Sunday 25th April saw my local team, the Watford Cheetahs, begin their 2010 BAFACL season campaign in an away game with the Milton Keynes City Pathfinders.

Watford have played the Pathfinders several times over the last few years. They played their season opener against them in 2009 also.

It was a pretty hard fought game. Both teams’ defences dominated through most of the match with neither side able to get any appreciable lead over the other. Right up until the last part of the 4th quarter. Defensive Cornerback, Dyann Lewis (#21), in his first ever game of American football, managed to intercept three MK City passes & return all 3 for touchdowns, leaving the final score 28 – 8 to Watford.

This is a section of photographs with the theme of hidden in plain view.

Wherever we go we are surrounded by photographic opportunities. Sometimes it’s just a case of looking for something that’s already there & turning it into somthing which pleases. I was quite pleased with these.

The first two are simply reflections in glass buildings next to the River Thames. The 3rd is a building just outside the tube station we used to get to the Thames. (I can’t remember which station it was now)

The orange building is a set of flats which front the river by the bridge which leads across to St Paul’s Cathedral. The second was some flats on the Cathedral side of the bridge. I think the third was a car park for flats just off an alleyway which leads you away from St Paul’s.

Then we have the flats above the aforementioned car park & a simple door number.

And lastly, I think the yellow lines should have been taken at an angle as they look a little static. I just loved the graphical element of the hoarding around some building works.

In the middle of April I took my youngest down to London for the afternoon to take some photos. I normally stay away from the city if I can help it & have never really been there with the express intention of just taking photos.

Fortunately the weather was fine, it was probably the hottest day in April.

All photos were taken with the Canon 5D MkII & Canon 100-400mm zoom.

Not being a regular visitor, I have no idea whether the empty pod in the photo on the right is normal or not.

On the 13th March the Hertfordshire Hurricanes took on the Portsmouth Destroyers when Portsmouth visited Hertfordshire’s Hatfield ground.

As usual, lighting was variable throughout the game changing between sunlight & dark cloud cover.

The Hurricanes went behind with an early safety but ended up eventual winners with a score of 12 points to 8.

The second of the following shots was taken remotely with the camera on top of a monopod held high in the air & triggered with an radio shutter release. It was taken while the teams warmed up prior to kick-off.

Posted under Photo Shoots

I bought the Canon MP-E 65mm macro lens in February 2009 but not had a chance to properly try it out. Spurred on by a recent article in Amateur Photographer, I got the lens out & collected a few insects to try it out on.

The wasp was a dead example I found in the shed. It was placed on top of a small perspex box in the light of a window. Radio shutter release was used, I think the shutter speeds were around 1/2 a second.

For each of the images I took 20-40 photographs all taken at a slightly different focusing range. All the shots are then loaded into image stacking software – in this case Zerene Stacker – which goes off & takes the sharp part out of every image, combining them & deleting the rest. Thus you end up with a photograph with a much wider depth of field than is possible with the lens in a single shot.

Taking 40 shots of an insect is only possible if the subject is really still. In the case of the wasp, that was fine as it was dead. With the spider, I put it in the fridge for a couple of minutes. I’m told that no harm is done to the creature & it goes into a state of sleep as if in a cold night, though you do have to be careful not to cool it for too long.

The ant is in  the state of waking up from its brief winter sleep. In fact on the second shot it was preening its antennae so I wasn’t able to get a series of shots to focus-stack. This is a single image, you can see how narrow the depth of field is with just one shot.

The woodlouse was a dead specimen found in the garden.

On the 6th of March my choir performed our spring concert at St Mary the Virgin Church in Pirton near Hitchin. We had the rehearsal during the early afternoon & I took my camera with me.

After the rehearsal I spent some time in & around the church setting up some shots which I intended to process with HDR (High Dynamic Range).

The shots were taken hand-held on the 1DMkIV, five shots in a rapid sequence, then married up on Photomatix & combined. The processing is a little more subtle than the more obvious HDR effects you quite often see.

The couple in the car arrived by driving into one of my shots, the quickly realised & reversed back behind the church so I could finish taking the shot. By the time I worked my way round the church to where they had parked, the car was still there. I liked the fresh, shiny, smooth bodywork against the old stone of the church walls.

In the first week of March my eldest came home for the weekend from University. We took the opportunity to take Tess for a walk around the back of Norton on the outskirts of Letchworth Garden City.

It may look sunny but it was bloody freezing. Walking around for a couple of hours with no gloves on a metal 70-200mm lens is not for the feint-hearted.

Here’s a shot of yours truly, taken by my daughter.

I just liked the graphical quality of this shot…

Watford Cheetahs, the BAFL team I shot last season, have started training towards the 2010 season which starts in April. On the 13th March they invited the London Blitz up to their ground in Watford for a practice scrimmage.

It was good to see a few old faces from last season & encouraging to see lots of new faces.

I was made to feel very welcome by new Head Coach, Drew Anderson

The scrimmage was basically each team taking it in turns to go through their play book & practice their plays against a real opposition. There were no points scoring & no winners & losers.

All the shots were taken on manual settings with small adjustments as the light changed.

I’m looking forward to a great season with the Cheetahs & hope to come up with some shots which they’ll be really pleased with. You can see the rest of the shots from the day on my old website.

Saturday 27th March 2010 sees the end of the Letchworth Garden City Camera Club Annual Exhibition. It ran for a month at the museum in Letchworth town centre.

This is my second camera club exhibition & I had 6 or 7 shots displayed. I was also lucky enough to be one of the chosen four to have their shots featuring on our advertising poster. You can see the shot of the B-17 Aircrew in the first shot. My black & white shot of the B-17 itself is on the right hand side of that shot also.

Focus on Imaging is the largest photographic show in the UK & is held at the NEC in Birmingham. This is the third year I’ve attended.

Talk about being a kid in a chocolate shop, you can find everything at Focus. I bought my Elinchroms last year. This year I had to reign in the spedning as I’d only got the 1D MkIV a few weeks earlier, so major acquisitions were out of the question.

The other great thing about Focus is all the free talks & seminars. You can pick up so much info. I watched a couple on the Flash Centre’s stand, one by a guy on ‘Strobist’ type photography, basically, photography with flashguns. Then there was another by someone who is using a 5D MkII for video production. Another good talk was at the PhotoTraining4U stand on black & white portraiture & how to make money from it. I was quite impressed with their seminars that I later joined their training website.

Several stands give you the opportunity to photograph some models. Lastolite had the ever-gorgeous Katy Green. I popped by their stand in the morning & the afternoon & took my chance to grab a few shots. Looking at them I doubt you’d be able to tell I was just standing in the crowdline waiting for her to look into my lens. The shots are taken with the ambient light on my 1D MkIV with 70-200 f2.8 lens.

I walked away from the show with another Pocket Wizard, a white shoot-through umbrella & a Lastolite Ezybox & stand for my flashgun.