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Month: April 2018

Posted
April 18, 2018
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Architectural Photography Workshop

Last Friday, I attended an architectural photography workshop, run by Line+Light via the Royal Photographic Society. Line+Light also ran the astrophotography workshop I attended recently, so I’ll use them again as I’ve thoroughly enjoyed both of the workshops. The teacher was knowledgeable and enthusiastic, which is what I found on the astrophotography course as well.

Again, the weather was a bit grim but I’ve lived in this country long enough to take the good weather when I can get it and make the best of the rest of the time.

The day had some theory in the morning, which was fascinating, and we had a number of buildings to visit during the rest of the day that were interesting in different ways.

The professional images that were being shown off by the teacher sometimes used tilt-shift lenses which can make buildings look straight and correct and not distorted as is normal with normal lenses. If I was seriously into photographing architecture, I’d look at that type of lens.

I had a 10-24mm wide angle in my bag along with an 8mm fisheye – so I went the way of doing the opposite of professional. Because my images were really just for me, rather than a client, I used a fisheye in some of them to enjoy the distortion. The 10-24mm shots were more sensible.

So the photos here are just aesthetically pleasing to me, and not how a proper architectural photographer would do them at all.

All of the buildings were in Nottingham city centre. So my intention is to go back in nicer weather and have a go at some of the exteriors and actually use some of the knowledge picked up from the day and try and create some images that do represent what a building is about.

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Posted
April 1, 2018
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Learning
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Astrophotography Workshop

I attended an astrophotography workshop yesterday at the Sherwood Observatory run by Line+Light.

It was a thoroughly enjoyable day. The typical British weather put paid to an outdoor practical segment, but that was more than compensated for by the talks inside the observatory.

The people on hand from the observatory and the workshop company were all really knowledgeable and enthusiastic and the whole thing was crammed full of useful information. And they had Jaffa Cakes.

I had, in my ignorance, assumed that astronomy in most cities and towns was largely a waste of time due to light pollution but the images on display were often breathtaking. Photography has the advantage over direct human viewing in that a final image can be constructed by taking the light from lots of photos and combining them. That combined with techniques to reduce the effect of light pollution means that urban astrophotography shouldn’t view it as a barrier at all. Peter Jenkins was one of the speakers (http://www.pjastro.co.uk); he uses a telescope in his back garden in what looks like a well lit urban area. I wouldn’t have imagined that was possible before yesterday. Have a look at some of his images, they’re amazing.

I definitely want to give this a go, so I’ve drawn up a list of some simple starter projects: A star trail landscape and a moon shot to start with – using equipment I already have – so nothing specialist. From there we’ll see…