack colour saturation, the colours seemed to shift in their hue slightly and the contrast was reduced.

I realised that in the export mode you can set which colour space you wish to use when exporting the photos. I was using the standard 1998 setting. I tried using the sRGB setting and have got much better results so far. I have been warned however that using this setting can result in a loss of image quality but so far I am yet to see exactly what this means. I have actually set a colour space using a screen calibration device but I haven't worked out how I can use this colour space when exporting! Any ideas anyone? It's not coming up as an option when I export from Lightroom.

Trouble with Ebay!

Having trouble with an E-Bay company at the moment. I bought a set of Kenko extension tubes from sighterz-uk on 13th June and worryingly they still haven't arrived. I emailed them to let them know and they have been pretty good at keeping in touch which makes me think they're a legitimate company (with good feedback scores too). But still no tubes!

A bit disappointing but will keep you posted!

Hoping to do a bit of photography today as I haven't had my hand in for three weeks now!

More red squirrels

Red Squirrel (Sciurus vulgaris), Alverstone Mead Hide
Originally uploaded by danlayphotos

I went back to Alverstone Mead Hide a week ago and saw the reds again. As curious and quick as ever, I found that this time photographing them was much harder. The canopy overhead was fully overgrown meaning that very little light was getting through and I had to push the ISO to 1600 to get fast enough shutter speeds. This resulted in low depth of field which caused no end of problems trying to get sharp enough images. In the end, I managed to get this shot of a brave little squirrel who was keen to see what I was doing. The image isn't technically great as I have chopped a bit of the ears off and the image doesn't have a lot of depth of field. But I say that despite all this, the image is a good one as the posture and poise of the squirrel is just right and means the squirrel jumps off the screen and grabs your attention. Now that is what photography is about and I'm quite pleased to have got this shot. What do you think? Comments on this blog welcome!