I recently saw a tutorial for a home-made beauty dish for flash photography & decided to give it a go myself. This is basically just another item designed to diffuse the harsh light from flashguns when taking portraits.

The dish consists of a rounded garden plant container & a plastic CD container painted white & used to deflect light from the flashgun onto the subject.

The components were made up of a pot from a local garden centre. I had searched several DIY outlets & not found one. Unfortunately, after paying £5.99 at a local garden centre, my wofe advised me that they were quite expensive at that particular centre, so you can probably find them cheaper if you look around the garden centres. 

An item recommended on the website I saw this on originally, used a black plastic rectangular tube affair which is used to slide the flash head into the pot. It’s part of a drainpipe connector widely available in the States, but I couldn’t find anything similar at Focus, Homebase, B & Q & a couple of local shops. We must have a different gutter system because the nearest I could find were square & slightly narrower than the width of my flash head. I originally planned to use the metal brackets seen in my picture here, but found I didn’t actually need them as I cut a hole just a little wider than the flashgun & when sliding it into the opening it forms a really nice, tight fit, so won’t fall off without some work.

I cut holes in the plant container & the CD container & screwed the black plastic CD base onto the inside of the plant pot.

The CD top just slips into the base as it does when it’s full of CDs. The original design calls for a convex mirror fitted inside the CD top to reflect light back into the pot so it can be diffused from the pot out onto the subject. Apparently these are available for a few dollars in USA at car parts shops but I;ve not found any locally yet, so until I o, I’m using the reflective surface of a CD disc.

A few coats of enamel spray paint – black outside & white inside – later & the DIY Beauty Dish is complete.

Now all I have to do is to test it out, when I can find a willing volunteer to pose for some shots!

I like to try to get to Duxford a couple of times a year during the airshow season, so I was pleased to be able to make their Spring Airshow on 18th May this year.

I took my middle daughter who brought along our Canon 300D with a Canon 100-300mm lens for her first attempt at airshow photography.

The weather was dry & although mainly warm-ish,  there was a great dela of cloud cover which became greater towards the fling display time. By the time flying started, there were not many patches of blue visible for the rest of the day.

I normally pay the extra to get into the flight-line walk area where you can get closer shots of the static aircraft. I didn’t bother this time because, frankly, I wasn’t that impressed with the amount of aircraft on show. There seemed to be many less aircraft on show. Only a couple of Spitfires & none of the Mustangs.

The first display was the Guinot Wing-walker team who had brought two aircraft with them. The wingwalkers for their first display of two, were two of the presenters of Blue Peter who did a full routine. And hats off to them too, they even did the upside down trying to link hands, one aircraft above the other & I reckon their pilots got closer than when they did it for real with the regular wingwalker girls.

The Battle of Britain Memorial Flight did their usual routine. A welcome addition to the display was a Eurofighter Typhoon. It’s always great to see some afterburners!

It was disappointing not to see the B-17 Sally B flying, no matter how many times I see it, I never tire of taking photos of it. None of the Mustangs flew, but it was nice to see the Sabre.

The next show at Duxford is their two-day Flying Legends show on the weekend of 12th & 13th of July. Unfortunately, this is the same weekend as RIAT at Fairford where I’ll be heading. A bit of bad planning there!

For the last two & a half years I have been pretty disorganised with my photography gear. 

I never had a central location to store all my gear. much to my wife’s annoyance, the stuff is stored all over the house. I usually keep the camera on the kitchen top; it’s handy & I can grab it if I see something in the garden or flying over the house. Then there are probably a couple of lenses, plus the remote release cord, maybe some filters.

In the bedroom I keep lenses, filters, flashguns, odds & ends etc in a plastic crate on my wife’s dressing table. At the bottom of the bed is my studio lighting, light stands & photography magazines. I also keep the tripod & monopod there (when I’ve bothered to carry them upstairs).

In the utility room is a whole pile of photos waiting to be filed plus a few folders of pics.

We decided to get some cupboards for the play room where my wife said I could put all my gear. The downside was that before I could install them I had to decorate the room first.

I spent 3 days last week decorating the room & then we planned a holiday to Ikea to get the cupboards. You have to go at least twice, the first time to get all the bits & the second time to return the one pack which is missing bits. So it was that I returned at the weekend & got a complete kit.

Anyway, the cupboards are up. All my gear is centrally stored out of the way & we’ve even got a little gizmo shelf where I can plug in battery & phone chargers.

I wonder how long it will be before the camera is back on the kitchen top…

I had a nice surprise today when my Photobook arrived. I’ve been wanting to order a photobook for some time but not got around to compiling & preparing all the shots. I changed this last week when I uploaded 88 photographs to make by book.

I’ve been using Photobox for my last few orders, so I decided to try one of their books. They do several versions of the photobook & I decided to go for the ‘Classic A4‘ This comes in  a hard cover which has a window. The cost is £19.99 for 26 pages with each additional page at £1.20. On any page you can have text only, or from one to nine photos.

Compiling the book is relatively simple. You upload your photos into an album and select the album you want to produce your photobook from. Then it’s a case of selecting your page templates for each page & dragging your photos from the album into the photobook template. You then add any text and send your book through for printing (having paid first). My big criticism is that given that an awful lot of cameras work on a 3:2 format, hardly any of the templates work to this format so you have to crop your shots to fit.

Photobox quote a 3-day turnaround for their photobooks. This was where they fell down. It took 10 days to get my book. I received an email saying this was due to one of their binding machines breaking down, at least I got an apology half-way through. The problem was that the standard prints I ordered at the same time took 9 days. Having said that, I uploaded some more prints at about 10am this morning and at 12.20 I got an email saying they’d been sent first class!

Anyway, what’s the book like?

Well, I’ve nothing to compare it to as I’ve never seen one of these products before (apart from a friend’s wedding which cost a lot more than twenty quid!) I have to say I’m pretty pleased. The cover is substantial card, around 4mm thick with a rounded window through which I can see one of my photos. The website says the paper is 170gsm gloss. I don’t know about that but it feels nice and has a more satin feel to it.

All in all I’m pretty pleased. I paid a bit more than the standrd rate because I added extra pages but at these prices, I’ll certainly be looking into getting more.

Hitchwood lies on the B651 between St Paul’s Walden & Preston, off the Codicote Road.

It has to be one of the bext examples of a bluebell wood I’ve ever seen. We’ve been going to this wood for many years & usually pay an annual visit at Bluebell time, which is around now.

I visited Hitchwood May Bank Holiday Monday & the Bluebells were simply stunning. I’ve been coming here for maybe 15 years & his year has to be one of the largest spreads of the flower in a long time. They go on for many acres.

I couldn’t take all the shots I wanted this visit because I was with my wife, daughter & daughter’s friend. I’ll probably return later in the week. Although I took the tripod, I didn’t use it.

I also tried a few abstracts. The following shot was hand-held. Taken at 1/5sec on f11, I panned the camera upwards during the exposure, giving it the blurry, arty effect.

If you are within striking distance of North Hertfordshire, Hitchwood is well worth a visit.

Here’s an aerial shot of the area & you can find a link to a map of the area via Google Maps.

I’ve now processed most of the shots from the Baby Photoshoot. Here are a few examples:

Unfortunately, Photobox are playing up and they still haven’t printed the shots I uploaded over a week ago.

I’ve not sent any new orders off for printing yet because I want to make sure Photobox come up with the goods first.

I posted earlier about my letter to my MP voicing my concerns for the increasing cases of photographers being illegally told to stop taking photographs in public & in some cases being detained by the police or forced to delete their photos from memory cards.

I got a reply from my MP who sent my concerns to the Home Office. He has hd a reply back from Tony McNulty, MP, Minister of State for the Home Office on behalf of the Home Secretary.

The letter reads as follows:

Dear ….[MP]…,

Thank you for your letter to the Home Secretary of 11 April on behalf of Mr….[me]… regarding his concerns about possible restrictions on photography in public places. I have been asked to reply.

I can assure Mr..[me] there is no legal restriction on photography in public places, and there is no presumption of privacy for individuals in a public place.
It is for the Chief Constable to ensure that Officers and Police Community Support Officers (PCSOs) are acting appropriately with regards to photography in public places, and any queries regarding this should be addressed to the Chief Constable.

However, decisions may be made locally to restrict photography, for example to protect children. Any questions on such local decisions should also be addressed to the force concerned.

Tony McNulty

The letter answers the question about photography in public places, but then kind of passes the buck to the local chief constables. I note there is no mention of any legislation which chief constables might act under to restrict photography.

My MP says he will write to our local chief constable to enquire as whether any such local restrictions exist & will get back to me in due course pending a reply. I have to say, whilst I don’t generally hold many MPs in high regard, I am impressed that mine has taken the time & effort to deal with my concerns. He did the same when my wife contacted him over another completely unrelated matter, so hats off to him!

So there we have it, from the horse’s mouth, so to speak, or at least the Home Office. You may want to download a copy of the letter, stick it in your camera bag & produce it next time someone says ‘Oi, you can’t take photos here, it’s illegal’.

You can download a larger copy of this letter which you might want to print out & keep handy in your camera bag if someone tries to stop you taking photographs in public. (right click the below link and select ‘Save Link as’ to save it to your hard drive.

Printable Copy