It was a fantastic long weekend when we visited Lyme Regis in Dorset. The weather was (mostly) fantastic and by chance it was lifeboat week as well.

http://www.rnli.org.uk/

This meant that there was an awful lot going on and the town was really busy! It was a bit of a treat to see the Red Arrows http://www.raf.mod.uk/reds/ as well and they performed a half hour show on the Saturday. It was a great chance to have another play with the Tamron 70-300 Di which performs well as long as the weather's bright and I can stick to a small aperture.

There wasn't really a moment to swap lenses to a wide angle which meant I couldn't get a decent photo of some of the larger displays they do. It was good practice at panning and trying to follow the action though and I was able to get some decent photos of the planes as they zipped overhead.

I was pretty happy with this picture, there was a bit of luck involved in getting the right moment but that's why cameras have continuous drive! If I'm going to be picky, the plane on the left isn't as sharp as I'd like but it wasn't very high above me at all and really going some so I think I'll forgive the camera that one.

After watching the Red Arrows, we had a little sit further up the hill and took a couple of photos of the view, this is still with the Tamron and shows of the coastline along to the East. It really is a nice bit of England and famous for the quantity of fossils that turn up, we didn't go collecting but straight after a landslide is the best time by all accounts.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/huge-landslide-hits-dorsets-jurassic-coast-822822.html

After spending the day in Lyme Regis, we headed down the coast to Beer which is more of a working coastal town than Lyme Regis and has a much smaller and rockier beach. The weather was also less good (although not Beer's fault) and although it was still warm it looked like it was about to rain for much of the day.

It was a chance to use the Sigma 10-20 ex dc for a few landscape photos. I'm still learning how to best use this lens, because of the perspective it gives you it's quite hard to give a picture structure. I find that I need to be pretty much sat on whatever I want to be in the foreground or it disappears into the background. Saying that, I'm getting more 'keepers' from this lens as time goes on and I use it more and more.

This last photo is my favourite from the weekend, it took one or two tweaks in lightroom but this is broadly how it came out of the camera and really shows of the wide-angle lens to its best.

We stayed in a great Bed and Breakfast about halfway between Axminster and Lyme Regis http://www.sw.wol.co.uk/Content/default.asp which served a fantastic breakfast and had a brilliant Summer House for us to stay in.

Rob and Alison came to visit.

We had a fantastic day when Alison and Rob came to see us a while back in February and we even got to meet the lovely Joseph again. He's the grand old age of 9 months now!

After a busy day looking around Chichester, catching up and generally chatting we thought we'd missed the chance to take some photos of him. There were a few short minutes before Alison and Rob had to go so I grabbed the opportunity then.

These are all taken with the Minolta 50mm and I thought I'd go all out on the aperture and take them all at f1.7. It's resulted in some really nice portraits and these really show of the best of the camera.
He was a bit tired but pulled it together for these pictures!

We had a fantastic day when Alison and Rob came to see us a while back in February and we even got to meet the lovely Joseph again. He's the grand old age of 9 months now!

After a busy day looking around Chichester, catching up and generally chatting we thought we'd missed the chance to take some photos of him. There were a few short minutes before Alison and Rob had to go so I grabbed the opportunity then.

These are all taken with the Minolta 50mm and I thought I'd go all out on the aperture and take them all at f1.7. It's resulted in some really nice portraits and these really show of the best of the camera.
He was a bit tired but pulled it together for these pictures!

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.

In the press!

Excitingly, a few images I shot for a friend's furniture design and making company a while back have been used in an interview he's done for Furniture & Cabinetmaking magazine. They've been on his website...

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

...for a little while and now they've reappeared alongside the interview in the magazine as well as on the website.

http://www.woodworkersinstitute.com/page.asp?p=1709

The full article seems to be on the website that I've linked to above but it's really cool to see images that I've taken used like this.

All in all, it's really flattering to have my images appear in a magazine. With any luck, I'll see some more appear in print in the future.

After the amazing and slightly strangely fantastic weather we've had this week we went on a short stroll to Chichester Harbour to see the sunset. No clouds which took some of the interest away from the setting sun but the colour was brilliant and the air very clear so it was a worthwhile trip.

It looks as though I've failed (well and truly) the New Year's resolution of updating this once a fortnight. The last update was back in February so that makes me a bit crap.

Anyway, I've had a lot of good feedback from a sunset picture of Bosham I took a while back.

http://edwardbryanphotography.blogspot.com/2010_10_01_archive.html

So i thought it would be fun to have a go at using some of the same techniques again and trying to see if I can improve on what I did then. The composition's a bit different here, with the picture of the boat in Bosham I had a bit of foreground interest but less so with these pictures. I also found that the foreground was nearly as bright as the sky in this set which meant I used the graduated filter a bit less.

They're all shot in RAW which how I normally shoot anyway now and using the trusty Sigma 24-70mm EX DG. I stopped out to f8 for these as well which is becoming my standard landscape setting, it seems to get the best out of the lens.

This is much the same photo but I think this has a bit more going for it and I'm a bit more fond of it, it shows the harbour a bit more by including more of the boats and buoys and general harbour gubbins.

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.