Dave Johnson's Photography

Photos & Thoughts


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Mia and the Apple

Today Mia has been particularly cheeky, none more so than when she decided to help herself to some fruit! I suppose I should be pleased that she went for the fruit and not the sweets or cakes. However, as you can see from these photos, she wasn’t content with having just the one apple. No, she wanted two apples and even tried to eat an un-peeled orange.

On the plus side, this little cheeky session she was on allowed me to my new lens through its paces again, and also to try and apply some freshly learnt skills about speedlites. One area of photography that I have never got to grips with, and should since I am shooting a wedding in the Spring, is flash photography. Anyway, to make my life a little easier I’ve purchased a book and have spent the last day going through it and then running off to do a little experiment. I’m slowly getting there but the key, as with most learning(!) is to be able to recall this knowledge when its needed…only time will tell if this will be the case.

Until then, enjoy these pictures of Mia and the story of her apple!


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Testing my new toy!!!

Today my new Canon EF 28mm prime lens arrived- ordered from Warehouse Express yesterday! The more I use prime lenses, the more I like them and the quality of the images over standard zoom lenses is far superior (in my opinion!). I am lucky enough to have a Canon L lens (the 24-105mm) and if the shutter speed and aperture are chosen correctly then I would say the images it produces are on a par with a prime lens.

I have a feeling that over the next few weeks there will be a lot of discarded shots due to autofocus errors etc., but once I have had a good play with it I will post some more photos for you to review!


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Playing with a 50mm!


 

Quite a number of years a go I bought the cheap Canon 50mm f/1.4 lens for my Canon Digital Rebel (my first dSLR). I barely used it at first mainly because if I wasn’t paying attention and the ISO was set to 100, the camera would automatically open up the lens. This would often result in photos that were out of focus or the focus point was not on the subject. Recently, I have found that having such a fast lens is fantastic for taking pictures of the children, particularly where I don’t want to use flash. However, recently I have decided to use my flash more and so I am now using 2 pieces of kit that were bought and forgotten about.

I don’t really have an eye for the shallow depth of field photography, or Bokeh style, so I am having to readjust my eye to looking around my surroundings more. I couple of photos taken yesterday are posted below where I thought the narrow depth of field would work- what do you think?

Another reason for digging out my 50mm lens and the flash is that my sister-in-law is getting married in May and they have asked me to take some of their wedding photographs as they aren’t having a professional photographer- so they get me instead! Naturally this has resulted in lots of google searches for the best lenses to use at weddings, flash techniques and so on, and so on. One idea I have (which I haven’t discussed with the happy couple), is to set the camera up on a tripod and to make a time-lapse movie of the wedding and subsequent wedding breakfast. I’m sure they will be happy for me to post some pictures post scrutiny!

On a totally separate note, I have been listening to the new album by Lana Del Rey constantly for the last few days. If you haven’t heard it I would definitely recommend buying it or finding most of the tracks on YouTube! Try this for size…

 


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Waiting in line

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Unfortunately my daughter has been ill for the last few days so today it was off to see the Doc. Typically as soon as we get to the doctors she starts to perk up a little, although not enough to resort into her normal cheeky ways! Whilst I completely value the job a GP does, what winds me up is the time you spend waiting to see them. In our surgery the appointment slots are 10 minutes apart yet even with the 2nd or 3rd appointment of the day they can be running nearly 15 minutes late! How?!

Anyway, upside is the doctor thinks she just has a virus and it will work its way out over the next few days so nothing to worry about.