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  • Welcome to Gale Photography

    Hello! I'm Derek Gale, Fine Art photographer and photography trainer.

    I make beautiful Fine Art images that showcase my personal vision. I also love passing on my photographic ideas and knowledge, so if you want to improve your photographic creativity and technical skill do get in touch.

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Keep on taking the tablets: part 3

Thursday, May 10, 2012 Posted in Creative Photography, Equipment tips, Landscape Photography, Photographic Training

The recent heavy rain has made the little stream at the bottom of the garden flow very well.  I’ve been taking some long-exposure images of the flowing water with a 200mm lens and 2x converter on my DSLR, and wondered what I could do with my Galaxy tablet.  The tablet’s camera, which has a wide-angle lens, is somewhat different to a DSLR with the equivalent of a 600mm lens on the front…

"Galaxy stream" by Derek Gale

There’s no manual control on the tablet camera, so setting a slow shutter speed to show the movement in the water needed a bit of cleverness.  There’s a bit of the stream that’s overshadowed by some leylandii trees (they’ve got to be useful for something!), and it’s nice and dark.  I made sure the “flash” was turned off, and hey presto! a long shutter speed.  The great thing about the tablet camera is that the lens is near the edge, and you can get it very close to the water surface.

A quick download on to the PC and a crop in Photoshop, and there you are, a semi-abstract water image.

Keep checking back for more tablet photography.

by Derek Gale

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Softly, softly.

Thursday, April 26, 2012 Posted in Creative Photography, Equipment tips, Fine Art photography

I recently dusted off my soft-focus lens and tried it on my Panasonic GF1.  It’s a simple plastic tube, with a plastic lens element at the end nearer the camera, inside another plastic tube.  You focus by sliding the outer tube relative to the inner tube.  The lens is made so that it produces a lot of spherical aberration.  This appears to blur everything, whilst keeping the edges sharp.  It’s an effect that is very pleasing under the right circumstances.

"Soft focus maple" by Derek Gale

The image, of wet, newly-emerging maple leaves against the blue background, fits into those circumstances.  There’s a sort of dream-like look, a bit like shooting through mist or gauze.

So don’t worry about getting every image super crisp, try being a big softy!

by Derek Gale

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All that glitters…

Thursday, April 12, 2012 Posted in Creative Photography, Photo Tips

… is not gold.

This is actually a misquotation, as it’s supposed to be, “All that glisters is not gold”.   Anyway, here’s an image of a candle, covered in gold glitter, stored on a shelf in the understairs cupboard.  I had seen it glinting on several occasions when getting other things out of the cupboard, and thought there was scope for an image.

"Glitter candle bokeh" by Derek Gale

I took the shot with the candle in situ on the shelf.  It would have been much easier to take it out of the cupboard and put it in the studio, but it was more of a challenge where it was.  The light in the cupboard was from a single tungsten bulb, so I set the White Balance to Incandescent so the colours came out right.  There wasn’t much brightness from the bulb, so I had to increase the ISO to get a short(ish) shutter speed.  I used my Lumix GF1 and 20mm lens with the aperture set on f1.7 to give the smallest depth of field.  I manually focused on a distant subject and then framed nice and close to the candle.  The combination of maximum aperture and distant focusing with a very close subject gave the attractive bokeh circles and ellipses.

To use another quotation…

In “Cold Comfort Farm”, Stella Gibbons’ wonderful book, Aunt Ada Doom had seen, “Something nasty in the woodshed”.  Don’t worry about nasty things in the woodshed, there are beautiful things hiding under the stairs!

 

by Derek Gale

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Keep on taking the tablets: part 3

Thursday, March 29, 2012 Posted in Creative Photography, Equipment tips, Photo Tips, Photographic Training

Here’s another in my occasional series of images taken with a Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 tablet computer.  It’s a close-up of a daffodil in the garden.

"Galaxy Tab daffodil" by Derek Gale

I chose one that was in the sunlight, pointing the right way, and with an unlit area behind it to give good separation from the background.  To focus close enough I used an old condensing lens from a microscope in front of the tablet’s camera lens.  The condensing lens was quite large and hung over the edge of the tablet, and this let light in from the back and gave unwanted reflections.  To get round this I cut out a piece of card, made a hole in the centre, and taped the card to the back of the condensing lens.

It was quite entertaining holding the tablet with one hand, holding the condensing lens on to the tablet with another hand, and pressing the shutter release with another…   I’m pleased with how it turned out though.

by Derek Gale

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Through a glass darkly

Thursday, March 22, 2012 Posted in Creative Photography, Photo Tips, Photographic Training, Travel Photography

I was in London last weekend, and took the chance to visit the Victoria and Albert Museum in South Kensington.  I like glass, (including glass camera lenses of course!), so made sure to visit the glass gallery.  As well as the beautiful exhibits, there’s a fabulous glass balcony in the gallery.

"V&A glass balcony" by Derek Gale

I stopped near the top of the stairs and set my GF1 on a large aperture* to give a small depth of field*.  It wasn’t fantastically bright in the gallery so I rested the camera on the banister rail for extra support.  There are some lovely colours and textures, and it’s an image where it’s hard to judge the scale.  It could be huge or it could be very small.

* If you aren’t sure what this means, I can help.  Take a look at the Photography Training pages for more information.

by Derek Gale

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