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.

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.

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.

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.

]]> http://blog.glnphotography.com/archives/455/feed 0 http://blog.glnphotography.com/archives/461 http://blog.glnphotography.com/archives/461#comments Tue, 01 Jun 2010 20:29:42 +0000 Garry http://blog.glnphotography.com/?p=461 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.

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.

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…

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.

So how did it perform?

It’s heavy, I needed help to fit the thick card roll onto my background stand.

At 7 or 8 metres there is plenty to form a good length train. The setup above is in my front room. I used my older eBay (Hong Kong) lights on the background & the newer Elinchroms as the main flash. Note the card spill-killer boards clamped to the background lights to prevent light straying on to the model.

Unfortunately, I found the battery on my flash meter had run out & being as they take a non-standard sized battery I was a bit stuck, so I had to use the old fashioned way, setting the light power & checking the shots until I had a decent combination of aperture & shutter speed. hapily, it only took a couple of shots to sort. I hooked up the camera to my laptop & shot tethered so that Laura could instantly see the results of her modelling.

We even got Tess in on the action, although she’s not the most confident of models.

All in all, I’m really pleased with the new background. It will be a useful addition to my studio kit.

]]> http://blog.glnphotography.com/archives/421/feed 0 http://blog.glnphotography.com/archives/416 http://blog.glnphotography.com/archives/416#comments Tue, 23 Mar 2010 00:31:00 +0000 Garry http://blog.glnphotography.com/?p=416 On the 14th February Hertfordshire travelled to Birmingham University to face the toughest challenge of their season so far. The Lions are the current BUAFL champions & haven’t lost a league game for several years.

The day didn’t start well with poor weather & rain enveloping the south east. Surprisingly as I got further up the M1, the sun started to come out. The game started in bright sunshine, though this varied throughout the gaem, it stayed dry.

Sadly, the challenge was too great for the Hurricanes to meet & it soon became clear that their rivals were equal to their reputation. The Lions ended up victors by 44 to 12.

If the Hurricanes advance to the playoffs, the chances are that they will meet the Lions again. If they do, they’ll have to put a stop to the silly little errors which plagued their game.

The new camera was a joy to use & I can’t wait until the summer season where the weather is the same throughout the whole game.

I love the first shot which captures a facemasking penalty in glorious technicolor.

you can see the rest of the game shots on my old website.