Shortly before Christmas I was asked to photograph a "new baby" shoot just down the road, it was great experience and good fun to do. It was also a chance to use the Minolta 50mm for a proper shoot and make use of that wide aperture!

Natalie and Leigh were really good fun and it turned into an enjoyable morning taking these. I originally turned up with a few lighting options, a reflector, second flash and all that but it wasn't really needed. The other flash provided a bit of fill-light but we moved around a lot and it was more important to keep the photos quite natural and fun.

The new(ish) Minolta 50mm lens really came into its own on this shoot, it's since turned into my favourite lens and now tends to stay on the camera. It's frustrating sometimes to want to zoom in or out and not being able to, and it's also a little upsetting that it's as sharp as my Sigma 24-70 EX DG for a quarter of the price! That wide aperture gives me a chance to be a little more daring in low light and lets me play with de-focused backgrounds.

The photo above shows off that aperture, it's sharp on his eye but softens at the edge of his nose. It gives the photo an intimacy and I'm pretty happy with it :)

All in all, I had a great morning and really enjoyed taking these pictures. If you're thinking of having your own portraits done, you can get in touch with me at ed.johnbryan@gmail.com.

Just a short walk from our house is the Chichester Crematorium which I often run past on my training runs but haven't yet stopped and tried to photograph. That's a pity because it's a really atmospheric place and really big considering it's right in Chichester.

I like the flare that the Sony Alpha 700 and Sigma 24-70 seem to produce (although, saying that I've noticed a very similar star-shaped flare when shooting with the minolta 50mm 1.8). It's not unattractive and the Sigma very rarely flares as long as the sun is out of the frame. I did fall into the trap when I got it of attaching a cheap uv filter to the front and it took me a while to work out that it was the filter producing flare and ghosting.

It was a really good sunset and I noticed it while driving back from work, a frantic run around the house to get the camera and a quick trot to the crematorium just about got me there in time. Although I did take some pictures of the buildings, they didn't come out so well and I didn't want to post them this time. I think I'll head back there soon and maybe have another look at the pictures I took on this trip to see if a little tweaking and cropping might do something.

The sunset was turning out to be a bit normal until this little spot of blue turned up, I cropped to a wide angle and notched up the blue a fraction but think it looks pretty good.

The last picture is one I'm really happy with, a man in a 4x4 came and booted me out shortly after this otherwise I would have taken some as the sun went down further but this one came out well.

So, on one of the first few days of 2011, we went to sunny Emsworth to have a short walk followed by a coffee, the coffee shops were closed but we managed the walking bit just fine.

It was a great day for taking some pictures, really cold (!) but very clear and bright. There's a short loop around the salt-water pond which takes you around and back to the town and it's quite a nice way to see the old bits of Emsworth. It's not a walk in the rambler sense of the word, so don't get the guide book out, but more of a Sunday afternoon stroll.

The weather really was great for photos and I'm a bit of a fan of cold, crisp winter days so despite some seriously numb fingers I got snapping. The photo above was one of the first I took and shows of the Sigma 24-70 EX DG lens and Alpha 700 camera very well, taken straight into the sun it should have lost a lot of detail in the darker areas or been fuzzy with glare. There's a little bit of greenish glare at the bottom but nothing apart from that.

The wildlife round the pond's very used to being fed by everyone who walks near the pond so as soon as you stop for a couple of seconds they wander up expecting a slice of bread. It meant I could get really close to some of the swans and I really like the picture above, it's very sharp and I quite like the fact that you can't see the swan's beak. The dark water and white bird looks a bit abstract and seen big, the swan has a surprising number of colours in it's feathers.

This isn't the best picture here because I didn't have the right lens, I think the swan was washing itself but it was a bit too far away. It looked like fun though and went on for a little while.

Similar to the first swan picture (it may have been the same bird) I'm really happy with the contrast between the dark water and the feathers and this is a much more classic picture of a swan. It would have been good to get a little lower and a bit more to the side but that would have probably lost the darkness of the water as well as getting me wet.

The last picture is my favourite, I think I could get some interest in the foreground next time but it's good to have a nice seascape picture in the set.

It's been an exciting year for Edward Bryan Photography in 2010; as well as acquiring some new and exciting equipment, I've made it pay for itself, and that was the challenge for last year. It was also important to see which area of photography I wanted to focus on, it was great to get the wedding, portrait and product photography last year and all were great fun and brilliant learning experiences.

There's even been interest in some landscape photos I've taken so I think I need to keep experimenting and exploring as many areas of photography as I can in 2011.

With all that in mind, I increase my focus on product photography this year, it was a great experience photographing for EJ Bespoke Furniture and I think it would be great fun to increase my experience in this field.

Part of that would be photographing smaller items and even very small earrings, as much as I like my Sigma 24-70 EX DG, it doesn't quite have the macro capabilities really tiny things call for. The ceramic bust above was a great size for the Sigma but the earrings were just a bit too small.

The three earring photos here required a different lens to the Sigma, I used a Tamron 70-300 DI because it has a higher magnification ratio of 1:2. It's actually quite a cheap lens that I bought with the Alpha 200 just so there was a zoom lens in my kit bag but I'm really glad I haven't got rid of it. As a zoom, it's not all that great and I tend to use the Minolta 70-210 beercan I have, but it focuses close for a zoom/macro and stopped out it's not bad at all. I've treated myself to Lightroom 3 over Christmas and that has no problems getting rid of chromatic abberations which this lens is a little prone to.

This set of earrings was from Pretty Scruffy in Chichester;

http://www.prettyscruffy.com/

They are very nice but as you can see, also tiny. That was a bit of a deliberate decision to make the picture hard to take. The one above just shows the earrings themselves but the one below is my favourite. I used a gold painted leaf from our Christmas decorations and it gives the picture a little bit of interest as well as helping with the scale.

These last two items are from an art trail we went to in Cornwall on our honeymoon, unfortunately I can't remember who made them but they are very pretty and as a mid-sized piece they were perfect for these example shots.

www.edwardbryan.co.uk

It's been a very busy few weeks at school recently, what with Nativity fast approaching and inspection just put to bed so there's been little time for fun and hobbies! With that in mind I'm going to do my best to keep the blog going but might have to accept that it's going to be difficult for a bit.

I shot a studio session for a friend a few weeks ago and it was a bit of a new challenge. He's started his own bespoke furniture company...

http://www.ejbespokefurniture.co.uk/

...and made some amazing pieces, his nesting tables have already made an appearance on here and I was very happy with how those came out. His two new items are a table and sideboard, both of which appeared at the Arundel Art Trail.

http://www.arundelgallerytrail.co.uk/

The challenging part of photographing these was their size! It's one matter lighting three small tables, and a completely different kettle of fish lighting a large table and sideboard. There were going to be problems with shadows, uneven lighting and all sorts so I was a little bit nervous about this one.

The difficult bit was making sure that the whole item was lit, and it was really complicated to get the front and sides lit without casting shadows all over the place. It took some clever placing of reflectors and umbrellas to bounce the flash around evenly and when all else failed we just had to have people stood on chairs and contorting about to get it right.

There is definitely an argument for hiring lights for the next shoot, it will take a lot of the guesswork and experimentation out of the shoot and allow me to concentrate on taking photos. It's hard to find lighting hire around here but this company...

http://www.stevesphotoshop.co.uk/studio_flash_sets.html

...have what looks like a decent set-up for a lot less than I'd expect. I'm a bit nervous about buying it just yet (the flash units aren't all that powerful) but it's worth bearing in mind if I have to factor in driving to and from London to pick up lights.

I'm happy with the results from this shoot, it's great fun using a studio and always very good to work outside of my comfort zone.

On a very clear but REALLY chilly afternoon Alys and I wandered down to Bosham, near Chichester in West Sussex to watch the sunset and for me to have a little bit of a go at some landscape photography.
It's a testament to the Sigma 24-70 lens that it went fairly happily from being used as a macro a week ago to being used as a landscape lens here and I think they turned out pretty well. It didn't work using a wide aperture, f2.8 looked pretty soft, but I think that's often the case when focusing a long way away. I stopped down to about f3.5-ish and they looked fine.
What I did have a play with was using RAW software to emulate a graduated filter on the lens. I don't think jpegs have the dynamic range for it to work but I shot in RAW (I always do anyway) and decided to see what I could get from these photos.
This one above have a very dark foreground so you couldn't make out any detail on the boat, the water wasn't very bright either. By darkening the sky and then brightening the whole picture it's really showing off the harbour.
I think I may have over-cooked it a bit on the one above but it shows what a RAW can do, I don't think that a jpeg would be as capable of such a change in brightness levels from the sky to the foreground (which really was very dark). It's at least two and half stops and although you probably wouldn't notice a difference here, when printed large there would certainly be some visible issues.
The last is my favourite by far though, I think the boat looks brilliant and the whole image looks right for Bosham.

All in, it was a good day out for the Alpha 700 and the Sigma, this sort of shot would have been improved with a wide angle lens such as the Sigma 10-20mm which could have given the scene a bit more impact but I think my wedding faithful did well.

On a very busy weekend before a truly frantic week at school I decided to take a few minutes away from the horrors of planning and see what I could see in the garden. It looks as though the spider's nest I disturbed when we moved into the house has born fruit!

They're pretty big fellas and there are a few of them around the garden (as well as in the house) making themselves useful catching flies. Normally one has managed to get a cobweb all the way across the garden as well, not the best way to be woken up in the morning as you stumble out in the dark to get the bike.

Because the web was in a really cramped place it was too close to use the Minolta 70-210 "beercan" and the Tamron 70-300 can be a bit soft sometimes. I had to try out the Sigma 24-70 as a macro, in all fairness it does describe itself as a macro lens but it hasn't got the same magnification ratio as the zooms.

I really like this lens attached to the Sony Alpha 700 and I'm getting a bit more brave with the f-stop recently. It stops out to f2.8 which I'm always worried will be a bit soft but the background 'Bokeh' (who came up with that word?) looks brilliant with that wide aperture. I tried the lens wide open for some portraits at school recently and as long as the focus is clear on the eyes they look really effective.

I'll need a different, fairly mental macro lens to get the spider much bigger and maybe a miniature studio so I can play with the lighting. Also, I'm going to get a plant mister to see if that brings out the cobweb.

*UPDATE* (!)

So, inspired by writing the blog above I wandered out into the garden when it was dark and probably weirded out the neighbours a bit by taking the 'Wotan' slave flash out and having a go at a bit of creative lighting.

There was a plant mister in the shed so I gave the poor spider a bit of a spritz to help show up the cobweb and make it look a bit more atmospheric. These first two were taken from standing up so you can see the fence in the background a bit, it's not obvious that it's a fence but I noticed it so it bothered me a bit.

Saying that, I was really happy with the photo below. The shadow picks out the spider really well and I think it give a good line to the photo, if you look at it large the spider's back looks almost be-jewelled with water droplets.

For these last two images I managed to get behind and underneath the cobweb, it was a bit of a nightmare seeing as I was sat on a plant and wedged into the corner of my fence under the apple tree. They came out well though, it was the look I was hoping for with the spider picked out against the dark sky.

The hardest part of all of this was trying to focus on a little spider in the pitch black (the flash auto-focus lamp was no help at all) which kept moving around whenever the wind blew. I ended up using a torch to pick it out and using manual focus to try and get it.

All in all, I enjoyed taking these photos and will have another go at insects at some point during the holidays when I can be up early in the AM to get some good misty morning insect macros.