Got a new camera recently? Upgraded to a new DSLR or just got a great new compact camera? Flickr is a great place to share your photos, get feedback, advice, ask questions etc and I’ve recently become the only Admin for a group called Striving Amateurs and have decided its a good time to give the group a bit of a new direction.

The group is all about amateur and professional or experienced photographers to help one another out by sharing how they achieved an effect or sharing ideas and web resources etc. At the moment the group is still growing but if you’re looking for a friendly place where you can ask for advice and feel free to post your pictures and learn from the others then please join the group at the link above ). Most people on Flickr will tell you how they achieved an effect if you post a comment on their photo and this group also aims to encourage this. Check it out.

Here’s a sample of some of the photographs in the pool…

Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.

While getting used to my shiny Canon 450d, I have been using flickr a whole lot more and have found inspiration within the realms of light painting!

For those of you that don’t know, ‘Light painting’ usually involves fairly long exposures and a light source. From what you generally see on flickr, there’s 2 main types – static lighting that lights up a scene with funky colours or ‘drawing’ with a light source.

Here’s an example of painting a scene with a light source and ‘gels’.

The Throne Room by JohnnyBlough

Generally these sort of photos are done with a flash or ‘strobe’ and using different colour ‘gels’ in front of the flash. You use a long exposure and light up different parts of your subject to build up the end result.

I’ve experimented a bit with a few different light sources and here are some of the results… 

These first two are of a lightning bulb, one with me touching the side of the bulb to attract the strands of lightning to one spot and one with a bit of foil on the top to keep the strand in one place constantly.

Blue Touch by me

Match Stick Lightning by me

This one below is using a light intended to sit in the bath and light it up! Random I know but I was going through firebox.com looking for interesting light sources.

Technicolour Spiral by me

Photographing my guitars is so much fun and I get to play with my camera too! This one is now my desktop!

I was pretty surprised at the quality of shot I could get out of my compact (Nikon S3) camera for this, it’d be quality to play with a digital SLR one day I reckon!

Most of them are just with some red and or blue LED based lights along with some fairy lights. What we then did was to use a weird mode on my camera and move the camera while it was taking flashing (it did it a few times per pic on this party mode). The middle one looks particularly ghostly (click on it to get a bigger picture) as her face is disjointed!

Check that page out, I will be uploading any artistic photos I make to there, hopefully there’ll be some nice ones of Canterbury at some point! At the moment there is just 4 there but I’m sure it’ll grow…

technorati tags: photography flickr

I got a new camera at last! After initially thinking I’d go for the new funky WiFI ones that are just coming out, I changed my mind and went for a slim one (another Nikon too!) and got the nikon s3.

In my hunt for the cheapest seller I ended up getting it through an ebay shop and having it sent from Hong Kong! It was worth it though as the camera is Red and you can’t get that from UK sellers hehe.

I am now able to resume my usual love of taking lots and lots of pictures and last night at Nicks birthday was a great excuse! I have lots of other pics on my flickr account here too.

Nicks Birthday was great, we started off in Spoons, then West Bar, then (cringes) The Works and it was pretty darn cool! I randomly stopped off at a party on the way back and then after walking Laura back home ended up seeing some more friends I knew so chilled with them for a bit before goin back.

All in all, it was pretty random for just one night!

technorati tags: camera, night out, random