Surprising Silhouettes!

I love Surprise View in the Peak District.  It is not that far from my house (just over 30 minutes drive).  There is a car park there.  It only takes about 20 minutes to walk from the car park to the top of Surprise View.  And once you get there the view is simply beautiful (and it feels like you are right in the middle of the Peak District but without all that tiring walking).  It is especially beautiful if there if there is snow on the ground like there was today (although that made it particularly chilly!).

I have been a frequent visitor to Surprise View and have taken lots of photos there over the years but I’d never really managed to nail a decent sunset there before.  So I decided to head over there today to try and do just that.

I also needed to take a photo for week 4 of my one photo a week in 2012 challenge too so I thought a Surprising sunset would do the job.

I set up my tripod behind the big rock formations at the top of the hill so that they would be silhouetted against the setting sun. A group of families then started climbing up the rocks and I liked how they were also silhouetted against the sky if I exposed for the sky and not the rocks.

One of the Dads spotted me and came over.  I was a little worried that he would be angry at me for taking photos of his kids but he was nothing of the sort.  In fact he was interested in what I was doing and when I showed him that everyone was coming out as a silhouette it got him and the other parents thinking.  They all very kindly climbed back up onto the rocks again and decided to pose for me.

That first pose was marvellous.  But then they decided to get even more creative.  And bingo, I got my week 4 shot!

The families then left leaving me with a lone man standing on the rocks.

Once the sun had completely set the whole sky went a wonderful yellowy-orange colour but by then I had set off back down the hill towards my car.  I would have loved to have stayed and captured the rocks with this colour in the sky but I didn’t want to have to negotiate the rocky climb back down in the dark!

I have realised that I forgot to blog about my week 3 photo last week.  So here it is.  It is a 3 photo panorama stitch of the University of Sheffield Students’ Union building.  I had walked past it the day before at sunset and the sky behind the Union building was full of glorious orange colours.  I didn’t have my camera with me so I vowed to return the next day.  And typically the sunset the day after was rubbish.  But it was raining a bit which allowed me to capture some great reflections in the ground so all was not lost.

Stay tuned to my blog for my week 5 photo next week!

Week 2–Strong & Northern!

For week 2 of my one photo a week in 2021 challenge I had intended to make a stunning long exposure photo of the Henderson’s Relish Building using my new welding glass 14 stop ND filter.  In my head the image was a very striking photo of the building with a sky showing lots of dynamic movement in the clouds.  Unfortunately when I tried to make just that photo I got neither of these two – a washed out building and a white featureless sky.

So I next thought I would take a photo of St George’s Lecture Theatre but I got a similar looking photo with no movement in the clouds (even though the exposure was 150 seconds!).  It appears that it is a lot harder than it looks to get cloud movement in a long exposure (most likely due to the detail in the sky being blown out).  More practice is obviously required!  But I did manage in Lightroom to make a half-decent image out of my photo of the church.

My next idea was to head to Ladybower Reservoir and take some long exposure shots of the water. I spent 3 hours there yesterday freezing my nuts off but couldn’t get a shot I liked until dusk where I made this panorama:

Although I like this image it is a little dark so I revisited my Henderson’s photos and discovered that I had luckily taken 2 normal bracketed shots of the building without the welding glass attached – one to expose for the sky and one for the building.  I blended these together to make the images below, one in colour and the other in much more striking black and white:

 

And it is this last one that I have chosen as my photo of the week and will be entered into the View52 Group on flickr.

PS Regular viewers of my photos (and also of the View52 and October groups) will recognise Henderson’s building of course.  I first shot it back in 2008:

And my friends Richard and Dave have both shot it too, for the October and View52 groups respectively:

Photowalk with Dave and Rich

Yesterday lunchtime I went on a photowalk with my mates Dave and Rich.  Well, when I say photowalk, it was more photo than walk as we didn’t walk far.  We started at the Henderson’s Relish building then went to the Bioincubator and Jessops West buildings at the university. So our walk was all of about 100 yards.  But it was good fun though.

We had intended to meet up with The PP Girls again as they were planning a photowalk in Sheffield yesterday but they did the 5 Weirs Walk. As Dave, Rich and I have day jobs and only had our lunch hours to fit in some photography we couldn’t meet up.  There is talk of a weekend meet so hopefully we’ll all get together then.

Dave and I arrived at the Hendos building a little early so we both took some photos of this iconic building.  Dave’s photo can be seen here but mine was a bit rubbish, and a lot worse than my old photo of the building, so I won’t be posting it here.

Once Rich arrived we headed over to the Bioincubator and the cafe area on the top floor.  The view from there over Sheffield is pretty good but I’d never photographed it before so I was looking forward to giving it a try.  However when we reached the cafe we noticed that one of the windows had been shattered. So all thoughts of the view were forgotten about as we all became fascinated by the patterns of the broken window…

The view was pretty good and I captured it using my fisheye attachment.

I also made a 27 photo stitch of the view too:

We then headed outside and I took some photos of Jessops West.  I do like a good abstract image…

Then all too soon our lunch hour was over and we all had to head back to work.  Looking forward to a weekend meet up soon where we can spend a lot longer on the photography (and also do a bit more walking too!).

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year to all my customers, friends and family!  I hope that 2012 brings you northing but happiness!

The photo above is of the firework that Jonny and I set off last night at midnight to celebrate the end of 2011 and the start of 2012. 

The firework was a single light, 64 shot and it was amazing!  Back on bonfire night I set off some fireworks in my garden for the first time. I bought them from Asda and was a little disappointed with them.  I spent £50 on two selection boxes and, although there were lots of fireworks in both boxes, on the whole they were a bit rubbish.

This time I decided to go to a proper fireworks shop to get my fireworks in the hope that they would be better and after a bit of internet research I discovered there was one just up the road from me called Epic Fireworks. The nice man in the shop sold me a surprisingly cheap firework called the Paramount Heavy Duty.

It was only £14.95 and I was a bit sceptical that something so cheap could be as good as the salesman said.  But I am pleased to say he was right.  Unlike the Asda fireworks, it lit up the whole of the sky above my garden with a myriad of effects and for the 70 seconds that it lasted for it felt like we were under attack!

This is a video that Epic Fireworks shot of the Heavy Duty which gives you some idea of just how good the firework is.  Especially as it is a single light firework so you only have to light one firework but get the effect of 64 different ones.

As well as providing a great light show what I was also impressed with about the firework was the length of the fuse.  With the Asda fireworks the fuses were so short that it was impossible for me to retreat a safe distance once I’d lit the fuse before the firework went off.  But with the Heavy Duty the fuse was so long that I was able to easily make it to a safe distance before it went off.

As well as using this blog post to rave about the firework (and to wish you all a Happy New Year!) I am also writing this to highlight that the photo at the top of this post is my first entry to the  for the View 52 flickr group.  This is  where I will be posting one photo a week for the whole of 2012. I am doing a 52 because it is a lot less stressful than a 365 (where I would need to post a photo every day to flickr). One a week is much more manageable!  So look out for photos from weeks 2-52 in the rest of 2012.

Unlike when I took part in a 31 for October in 2009 and 2011 my 52 photos will be based on a more diverse series of themes.  Yes, I will be including some stranger portraits, but will also be photographing a whole range of other things from landscapes to macro, panoramas to long exposure light trails, candid street photos to, well, you get the idea.

My first shot, the fireworks photo above, didn’t go exactly to plan. The idea was that I was going to take a series of shots of the firework going off in bulb mode and choose the best one for my week 1 selection. What I didn't factor for is that the firework would be so powerful and that it was a bit like the Blitz in my garden for the 70 seconds the 64 shots lasted for. As my tripod was set up so close to the firework I decided to take cover and left my camera to capture the whole show. Hence the blown out main bit. Oh well, in Week 45, which is the week when bonfire night falls, I hope to take a better photo of the same firework.

Boxing Day 2011

Today has been a day of more eating, followed by complicated flat-pack construction!

The eating came in the form of a Roast Turkey bagel for lunch.  This contained the aforementioned turkey plus some of my homemade cranberry sauce (which this year was not as tart as in previous years thanks to the 10 tablespoons of sugar I added!), a few slices of stuffing, a few rashers of bacon and, just to be a little bit healthy, some lettuce leaves.  It was as delicious as it looks!  The kettle chips were lovely too…

The flat-pack construction was needed to make Jonny’s present from Uncle Marcus, a Wooden Table Football.  It looked pretty complicated and had lots of parts straight out of the box.

The instructions looked simple enough.  But they missed out a couple of steps and also failed to differentiate between the large and small bolts that came in the box. So I needed to take the table apart mid way through and start again.

But after 2 hours of hard work by yours truly I managed to put it together – anyone fancy a game?  Baggsy being the reds….

The only other thing I did today was make some turkey stock from the turkey carcass which I will be using later to make some turkey, mushroom and bacon risotto.  Yes, that’s right, more food!

Christmas 2011–Part 4

My final Christmas blog, this time it’s about my (English) Christmas Dinner.  Unlike Marcus last night, it wasn’t a triumph. I mucked up my timings.  Could it have something to do with the lovely drop of red I was glugging while cooking?  Surely not!

Anyway, at the least the photos were good…

Merry Christmas!

Christmas 2011-Part 3

As promised here is part 3 of the Butler’s 2011 Christmas.  And this was the main event – our Danish Christmas Eve celebration. And this was a year of firsts – Alice’s first Christmas and, perhaps most importantly, Marcus’s first time ever of hosting the event.  Marcus was very nervous about preparing the meal but he needn’t have worried because he did a brilliant job and we all had a lovely time, especially little Alice!

Alice wore a very pretty outfit for Christmas Eve.

As did her Dad!

Alice showed us all how strong her neck muscles are now by performing on her tummy:

How cute does she look with that Santa hat on?

Answer? Very!

Usually we open our presents after the Roast Duck at around 7PM but Alice got to open her presents in the afternoon.  Here she is opening a present from her Uncle Simon:

I am not sure she appreciated the clothes I bought for her but her parents did!

As per usual Uncle Marcus played a blinder and bought her the best present – a little Santa dress and matching tights.  And unlike my clothes she loved this present!

However, it wasn’t all clothes for young Alice this year, she also got lots of lovely books too.

As well as being spoilt by her Uncles, Alice was also spoilt by her cousin too.  Jonny gave her these adorable blocks…

Jonny also bought Alice some adorable little booties!

As you can imagine Alice was a very lucky girl and got lots of other lovely gifts….

I was pleased that my main present, a wooden walker full of bricks, went down better than the boring clothes that were my other present to Alice...

As you can see here she looked Über-cute in her Santa outfit from Uncle Marcus and her robin booties from Jonny!

Jonny decided at this point to take my camera and take some of his own photos of Alice.  And annoyingly he took this portrait of her which is a million times better than anything I took…

As if to re-enforce just how much better Jonny is at this kind of thing than me I then took a photo of the two of them and completely failed to notice the distracting box of tissues in the background.  A school-boy error I feel…

After a delicious meal of roast duck and all the traditional Danish trimmings we then opened all of the other presents.  Jonny’s Uncles both loved the Space Invader alarm clocks that Jonny gave to them….

James played a blinder, as per usual, as he gave Emma a beautiful bracelet:

Jonny was pleased that he got FIFA 12 from me…

and Marcus loved his present from Alice!

James got a wonderful present from Alice.

And Emma got a lovely present from her nephew…

The Beals were very generous this year and bought both Jonny and I lots of lovely gifts…

James opening a book from Emma

Emma showing off a photo book of old shops in London…

Every year Uncle Marcus manages to buy something that Jonny hasn’t asked for but has always wanted but didn’t know it.  And all by buying something that Marcus wants himself.  It just shows how alike Uncle and Nephew are that every year he manages to get his presents just right – even if they are usually extremely large.  This year was no exception and Marcus had to hide the present in his bedroom and bring it out much to Jonny’s surprise.  It was certainly the largest present Marcus has ever given to Jonny at Christmas….

Jonny enthusiastically tore off the wrapping…

….and was thrilled to discover a proper wooden table football!  Jonny loves it but I am not so keen – I have now got to make the thing!  At least I have a few days to put it together before Jonny is back with me again….

So that was Christmas 2011 over for another year.  It was fantastic and that was mainly down to excellent hosting from Marcus and a wonderful first Christmas for Alice.