"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.

"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!

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!

"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.

"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.

"Watts' Chapel ceiling" by Derek Gale

Inside the chapel was another photographer shooting HDR images with a Nikon D3 and tilt/shift lens, on a tripod.  I was travelling light so only had my Lumix GF1, 20mm lens and no tripod.  Luckily there was a lectern in the centre of the chapel and I was able to rest my camera on it pointing upwards.  I stopped the lens down to f5.6 to get enough sharpness, and this gave an exposure of 5 seconds.  I used the self-timer, set on a 2 second delay, so the camera stability wasn’t affected by pressing the shutter button.  What’s interesting is the flare coming from the chapel roof’s 4 windows.  They were very, very, bright compared to the interior, and it’s resulted in 4 blue areas.   The 20mm lens has no hood so it was hard to reduce the flare.  It adds a bit of mysterious glow to an image showing all the little faces looking at you – quite unsettling…

"Watts' tile" by Derek Gale

The outside is decorated with tiles made nearby and fired from a local clay.  They have very complex designs in what has been called, “Angels and Arthurian Legend meets Edward Burne-Jones”.  They were made by local villagers under the control of G F Watts’ widow Mary Fraser-Tylter.

A fascinating place, and great to photograph.

"Mmmm Galaxy" by Derek Gale

I put my faceted insect eye optical toy in front of the lens, and took an image of some crocuses in the garden.  It was quite tricky aligning the toy and the tablet and pressing the shutter button at the same time.  I’ve cropped it square in Photoshop but it’s otherwise untouched.

I reckon it’s pretty cool, and it would be hard to do with a big lens on a DSLR.

"Buscot Weir 1" by Derek Gale

Here’s some water running over a sluice at Buscot Weir, which is on the River Thames between Lechlade and Kelmscott.  I used a longish lens focal length, framed to give a good diagonal, and chose a short shutter speed (1/400th sec), to stop as much movement as I could. There’s a lovely gradation from a convex curve in the water at the bottom of the frame, to a concave “U” shape in the dark area at the top of the frame.

"Buscot Weir 2" by Derek Gale

Here I chose a quieter bit of the weir and used a longer shutter speed (1/10th sec) to give a completely different look to the image.  This time there’s lots of movement in the water.  The top of the frame shows the power of the faster, deeper water, and the way the slower, shallow water fans out from bottom left is delightful.

Buscot Weir is a great place for photography training.  So if you want some bespoke 1-2-1 training on location do get in touch.

"Tulips in vase" by Derek Gale

It’s a simple image of yellow tulips in a blue and white jug.  Blue and yellow go very well together (if it’s good enough for the Swedish flag it’s good enough for me).  I used an Android app, Pixlr-o-matic*, to apply a film effect, vignette the image, and apply a texture.  The film effect I chose made the image very red as well as vignetting it.  I just wanted the vignetting, so I shot the original using the “Incandescent” White Balance setting which made the image very blue. The film effect cancelled it out, giving strong natural colours and the vignetting I wanted.

*It’s a little bit like the Hipstamatic app for Apple iPhones and iPads.

Keep checking back for more Galaxy Tab images.

"Wreck" by Derek Gale

The bones of this shipwreck were poking up out of the sea, and the contrast between their dark tones and the greyness of the sea and the distant cliffs made the image stronger.

"Rock hole" by Derek Gale

With this image, looking through holes in a coastal rock, I used the dark areas of unlit rock to frame the light areas of sunlight bouncing off the sea.  The extreme contrast has made it much more of an abstract, almost map-like, image. It could even be crunched up silver foil on black velvet.