Digital Photography Art

As I have mentioned before I love making digital Photo Art, I have over the weekend created a few more from photographs that I have taken. I have added some of them below. If you want to see more of my selection of Digital Photo Art you can look at my Red Bubble account. Just click on this link here, http://www.redbubble.com/people/hshippey you can there also buy the images as greeting cards and framed wall art etc.
I also sell them through my website you will then get them as a soft copy and make the printing arrangements yourself. http://www.shippeyphotography.com/abstract.html
send me an email with your request to: infoATshippeyphotographyDOTcom
I have also made a few more 2011 calendars that might be of interest for you, they are also available for purchase through Red Bubble. http://www.redbubble.com/people/hshippey/shop/calendars

Please let me know what you guys think of the Digital Photo Art that I have created.
Cheers,
Helen

Another day in the life of me.

Hi,
The other day I got a facebook message from a friend where her mother in-law to be was asking for the images that I took of a wedding that we all attended back in August this year... oh dear did I promise something that I have not delivered on yet? I know a lot of people attending wanted to see my images but I did actually never promise to put them out somewhere for them to see... So technically I haven't but anyway I have since yesterday been trying to figure out how to put the images all 300 of them on my website but without them really being linked to my official website, since these images will have no interest to most people out there unless you attended this wedding of course. I had an epiphany the other night it was actually thanks to my sister she just had her family photographs taken in the states (me being located a bit too far away) and they were uploaded on the photographers website but not through her official one so I thought if she can do it why can't I and to be honest once I figured it out it was dead easy. Well saying that it is still uploading and it is taking ages... but in theory very easy. What took most of my time is not only the uploading but the creating of the web gallery. I am making it in Aperture also easy you click and choose which images etc. and then press create, now my computer have virtually no memory space left so everything and anything that I am doing on my computer is taking ages right now so annoying. I am on my third upload attempt to my website I think it will work now once it is all there. The first two times I had the wrong folder names on some of the html pages which means that the links wont work because they cant find each other etc. you get the picture I was not happy when I realized it and after trying to change manually again realizing that it is so many pages and places that need changing it will be a lot quicker to make a whole new gallery. Do I have to tell you that it takes just as long to delete a folder on my website as it did creating it? Well it does. While my computer was thinking this afternoon I went over to a friends house for a chat. I hope I am almost done now Yey!
This morning before I started on my web gallery adventure I was out capturing some great images of the golden hour which here is between 07.00 - 08.00 anytime after that unless it is afternoon is not a great time to take photographs the sun is just too high in the sky. I got some great images of the mountains looking all golden very nice. I wanted to do some more shots but the sun went too hight too quickly so need to make anohter early photo shoot to get everything in my plan done. I also saw a few shots that would look great in afternoon light due to where the sun is in the morning so will have to plan that in later on. What I did not like this morning was that my camera gear got so dusty it did not feel like it was very windy but I had to keep on taking the sand dust off the lens several times. Not ideal.

Macro Photography.

When I take photographs for myself I prefer to do macro photography or abstract. You know when you are so close to a subject that it becomes abstract to you it's almost hard to see what the subject really is. Abstract and macro (close up) photography both look really great printed on canvases so that they look more like a painting than a photograph. I personally like to have large art in my house the bigger the better or a few small ones that fit together to make a larger one almost like a montage.

This image will look great in a large format printed on a canvas. It will give a lovely colourful touch to your room I can also see it together with other similar images in different coulors to have them all in  close proximity to each other complementing one another.

This is a hibiscus flower.

Getting this hibiscus flower I sadly got a lot of pollen on my shorts and in my beach bag while carrying it home... not good for my clothes but it would also have been very cool with pollen on the images! Need to be more careful next time.

These are yellow flowers that grow several tight together on a bush I am not sure what their names are.

I took all flower images at home so that I could have the flowers arranged and my camera on a tripod. I also sprayed water on the flowers with a water squirter from IKEA. I used my Canon 100mm 2.8f lens for these shots had my camera on Manual as well as the lens. When you photograph images so close up it is usually hard for the lens to focus so you need to focus manually.

This image was taken with my 50mm 1.4f lens camera mounted on a tripod.

Last week I was busy photographing a sport event which I also enjoy doing, the organizers also had evening activities that I attended with my camera at hand. I felt a bit like one of them paparazzi photographers pointing my camera into peoples faces while they were chatting and enjoying themselves. I guess it is a bit different since I was at least not sneaking in the bushes with a long zoom lens but rather asked everyone to please look at me and don't forget to look at the images on facebook!

So this week I have been busy with editing some of the images to get them ready for magazine use. I am just finished and will deliver all the images to the client tomorrow.

I just heard from my sister that it is Thanksgiving this weekend in America so Happy Thanksgiving to everyone that celebrate it!

Cheers,

Helen

Image filing system and some Portraits

I have recently gotten a request from a magazine about images from a certain place here in Egypt. No problem I have plenty of images to send to the magazine to choose from. My biggest issue was to find the images on all my several external hard drives. I thought I had a good system but it turns out it is not so good so it took me a lot longer to find all the images that I knew that I had. So I have this morning started to make up a new system my issue that I am facing now is if I am going to continue my old system parallel to this new one which then means that I will have duplicates all over the place that will take up space that are quite precious to me… I am leaning towards to only use my new system. I hope it will work. The system I have now is according to year and month of when I have taken a picture but then you need to remember when you took an image. My new system that are far from all implemented or completely thought through, it will probably take me months to get it all done anyway it is based on categories. Such as a folder for; food and vegetables, Stockholm, Golf course names etc. so all images that have anything to do with the categories goes into that folder no matter when the image was taken so Stockholm for instance will have plenty of images from several different years since I go to Stockholm about once a year and take pictures every time. What do you think will this system work? I guess most of the time a client do not need an image from a certain year they just want an image of the place they are requesting.

Some images will of course be trickier to place in just one category and there is no point having duplicates (unless it is your back up of course!) Maybe that is when sub categories come in? You know when a picture can be thought of as fitting in two or more different categories such as an image of a date palm tree with dates on, it could be in the fruit or tree folder or in a golf folder since it is taken on a golf course. I will have to think about that one! I do think it would be good with subcategories though to make it easier and maybe fewer folders to see as a start. If I do folders per country but then I will have it tricky when it comes to golf courses since I have so many images of them from different countries. If I make a folder of golf courses then I can put it all in their but if I do countries then I will have to have a golf course folder as a sub category in all country folders which I guess there is nothing wrong with either… Let me know if you have any great insight into my new filing system or if you have another one that is idiot proof. I spoke to another photographer about how de does his filing; he had a system that he thought was very good well at least worked for him. I just thought that it was the most complicated one I had heard of so I will definitively not do what he does. I guess it is all down to making one that works for you personally and sticking to it.

I am already quite good at deleting images but I think I need to up my game a bit and become even better at it to save space. I save almost no images on my hard drive on the computer itself but still I got a worrying message the other day when I opened Aperture; that I had too little memory for it to work properly and that I was risking loosing images! Wow that was a wake up call so I straight away frantically tried to move images from the computer to different external hard drives. I did peek at the utilities on the computer and I was scarily low on memory not sure how that happened. I need to be better at keeping an eye on it that is for sure.

I recently helped a friend take some avatar images of her for an article that have been written about her for Living Abroad Magazine. So we both ventured out to take some lovely images of her for the editors to choose from here are a few of the ones we came up with.

Portraits.

As I have mentioned to you before I bought some photography equipment on my recent trip to England.
I am so happy with my new setup, remember I asked for a model in my last post well no one came on their free will and asked me so I had to go out and get myself a model :-) I asked one of my friends the other day if she could model for me so that I could try out my new gear. 
We planed the shoot to be straight after her work so that we could get the photo shoot under way and then afterwards meet up with some other friends for dinner.
I had in my head a photo shoot plan of what kinds of shots I wanted to do. I needed a chair as a prop and since I don't have one (I know it sounds silly but I do not have a chair in my house, I have bar stools but not a normal chair) anyway my model does so I thought, great I will come to your house then. In hind sight it probably would have been better if she would have brought the chair to my house. I have more plain walls than she did...as well as her ceiling is not white! I had planned to bounce one of my flashes against the ceiling and I think it got drowned due to that the ceiling was not white but peach.... ha ha but in the end we managed to get some great shots. The chair did not play a large role in our photo shoot as I had originally planned. I wanted to make very bright portraits so that the face is almost washed away only leaving some contours. That is not what I did not in camera at least I did more of that in Photoshop afterwards. I learned a lot by looking at the images afterwards of what I would like to do different next time with the light set up. So I would like to make another photo shoot and make some changes. My model is soon going away on holiday unfortunately so either I hurry up and get this next photo shoot underway or I will have to change model. I luckily have another model coming in a few weeks time. That I can use as well. I'll keep you guys posted :-)

I have for a few weeks now been waiting for a sunset with no wind you know when the water reflects everything like a mirror. I have another shoot planned in my head that I would like to do and it would be ideal to do during those circumstances but I am thinking I might be waiting in wain it being winter soon and all and more wind in the afternoon to come. Should have done this shoot during the summer! The greatness of  hindsight again. So I might just have to try and do the shoot now and see how it goes with wind. I will let you know how I get along.

Kids give the funniest comments

As I showed you earlier in a previous blog I made Pop Art of a family portrait that I got sent to me by email. When the eldest son in the picture, he is 5yrs., saw the image his spontaneous comment was "Mamma how did this happen we look like a cartoon" I will have to agree with him Pop Art does give you a cartoon feeling doesn't it? Mum in the family liked the image anyway she is using it as her avatar on Skype at the moment. :-) Maybe next step is to print it on Canvas?

My Swedish Smultronställe!

Every time I go to Sweden to my home town I always try to take some time to stop by one of my Photography "Smultronställe" It is a Swedish word that does not have a direct translation into English but I googled it for you and this translation fits very well to what I mean.  Smultronställe is a Swedish word that means an idyllic spot on Earth. It also means "a place where wild strawberries grow". Smultronställe is a beautiful metaphor that lacks an English equivalent. It is a special place, unique (even if) only to you, it can be a local forest, a bench, a tree, or your favorite vacation spot.
The image below I took there at sunset in May 2010. This is a place where I don't bring many people I have only brought 1 outsider part from family to this date and I think I will keep it that way.. :-) so sorry guys....
I know however that I am not the only person that knows about this place because I can see traces of where people have had BBQ's but I have never seen anyone there. You also need to be properly dressed to get there you cannot just think oh I will go to that place right now. So that rules out all the housewives that walk around in high heels and wake up with make up already on. If you are not wearing the right kind of foot wear you will not reach my "smultronställe". So some planning is needed and it is in the middle of absolutely nothing. You will not find it unless you know it is there. I have my mum to thank for showing me this place years and years ago.  
I do have a few other places that I also always visit when I am in the area that I can tell you where they are they are not such a secret. 

My "Smultronställe" .

Taken at a place I go every-time I get a chance no exceptions!

The ones below are taken by Mälaren in Köping.

Buy My Prints

http://www.redbubble.com/people/hshippey

New York Skyline!

The other week I sold an image to a travel site called Haute Compass, they just launched their website this Monday so please take a look at what they have to offer that can be suitable for you.http://www.hautecompass.com/new-york.html

This is the image I sold.

This got me thinking that I need to change my own website a little bit, I want to add a gallery where people and companies can buy my images that they see straight from the website with paypal. I have had these thoughts a long time I have even started a few times with different kinds of designs but never finished I never could decide upon which design I liked best, as well as its been a bit daunting to get all my images together and categorize them etc.

But I have now picked up again on one of my old designs and started to finalize it. It wont be changed just yet. Don't worry of course I will let you guys know when the new one is up and running.

In the meantime you can look at my current web page for information, www.shippeyphotography.com

Below I have added a few more New York images that I have taken.

I guess no one can buy images off you if they do not know you have them!

If there are any images on this blog or on my website that you like and would like to query how much they are to buy please do not hesitate to contact me with an email or email me a description of what you are looking for and I will send you a few sample images that fit your description, that is exactly what Haute Compass did it could work out for you too!

Email: infoATshippeyphotographyDOTcom 

Take care for now.

I guess I better get back to my website design.... :-)

Helen

A few New York images.

I got T-Shirts made!

Hi,
When I was on my holiday I didn't only buy photo gear for myself I also bought company T-Shirts.
What do you guys think?

I personally love the shirts which is good since it is me that will be wearing them. :-) I just need to make sure I don't grow my hair too long since then the website will not be shown on the back.

I still would like to get a great pair of trousers with loads of cleaver pockets that I can wear together with the T-shirt on photo shoots. I did find a Hugo Boss pair while I was in the UK but to my surprise they were too long in the legs! Since when have I had that problem? Never. I didn't get them so still need a comfy and cleverly made pair of trousers, but still nice and fashionable not a pair of combat trousers for photo shoots.

All suggestions are welcome and if I can buy them in Egypt even better!
Cheers,
Helen

I Won a little soft camel.

Before I went on holiday I entered my picture of the Tanoura Dancer into a Photo Competition that Longwood Holidays had,  I just found out recently that I was one of the winners in the Pro's section of the competition. Yay!!
http://www.facebook.com/notes/longwood-holidays/at-last-our-photo-competitions-winners-announced/150971841599274

I have also today uploaded some more images to my RedBubble account so please feel free to peruse it when you have time!
http://www.redbubble.com/people/hshippey

Pop Art!

I was inspired by one of the recent issues of Digital Photo Magazines to make Pop Art with one of my wedding images that I took recently of a wedding in England.

To my surprise it was not too difficult to do it took time to do but only due to that I was using so many different layers in Photoshop inorder to obtain as much detail in the wedding dress and in the suit. You can basically make it as quick as you like depending on how detailed you want your final image to be.

I have already showed it to the client and they loved it. But I can also appreciate that this is not a style for everyone.

I also showed it to my hubby and now he wants me to make one of us from one of our wedding photos. I also just had an email from my sister where she sent a picture of her family wanting to know how they would look with the Pop Art effect. Maybe this is my new nice? or maybe not. I did enjoy making it though but then I have only made this one image so far....

We'll where it takes me.

All the best,

Helen

Swedish Wedding!

Back from a few weeks break.

Well it wasn’t only a break I was of course busy using my camera as well! You can’t really go far without it if you are an avid photographer as I am.

I have now started to blog for a Swedish newspaper in Swedish so for all my fans that can read Swedish please take a look at this link. I am posting almost everyday. If you don’t know how to read Swedish maybe you can try Google’s free language translator will probably be a bit hilarious at times ;-) the translation that is maybe not my writing… ha ha. Hopefully my writing will be  a bit more witty as well. It’s a different kind of blog from this one so don’t be shy take a peek.

http://bblat.se/bloggar/fotobloggen

Whilst in Sweden I was assisting at a Swedish Wedding in Västerås, which was great fun. I was helping out Photographer Henrik Sunvisson that does loads of weddings in the Västerås area of Sweden. You can see his work through this link he does some remarkable portraits. http://www.henkasfoto.blogg.se/ and http://www.uppdragmedia.se/

I recommend that even if you are an established photographer to go out and help/assist or be the second shooter with another photographer once in a while you will have great fun for one thing and you always learn something, you will both act differently for the same shot for sure.

It's all about timing!

It's all about timing!

I went last Friday at 21.00  to a festival and stayed for a few different dance shows. It starts however at 20.00 so you can go earlier than I did and if you want to take photographs that might be a good idea so that you can scout out a good vantage point for you and maybe also get up close. I had my 70-200mm L IS f2.8 on my camera so I could stand a bit further away and still get good close up shots…. I had chosen that lens for the evening because of the f2.8. Now in hindsight and already while I was there I realised that my 24-105mm IS f4 might have been a better choice due to me not being able to get a good vantage point from far enough away so I ended up feeling that I was too close to the dancers. Hence the poor belly dancer below looks like she had both her arms chopped off. I was shooting through two very tall men so its their shoulders and heads that are blocking. Those of you that know me know that I am quite tall myself so you can imagine how tall these guys were. You can however get some quite unique shots using other people as props. So don't disregard that. Its always easier using natural props in a shoot than bringing your own along. Less for you to carry as well.

I was shooting only using the stage lighting, which at times did not work so well here because the dancers were not at all times in the spot light making them very dark. The stage light did not seam to move at all with any of the dancers, which was a shame. I had brought my flashes with me but did not want to use them since using a flash on evening events like these often takes away the ambient light that the stage light are creating as well as washing away the colures and that is not very flattering for the dancers.

How to get that amazing shot!

A few steps that you can follow to help you along the way, but as always practice makes perfect!

When taking images of someone that are moving its all about timing! After you have watched the dancers a little bit you might be able to predict a little bit where they are going next and that pre planning helps you with taking a great photograph. Because its all about being in the right place at the right time. 

If you for instance start pressing the shutter when the dancer is looking at you, you will most likely every time get the back of her head. Since by the time that you have pressed the shutter she has already moved. So try to see where she is going before she does so that you can pan with her. 

Here I changed the colour of her scarf above her head to match her dress. It was a boring yellow to start with.

Make sure that your camera is set to taking images in burst mode. (several images after each-other). I also always have only one focus point which at most times is aimed at the head of the dancer. A high ISO helps you when you take images in the dark. I was using an ISO of 500 and 640 while shooting these images (I changed during the night, started with 500 then went to 640). Depending on which camera body you are using you will get different quality results. Some cameras can take very good photographs at very high ISO while the cheaper cameras can not. So check your cameras limit. This is where practice makes perfect comes in try a few different ISO settings and see how good the images are on the computer screen afterwards. Always try to learn from what setting you were using so that you know for next time. My Aperture was between 4.5 and 5f and my Shutter Speed were between 80 to 200 during this event.

If you have any further photography questions please don’t hesitate to contact me and I will try to sort it out for you.

Happy Shooting everyone.

Cheers,

Helen