Dust Aid Wand!

One of my pet hates is dust on my sensor! I started this morning with looking at my images from yesterday afternoon and realised very quickly that I had a few dust specs on the sensor. Not a good start to the morning. But then again better to see it sooner rather than later. So I started to get my gear ready for a sensor cleaning. When you are shooting in digital cleaning your sensor is something that unfortunately becomes part of what you have to do. No matter how careful you are to not get dust on your sensor you will. Especially if you at all change between lenses while shooting. I always try not to change my lens outdoors if possible. When I am out on excursions I always try to trek back to the car to change my lens if possible.

It took me about an hour to clean the sensor today. Once I got rid of the original dust I found new dust in other places. Just great!

When I clean my sensor I use the Dust Aid Cleaning Wand together with their Platinum Strips and I swear by it. It is the one thing that I have tried that works very well for me. I have tried other sensor cleaning products as well but this one is what I like the best and it gets the job done for me. I am by no means sponsored by them…. I wish so if anyone that works for Dust Aid reads this please feel free to contact me I do not mind at all. ;-)

The way I do it is I have an image where I see the dust I look at that image to know where on the sensor the dust is so I know where to focus my attention when cleaning it. I then use the Dust Aid Wand on the sensor I feel its very easy to use and I am not afraid that I will hurt my sensor. But if you are nervous about cleaning your own camera sensor by No means do it yourself go to a professional since it can be very nerve wrecking and of course very expensive if anything goes wrong!

As I mentioned it took me just over an hour today to get mine clean this is mostly due to that I do not have a loupe. Using one of them I believe would have quickened the process a lot.

I was looking at one last time I was in London but thought they were a bit too expensive…. Since you don’t use it so often but I have today realised that it is worth the investment in the long run. I could have done a lot of other work in this hour that it took me to clean my sensor. So a loupe is up on my purchase list again!

Since I did not have a loupe I had to take a test shot with the camera every time I had cleaned the sensor and then download it to the computer to check the results. I did this several times in all I took 78 test images.  So you can understand how tedious this process can be without a loupe.

A good link I found:

http://www.cleaningdigitalcameras.com/inspecting.html

But before you start you might want to rule out that it is not your lens that is dirty.

I just want to say I take no responsibility at all for anyone trying to clean his or her own camera sensor. I just wanted to share with you how I do it.

Happy shooting everyone!

Helen

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

Sunsets and Sunrises in - Egypt

Hello friends!

I keep on forgetting that not all of you are following me through my FaceBook Fan Page or on Twitter. So for you not to miss too much I will try to recap for you what has happened since I last blogged.

Join my FaceBook Fan Page here:

http://www.facebook.com/shippeyphotography

My Twitter account: http://twitter.com/hshippey

I have been out late afternoons and early mornings the last two weeks to capture the sunrise and sunsets for a new photo series that I am doing. I have been up so many early mornings at 5 am now I am still waking up at that way too early hour, even though I don’t have to anymore!

I started with a late afternoon photo shoot by a jetty. I was using long shutter speeds to blur the water movement. It was so windy I was squatting down next to my tripod with my shutter release cable in my hand trying to shield the camera from the wind so that my images would not all come out blurry due to the wind moving the camera. Don’t take me wrong my tripod is not a light weight one so it can stand sturdy by itself but it was just so windy I figured every little helps in order to keep the camera still. I was using exposures from 30seconds and longer, so very sensitive to movements.

Something that you need to consider while shooting sea is that the tide move and if you are not careful you might end up standing in the water quite quickly. I did not have that incident but I did see my foreground disappearing, due to the tide coming in. I was so focused on the jetty that I didn’t really notice that I was loosing my foreground. So keep that in mind when you are out photographing oceans. It you are by a lake you should be fine ;-) The other element that was changing was the sun had set and it was getting darker and darker and therefore harder to see through the viewfinder. The darkness also made it a lot harder for the camera to focus so you might want to focus your lens manually but you need to do that before it gets too dark since later you wont even be able to see it yourself.

My last evening photo shoot I changed location to another jetty further down the beach, this time the one by another jetty. I had taken a few frames still doing long exposures so once you have pressed that shutter you are up for a wait, 30seconds can sometimes seam like a very long time. Especially if a beautiful Kingfisher decides to land only 2 meters away from you! I had just pressed the shutter to expose for another image I tried desperately to quicken the time so that I would have time to take a few frames of the Kingfisher before he decided to fly away. In order to get long exposures I was using 2 Cokin filters so I quickly had to grab the filters off the lens, I had nowhere to put them! You know how filters can be especially plastic ones they get scratched very easily so I didn’t want to put them just anywhere. I ended up having them in my mouth. (I know gross but I did get some stunning images out of it though.) Now I only need to clean my filters they are full of lip gloss.

The Kingfisher did fly away in the end before I had time to take a decent shot of him from his first location but he did thankfully not fly too far away. He also let me walk a bit towards him to get a closer shoot. (Of course with the camera, what do you take me for?) I quickly had to change my camera settings to suite taking images of a Kingfisher. Had to change the ISO and of course the shutter speed and aperture! You don’t want long exposures of a bird. Unless you are maybe looking for an Arty blurry feel. Then by all means go ahead.

I went home very happy with myself that I had caught the Kingfisher on “film”. The next morning I went down to the same location to take some sunrise images, and to my surprise my new friend the Kingfisher came along as well unfortunately he was not as chatty this morning as he was the night before. So I did not get to take any photos of him. I waved good morning and thought that I’ll see him later on anyway. Now when I know where he hangs out.

It was till windy in the morning actually every shoot I had done for this photo series the weather conditions have been windy, morning and evening.

This morning however it was not only windy but also cloudy so no sunrise for me, I was hoping that I would get some dramatic sunrays coming through the clouds but that unfortunately never happened either. So instead of capturing romantic sunrises I captured more dramatic moody scenes. Since that was the weather I had been dealt this morning.

The next morning I got clear skies and I saw the sun rise just above the jetty, at about 05.40 in the morning. Hurray!!

I feel that the minutes just before the sun reaches up behind the Jordanian Mountains are slightly more spectacular than once you can see the sun but that’s just me. What do you think?

I guess once again I learned that you need to be prepared for the unexpected and take advantage of the situations that present it self. Like with my Kingfisher.

Happy shooting everyone.

Helen

Do you learn from your mistakes?

Learn from your mistakes or if you can someone else’s mistakes is even better to save yourself some time.

Yesterday I had planned to shoot images of a tree that have started to bloom, it has many red flowers on them that look like a bottle brush (You’ll understand what I mean once you look at the images).

On my drive down to the Golf Club where the trees are I saw a Grey Heron in the water trap on hole 3 I stopped by the side of the road, quickly changed my lens from my 100mm 2.8f to my 70-200mm 2.8f so that I at least would have a chance to get a decent shot of the Heron. I ran across the road, at the same time I check what ISO I have the camera set on to see if I need to change it or not I have it on 200 and I decided that was good, by this time I was almost certain that the bird would have flown away. The bird was still standing in the water looking about I first shoot a few images then I dare go a bit closer to get a better vantage point so that I can get the bird and the flag on hole 3 in the same shot it looks great in my view finder. I fire away a few more shots the bird gets spooked and flies away I continue to shoot it while it flies away to my luck it flies towards me so it is actually coming closer and closer great! It can almost not have choreographed it any better. I stop shooting and to take a quick look at the images before I go back to the car. That is when I realize I have been shooting without a memory card in the camera. Just Great!

So the moral of this story today is to ALWAYS check all your camera gear before you leave your house since you never know when that money shot will appear!

So try to save yourselves some future grief and learn from my mistake!

Enjoy the images below the ones I had planned to shoot all along and the only ones I did shoot yesterday!

They are all taken with my Canon 5D, Canon 100mm 2.8f I did manual focus on all of them hand held some and some are taken on my tripod.

Photography Excursion.

Photo Excursion with fellow peers, 19th of March 2010.

When you go out on a photo excursion its paramount that you wear comfortable clothing and of course comfy shoes. Also think about to wear clothing that you don’t mind too much if they get a bit dirty so you wont miss that great image that are awaiting you if you stand with one knee on the ground or the one where you have to lay on your stomach to get it. You don’t want to come home and sit in front of your computer and look at your images and think if I had only taken that image from another angle! Why did I wear white trousers or a skirt?

Ok its not always like that but you will feel a lot more at ease and to be able to concentrate on what you love taking photographs! If you are not conscious about how you look whilst doing it. In Swedish we have a great word for what you should be wearing, Oömma kläder, that is clothes that as I mentioned above you are not too picky if they get dirty sort of like practical leisurewear. But there are no one single word explaining it in English, please let me know if you do find a great translation for it though, I am all ears.

Of course you also need to check that you have fully charged batteries, empty memory cards, tripods etc. and all the other photo gear that you think you will be needing. Leave nothing to chance but also do not bring too much so that it will wear you down in terms of too heavy for you to carry around if you plan to walk around a lot.

So, off we went the three of us to visit a local Bedouin camp that are not more than 10 minutes away from our house. Last time I visited a Bedouin camp was just over a year ago with some photographer friends that was here teaching at the PTO 2009 (Photo Training Overseas), http://www.pto-uk.com/pto2009.htm

Once we got there we decided against it… They had all received new houses (they had come up in the last month), which is very nice for them but not the kind of photography we had in mind to take. Before they all lived in small sheds so we were very pleased to see that they are getting more permanent housing to live in.  I do think that I will go back there soon though to take some people images, I love to capture people where you can see in their face that they have lived an active outdoor life, It brings so much more character to the person compared to the wrinkle free Hollywood faces everyone else are trying to copy… me included ;-)

So we turned around and headed towards a town called Nuweiba. First we checked so that we all had brought our passports! Otherwise we would not have been able to reach our destination, which we finally enough didn’t in the end anyway but only because we found so many other great places to take images of on the way there and we had the time constraint hanging over our heads as well. Because once the sun goes down behind the Sinai Mountains it gets dark very quickly and we had already decided where we wanted to be when the sun started to set.

Our first stop was an old Bedouin Camp that must have been an old diving camp because we saw loads of old BCD’s, masks and part of wet suits scattered around the place.

After spending some time there we headed back and stopped at a beach and took some more images, since it was still a bit too early for our sunset images we decided to go and get a coffee at Castle Zaman while we waited which was just behind the next bend from our current location.

When you are out taking photographs it will help you find the image you want if you already know what kind of image it is you are taking such as if it will be a great Black and White photograph or a colour one? Yesterday on our second stop I was thinking that these images will be great in Black and White, I still kept on shooting in colour so that I when I get home and start my post processing have more options rather than shooting directly in B&W. I also always shoot in RAW so I have full control of the colour balance as well afterwards to enhance the image mood.

All in all we all had a great day out and I personally feel I would like to do this again. It’s a great inspiration and also very fun to be out with fellow photographers on an excursion. When I lived in Dubai I used to do this regularly with fellow photographers there we ended up being quite a crowed at times, which was great.

It’s a great way to learn from each other and you will all very likely come back home with different images even though you all went to the same location its great!

I bet this would be great fun for our tourists here at the resort to go out on excursions with a ‘local’ guide (me being the local ;-) guide).

Something that could be done together with ‘our’ underwater photographer that comes here regularly to teach underwater photography I’m sure his students would also love to take images on land as well to fill in their time whilst here. Something to think about!.....

Our First Stop, we are standing on top of a mountain above the Rock Sea Camp, overlooking their surrounding camps.

Local Beduins on their camels.

Our Second Stop; a deserted Beduin Dive Camp.

Fishnet. 

A Padi Chart.

I guess who ever stayed here liked to drink wine....

In the same room as the image below.

Probably the social gathering place in the camp.

An old BCD.

Ceiling.

A fish head swinging about in the wind. Wonder how long its been there?

Sinai Mountains.

Castle Zaman. We can see this castle from our third stop and we're thinking that it will be nice with a break up there while we are waiting for the sun to set a bit lower in the sky.

Fellow enthusiasts, Yepp we are about to go for coffee at the Castle now.

Our Coffee Break at Castle Zaman.

While at the Castle we all took advantage and took a few snaps as well cant have a too long of a break now can we.

The entrance to the Castle.

Katie in action the sun is setting behind her.

If you want to see more images from our Photo Excursion please visit my FaceBook Fan Page. 

http://www.facebook.com/shippeyphotography

Photo Shoot

Hi there,

Those of you that follow me on Facebook and/or Twitter (@hshippey) already knows that yesterday afternoon/evening I was busy doing a photo shoot for a client.

It always seems like no matter how much you plan ahead for the unforeseen you still need to be ready for it. Yesterday I arrived in good time to scout the location and plan where to take the images check the light etc. I took a few images in different areas of the room to check where was the best. I decided it was best by the window so that I got the people back lit and then use my Speedlite 580EXII Flash to light their faces. Due to some of unforeseen obstacles from the clients we could not start the shoot until very late and of course by the time we could start the sun was long gone and therefore one of my light sources with it. So in the end I only had my flash.

What to learn from this experience…. Always plan what you want to do and achieve thoroughly and be ready to do something totally different to save the day!

I better get busy sending the images to the client so that they can send out their press releases.

Till next time Happy Shooting.

New Website Design on its way!

I have for a while now been thinking of changing the design of my webpage and I have now decided that I will do it. I must stay that it is a bit daunting a lot to sink my teeth into. Both in regards to choosing images for the galleries, deciding gallery categories, writing the text and the actual design, Think User Friendly. I myself do not stay long on a website that is difficult to understand and navigate.

I have decided I will make it very different from what is up and running at the moment and that is a big step in itself because I have made that design from scratch and I actually like it but I still feel that my clients that is You will get more out of a webpage with more images on so that you can see more of what I have done in the past and get a proper feel for my capabilities behind the lens. I will also be adding my design side to the website as well since I also do a lot of copywriting/press releases, proof reading and designing advertisements for companies. I have so far not advertised that side of my work and have therefore only gotten work through word of mouth which is the best way to get work to be honest also the easiest and most cost effective since you do not have to spend a penny on advertising it.

Well that is a bit of what I will be working on in the foreseen future. I know I have also promised to upload more of my images that I have recently taken. I will I promise. I believe a clever person once said: “Patience is a virtue”.

I have loads to do so I better get started…. So Over and out for now.

-Helen