We wandered to the woods near West Stoke last weekend and had a great time taking a few shots of the wee ones. The old adage about not working with children or animals rang true once or twice but they were (mostly) fantastic and we managed some good shots.

 I didn't take much equipment beyond the camera and a few spare lenses, I really couldn't see the camera staying on a tripod! Some extra light could have helped and I'll think about an wireless flash next time. It'd help fill the shadows a little.

 It's true, actual sun in the uk! We did take a few props such as the balloons and chair etc.

 These two turned out really well :) Just having a few clicks after we thought we'd finished and they turned out to be really nice shots.

 The Sony alpha 77 and tamron 17-50 are turning out to be a solid partnership, I don't think that lens has left the camera in a long time now. Fast autofocus, very reliable and great IQ at all f-stops.

As always, I'm finishing with a personal favourite!

After getting a bike fixed I decided to take the camera on a short pedal along Salterns Way..

http://www.conservancy.co.uk/page/cycling/346/

... which is a pleasant and flatish route from Chichester to the Witterings.  It's a decent length at about 18km and ends up on West Wittering beach so perfect for a summer pedal and picnic. (It's where I proposed a few years back :).  It's in no way a demanding ride (I took a road bike on it once) but very pleasant.

Blogger seems to have changed how images are displayed, so if you're keen to see the pictures larger than they are here just click on one and you'll get a nice slide-show to click through.

I didn't get as far as West Wittering on this pedal, it was beginning to get a bit dark by the time I got to Itchenor so that was as far as I went.  

The crows obviously knew what to do when someone pointed a black tubular thing in their direction, I wanted a shot closer to them but they all flew away almost the second I stopped.

 The house boats by the sailing club are always lovely, and I realised that the last time I was here it was hours prior to Milo being born and we were on a medically-advised stroll to ease the contractions.  This trip was a little less tense and I was glad I didn't bump into the petrified biker who offered to help last time.

 It was pretty windy so there were a few people out sailing the clouds scudded past quickly which led to rapidly changing light and what I thought were good conditions to use the Sony A77 with the Tamron 70-300.  I took a Sigma 10-20 with me as well but found that I didn't really use it on this trip.

 I quite like the yellow tint that the camera has given these pictures, I was shooting straight into the sun and I think it upset the auto-white balance.  This is never a problem anyway as I shoot in RAW but when I fixed them to have a more 'natural' colour I found that I preferred the originals.

 I hoped for a dramatic sunset but unfortunately this is as good as it got, clouds obscured the sun shortly after this shot and it clearly wasn't going to happen.  On the upside, I made it back from Itchenor in half an hour. That's nine miles on a mountain bike at an average speed of 18 mph, not shabby!

www.edwardbryan.co.uk

Gemma and Mourad's wedding

I was asked to photograph Gemma and Mourad's wedding on a sunny (ish!) Saturday at the start of the summer and had a real blast. They had chosen a fantastic venue and made the most of it with a great band, brilliant details, a magnificent buffet and a fantastic mix of friends!

There was a slightly challenging start when it began to rain in a fairly serious fashion just as we all left the registry office but I had taken a white umbrella for the happy couple to use and left the flash on. They turned out as some of my favourite confetti shots in the end!

We couldn't go outside for a little while once back at the venue but it was a chance to use the flash a little creatively, and I'm pretty happy with the above photo. There's an argument for getting another flash at some point but the one light gives a great effect.

We got the gents outside for a "Groom and the boys" photo and i'm pretty fond of this set-up, it works well with the groomsmen.

It cheered up and turned into a really nice evening in the end, this gave us the chance to take a few 'couple' photos around the grounds as well as capturing a few guest photos as they all arrived.

It was good to get out into the grounds and the sun really came out for the evening!

I've been keen to get this photo to work for ages, it's pretty hard when you're pressed for time at a wedding and the ring won't stand up in the book. It's often a copy of the bible however in this case we used a copy of the Q'uran to reflect the groom's religion. With a little bit of careful flash bouncing I managed to create the heart-shaped shadow.

It's great when you spot a bit of detail or a little bit of the venue that photographs well and this shot of the bride's shoes on the window sill worked well.

There was a pause between the ceremony and the reception so Gemma was able to take a bit of time to get ready again (it also gave me a chance to photograph details and make-up!).

The reception was great fun and everyone there made me really feel as though I was one of the guests, the band especially was brilliant. Which gave me a chance to play with the iso and have a go at some low-light photography.

It really was a great wedding and I had a brilliant day!

A short trip to Pagham

On a sunny day in June, a friend and I went for a short walk around Pagham Harbour Nature Reserve, mostly to photograph some wildlife around the area but also to give her new lens it's first walk in the country. (a Canon 100-400 L which is VERY nice http://www.the-digital-picture.com/Reviews/Canon-EF-100-400mm-f-4.5-5.6-L-IS-USM-Lens-Review.aspx)

It was also a chance for me to have a go at using my relatively new Sigma 10-20 EX (http://www.dpreview.com/lensreviews/sigma_10-20_4-5p6_n15/), I've been very keen to properly get to grips with this lens for a while since buying it and this felt like a great chance to have a good play.

The weather was amazing, but I found it difficult to take landscape photos that I was genuinely happy with. I think the cloudless sky took some of the drama out of the photos so I kept swapping lens over and using the Tamron 70-300 Di (http://www.photozone.de/pentax/281-tamron-af-70-300mm-f4-56-ld-di-macro-pentax-k-review--lab-test-report) which clearly isn't a patch on the Canon glass but copes well enough on such a bright day.

The advantage of such bright sun can be seen above, the swan's paddling around in some fairly murky estuary water which manages to look inviting here. The sea was a fantastic colour and remarkably clear, especially when we wandered further round the coast and away from the muddy bits. The tide was coming as well which must help.

I was surprised by the photo above, I took a few photos of this bird (which is NOT a Reed Bunting but er, something else) and most of them were pretty soft and not great. This one came out fairly in focus and although it wouldn't crop in any further it surprised me that the lens managed to get as sharp as it did.

Obviously this photo doesn't come under the definition of 'wildlife' but after taking some photos of pigs a while back (http://edwardbryanphotography.blogspot.com/2010/04/visiting-pigs-at-funtington.html) I think that taking the odd photo of livestock is just fine. I'm quite happy with it as well, the zoom isn't a bad portrait lens when all's said and done.

The Sigma 10-20 did get an outing during the afternoon for the photo above, I thought the rotten lumps of wood were interesting and the water's a great colour. With a little more going on in the sky this picture would certainly have more interest but it's a lens that I need to keep working with to get the best out of. Viewed big, it's not a bad picture.

It's a nice touch that the Tamron has a macro setting and I thought that the dandelion would make an interesting (if not that unusual!) subject. It's come out pretty well, although a specialist macro lens would be a little sharper.

I picked up a VERY cheap slave flash a while back, it doesn't have anything really in the way of controls unless you count the "computer" that apparently meters the flash. It's brilliant, an SC 18 Wotan Servo flash, and even came in the original packaging, all for a tenner from Arundel Photographica.

http://www.arundel-photographica.co.uk/

It's a brilliant shop if you've never been and great fun to visit and browse through some really rare and unusual photographic equipment.

The best part of the package is the fact that it was designed as an 'off-camera' flash and has a screw fitting on the bottom to attach to a plate screwed to the bottom of your camera. This fits the standard tripod screw thread so I've stuck it on my gorilla pod tripod where it looks a bit war of the world-ish and fits anywhere where I need a spare flash.

Anyway, I gave it a whirl and decided to photograph water dripping from a tap. It took a little while to get the flash and light levels right, I used an on-camera flash as a trigger for the Wotan because the pop-up flash can't be convinced not to do a pre-flash. The second problem was balancing the light output from the Wotan through a combination of aperture and moving it further away. As far as I can tell the light metering computer on the Wotan doesn't do anything so I left it covered, the instruction manual would have you believe it's an amazing next step in flash technology which is charming, but it doesn't really do a lot.

It was more of an opportunity to play than anything else, but lots of fun and I tried a slow shutter speed of 1/6 s, a narrow aperture of 32 and iso 100 to see if the flash could freeze the action and leave a little bit of blur.

The first few pictures I tried (some earlier pictures of flowers not shown here) had fairly harsh shadows so I bounced the on camera flash (a jessops 360afds) of a nearby white wall and this filled out those shadows quite nicely. I later bounced both flashguns of the ceilings and walls and while a bit soft for these water photos it will be handy for product photography and possible weddings.

This picture shows the benefit of using a slow shutter with flash, you can see the trail from the water drips as well as a couple of frozen drips in mid-air. It took more than a few shots to get the splash as well as the drips but it was a fun experiment and it's good to see a couple of bits of 'water shrapnel' flying away from the splash.

Finally I turned of both flashes to see what a fast shutter speed could do and although the Sony a200 and Sigma 24-70 struggled to find a focus point on the water I liked the result. I've given it a LOT of contrast in photoshop and it's not as sharp as I would like but it's a decent black and white.

Some of these pictures will be appearing soon on my website;

www.edwardbryan.co.uk

Visiting the pigs at Funtington

Well, on a slightly more cheery Easter Sunday we decided to go and photograph the free range pigs in Funtington. I fancied the challenge of photographing something that isn't commonly photogenic.

For such massive animals they were pretty tricky to get close to and the zoom I'm currently using (Tamron 70-300) doesn't like being used fully zoomed out. Even stopped out to f8 it's a bit of a pickle so we had to wait a little while for the bacon factories to get used to us.

It was worth the wait though, with the wind blowing towards us, some of the piglets felt brave enough to come and have a sniff and allowed me to get a few portraits. It's always a bit tricky to get sharp pictures of small animals that like to run everywhere, but we persevered and a few came out quite well. The picture you can see above I'm really happy with, I don't mind the mud behind and the piglet has a great expression.

The symmetry of this one works well, it's bit of a pity that the wire's in the way because I wanted to try and remove any sense that they're on a farm and really try and get a "free range" picture. The photo below shows more of what I was trying for.

This one was a bit of a brave pig and came right up to us, I did have a frantic scramble for my Sigma 24-70 but that scared them of and it took a long time for them all to come back, by which time I'd put the zoom back on... I managed to get this shot of him and his friends playing follow-my-leader through the grass while they wandered up to us which was very considerate of them.

A few even had a bit of a rumble while we were there, I took a fair few pictures of the pigs taking it outside but only a few showed their faces and there really is nothing attractive about a pig's bottom.