Lucy And The Lens

Tag: #IphonePhotography

  • Crystal Ball Photography

     At the beginning of the year, I set myself 30 photography related goals. Currently, I have started 11 of them, and today I am going to talk about goal number 24 which was to begin using props within my photography.

    My First prop of 2018 is a Crystal Ball because this is something I’ve wanted to try for a long time. Crystal ball photography is a type of photography that distorts your image, simularly to a fisheye lens except your subject will appear upside down inside the ball, which is the main reason it appeals to me. I also started following the #crystalballphotography on Instagram to find inspiration.

    The first time I used it was sometime in mid-February when it snowed overnight, so I went into my garden the next morning and experimented with my Nikon D3200, my iPhone 8+, and my crystal ball.

    I decided my sigma 10-20mm (wide angle lens) was the best one to use for this experiment, so I placed my crystal ball on my garden wall making sure I had foliage behind and shot at ISO 100 but kept varying the aperture and shutter speed to achieve a variety of different photos. I decided that the crystal ball in the snow tended to look better in black and white, so I adjusted this in the post-processing in Lightroom. I did this by taking down the contrasts and highlights and upping the shadows and exposure and then converting my image to black and white.

    I also used portrait mode on my iPhone 8+ to test a variety of different types of lighting my crystal ball and edited these in photoshop express. My favourite set-up in portrait mode is the stage lighting in black and white as I felt it made the snow stand out.

    The Second time with my Crystal Ball I went to Beacon Fell with a friend who held the crystal ball for me while I photographed some sunsets. Anyone who knows me knows that this is a type of shot I thoroughly enjoy taking so I couldn’t wait to try a new approach.

    Finally the third time I took my crystal ball out it was also snowing except this time I went to Avenham Park using the landscape as my backdrop.

    Here is a gallery of my Crystal Ball photos:

    If you enjoyed my article be sure to keep checking out my website and for further reading check out what other bloggers have written about this topic  in the links below:

    1.  Photography Fun With A Crystal Ball
    2. How To Create Glass Ball Landscapes
    3. Glass Ball Photography
    4. The Travelling Crystal Ball

     

     

  • Photo Challenge Friday: Week 8: Textures and Patterns

    This week I had to photograph Textures and Patterns and it took me back to a time when rather than ordering photo books off Photobox I used to order photos and buy patterned paper from Hobbycraft. So for this challenge I decided to take a picture of one of them because it brings me back to an old creative hobby of mine, making scrapbooks of my photos. I chose this idea because it showcases my early days of displaying my photographs.

     

    My Week 9 Challenge is going to be to shoot Organic Shapes. This means shooting anything that is created by nature. I think I will have fun with this challenge because nature is full of endless possibilities.

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    So if you enjoyed this weeks post why not have a go at my challenge for the upcoming week and tweet or Instagram to #lucyandthelens and don’t forget to #organicshapes.

  • My Camera and Lens Collection

    For this post I have decided to discuss the types ofd cameras and lenses i typically use and those I want to try and use in the future. I will be discussing my phone camera, digital SLR and my Polaroid Socialmatic Camera.

    First of all I am going to talk about my phone camera. I know this isn’t technically a camera but this is something I always have on me and there are lots of apps you can download to make your photos look more professional. At the moment my friend has inspired me to do a 366 days of positivity thing on my personal Instagram where I have to do 1 post a day. Sometimes I use quotes and screenshots but most of the time I take pictures and I admit when I first started to do the 366 days I used images straight from the mobiles camera roll. But now I have started downloading post edited images from my camera on my phone to use for my Instagram and now if I do, do mobile photography itself I have a photoshop express app for slight touch-ups. Another trusty sidekick app for me is Layout for Instagram so I can create a simple collage of multiple images for my accounts. Another Great app is Vsco cam because it has professional camera settings and it comes with its own filters and you can also buy filters for different types of photography. There is also a range of free filters you can download and add to the app.

    Typically I shoot on my  Digital Slr which is a Nikon D3200 with an AF-S Nikkor 55-200mm Telephoto Zoom Lens. Either these shoots are planned days out with Preston Photographic Society or Lancashire photo walks. I also take this camera on Holiday and pretty much everywhere I plan to go and sometimes even on spontaneous trips away. The subject of the shoot is the deciding factor for the settings I normally use.

    A studio portrait shoot is typically shot on a 70-200mm focal length depending on how much of the subject you as a photographer want your viewers to see. For this Kind of shoot the ISO should be no more than 200 because the studio lights already brighten the subject so you don’t need to add even more brightness. The shutter speed is set at 1/125 to avoid camera shake and if the subject isn’t moving and you up the shutter speed it will become blurred. Only up the shutter speed if you are doing an action shot.

    For most of my shoots I tend to use the manual setting on my camera and you can usually end up with a pretty good guide of what your aperture and shutter speed need to be and adjusting accordingly.

    Finally I am going to discuss my most recent addition to my cameras, the Polaroid Socialmatic. So for months I had been looking at Polaroid cameras on the Polaroid website and I got one a couple of months ago for my birthday. There’s a funny story behind this though. I was planning on getting a Polaroid Z3100 as I thought the Socialmatic was too expensive. However on my birthday I happened to be in Cardiff and I knew they had cameras in urban outfitters and so I went in on the off chance and there it was the exact model of the polaroid Socialmatic I’d seen on the polaroid website at a bargain price, so I was ecstatic. But I had no idea why until I got home, the camera was in Chinese and although I did Chinese Gcse years ago I just didn’t have the skills to figure it out. So I spent a couple of months with a camera I couldn’t use until earlier this month when the problem was finally solved.

    So now I’ve told you this story I am going to talk about the camera itself. The Polaroid Socialmatic is a modern version of the vintage polaroid camera in that it has its own phone network that allows you to upload pictures straight to Instagram as well as choosing and printing the shots you desire, straight from the camera.

    What’s Next?

    Now I have a Digital SLR camera and a telephoto zoom lens my plan is to keep adding lenses every Christmas and for birthdays and also saving up money to buy my own lenses.

    There are four lenses I currently have my eye on but I am waiting for a defining moment to buy one, as that is when I usually tend to indulge in material things.

    The first of these is a 50mm prime lens to give my images a wider depth of field.The second is the most expensive of these which I recently had the opportunity to test it is the Lomography 58mm f1.9 Petzval art lens which comes in brass or black and allows you to alter the distance between the lens elements. Any lens that gives your image a different perspective like the fisheye and the wide angle also fascinates me.

    I hope you enjoyed this post, stay tuned for photographic ideas, additions and events I’ve been to.