Okay so its a blog about things around photography and me learning how to use a camera.

The best thing to do?  Practice!!

Sometimes that is easier said than done. There is also the question of what to practice?

Recently I have tried a few different areas including shutter speed, exposure and composition, along with using my camera in aperture priority and manual modes.

Below are two photos capturing / showing motion:

I didn’t really think about exposure with this image as I was more interested in getting the right shutter speed to show motion. The exposure was taken from the road and I tried to capture the cyclist as they entered the frame.  I’m not sure if I have exposed it correctly or even what metering I used. The composition wasn’t a massive considered either and I had to crop the image a little. Using cyclists rather than faster moving traffic to capture movement was interesting. Cars and motorcycles tended to be moving at roughly the same speeds where as the cyclist speeds was much more varied and challenging.

Because this is a bit of a diary for me to view my own progress I have included this photograph for a couple of reasons.

I think its reasonably well balanced as the cyclist and runner are in black and red. I also think it does what I set out to do, capture motion. Unfortunately there is some camera shake so I have a bit of a mixed feeling about this particular image, have I really captured motion or do I have a slightly blurred photo? I think I’ve got away with it but would like to know the thoughts of both photographers and the casual on looker.

I also had a little Tinker around with shutter speed in the opposite direction in an attempt to freeze motion. This was easier with the slower moving cyclists, runners and pedestrians.

These folks were doing bunny hops while taking part in a circuit class in London’s Hyde Park. As an image it doesn’t particularly float my boat. It might be a little under exposed but it sort of follows “The Rule of Thirds”, does freeze motion and it tells a bit of a story.

Depth of field is another topic I played around with. The next two photos have been posted because I was torn between which I preferred. The one with the shallow DOF does what I set out to do but I wanted to get the section of the berlin wall in focus too.

I like the composition and I feel that the message along with the dying roses complement each other.

While trying some narrow depth of field shots I found a spider sat in its web, I thought I’d get a photo of it and had problems in auto focus so I had to switch to manual focus and while I was focusing, there it was; something I have never ever thought about. Why would I? When it happened I thought “Oooh!! This spider is having a poo”. It made me chuckle and I had to share this with a passerby. Black sticky looking stuff oozing from the spider. Surprised!? Yes actually I was. But then why should I be? After all anything that eats needs to excrete.

Shame the passerby scurried off as I blurted out “Blimey this spider is poo-ing!!” Followed by an even louder outburst of laughter.

They must have thought I was bonkers.

Never mind, it tickled me and I’ll probably never see the passerby again.

Thanks for reading my ramblings.

Jim Jimmy James.