Where I live - January

It's strange how the first month of the year has gone. Usually January is a gentle start, this year it seems more like it's the second half of the year than the beginning, and we're all playing catch-up already.

Ok so to the pictures for the personal where i live challenge....

I liked this picture as it was one I pre-visualised even before visiting the location, and when it came to getting the image it only took me four pictures to get the shot I eventually chose. Despite my initial writing and indeed thoughts about the night shot in the alley I decided that since this is the start of my project it needed some element that signified growth or journey. The low angle also was key, one of the other of the shots was taken from a higher viewpoint and looked like a simple snap. I processed the image twice, once for the black and white and once for the boots then layered them with a mask in photoshop.

Just two days after this shot above I was at my local camera club for a studio lighting course session. Despite some initial concerns with the available space and a conflict with the local allotment association annual meeting, the inspired choice of flash out in the car park made for some unexpectedly good set of pictures. Also a great set of willing models prepared to brave the cold weather in the improvised outdoor studio. I've also found that the Canon Studio Portrait picture style is actually rather good on this kind of picture. I used the P-STUDIO picture style in DPP when I did the RAW conversion.

I was using the EOS 50D, it's an amazing camera producing great results in low light as this portrait was taken at ISO 1600. There's been a lot about videos and low light coverage for the EOS 5D Mark II but the EOS 50D is also a pretty good camera. I am thinking that the RAW files from these DIGIC 4 cameras are a bit tougher for the computers and Canon DPP to process. My computers seem to struggle more with EOS 50D and EOS 5D Mark II images than they do with EOS-1Ds Mark III RAW images.

After my initial enthusiasm for the challenge there was a period of concern that this was going to be a dismal failure at the first step, but I'm now happy that I can go in to February having cleared the first step.

- p4pictures -