Tag: photography skills

Now you see it, now you don’t

Now here’s an experiment at removing those irritating lines and wires that make their way into every photo (especially those in cities). Having read about Snapheal CK, I bit the bullet and bought a copy of the license. And the results are below to compare. Snapheal makes removing lines, wires and other unwanted features from a picture a doddle. Interestingly enough, the algorithm underneath the hood does a brilliant job and understanding the background patterns so that there are no ghosts left from the removal! Of course, nothing is perfect and one shouldn’t expect miracles and nothing can rescue a badly composed photograph.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

The photos above are of Casa Bruno Cuadros (a famous umbrella shop in the La Rambla area of Barcelona), and show the photos before and after treatment with Snapheal CK.

Nature’s Tiny Beauty – Anatomy of a small flower

Capturing this photograph gave me no end of satisfaction. It was a very small flower (< 5mm diameter) to work with and it was a windy day and getting focus and framing right using increased magnification from extension tube attachments on the lens was a challenge. Finally getting the black background using a remote flash was also difficult. In the end, the results showed a beautiful, almost hand painted flower with flecks of yellow, magenta and crimson on the petals. There is truly beauty in small things!!

Miniature beauty..
Small flower from a Sempervium. Click on the photo for more viewing options on Flickr!

 

Nikon D7000 with a 105mm Sigma macro lens with extension tubes.
ISO200, f/18, 1/250 with remote slave flash
No post-processing!

Photographing Roses

Last week I had this really nice bunch of gold-coloured roses and I wanted to try out my photography skills using a remote flash on commander mode. I placed the flash on the tripod and right angles to the photograph with some interesting results. One of two of these are with the flash on the camera, but can  you tell the difference?

head-on flash
external flash behind roses
external flash behind rose to the right
external flash at right angles to the camera. Light coming from the left.
External flash right angles to camera from left. Longer exposure.
external flash about 45 degrees to camera in a V arrangement

The main advantage I found to having an external remote flash was to be able to play with the colours and backgrounds. No post-processing carried out for any of these pictures. The roses too look different depending on the light source.

What do you think? Click on any image to see a full-size view.

Technical Details:

Nikon D-80 with remote SB-600 speedlight flash in commander mode
105mm f/2.8 Sigma macro lens
Related articles