Lower Manhattan Night

Originally uploaded by mike.horrocks

New York City is my favourite place in the world to visit. This year I was fortunate enough to travel to Philadelphia for business. While Philadelphia is an amazing city, and the people there were brilliant, I could not resist the opportunity to travel up the coast to the Big Apple.

The chance to be in New York City on my own allowed me the opportunity to spend some serious time exploring and taking photos.

In a three night stint in New York I had planned to take in a Mets ballgame (they lost) and enjoy a little of the night life. This meant I had one night, the night I arrived in Manhattan, to devote to photography. Being based in Lower Manhattan and knowing the area quite well it was a simple decision to get to the other side of the East River and enjoy the views of the famous island from dusk into the evening.

This picture is the result of much time and many efforts from the Brooklyn Bridge Park. This was taken with my 10-22mm lens at its widest. Hence the distortion of the buildings on either edge – most notably on the right side. The shutter speed was slow to smooth out the river – and this causes some movement blur in the centre of the shot where there was obviously a moving boat. However, catching the East River without any traffic is near impossible.

As per usual post-processing was kept to a minimum. Some adjustments of levels, contract, saturation and sharpening.

Tree Silhouettes

Originally uploaded by mike.horrocks

While this looks like an infra-red photograph it is not. Infra-red is not something I have really considered experimenting with.

While out and about looking for possible locations to host the photo-shoot for my own wedding day I came across this field next to Tolquhon Castle. The field in the foreground is ploughed up dirt, which I hoped would give some nice texture. The trees, dotted along the peak of the hill, looked nicely silhouetted against the sky.

On an unseasonably nice day I was lucky to have some clouds to give the sky some interest.

In Apple Aperture, I applied the usual simple enhancements plus a bit of extra contrast for the (red filter) black and white conversion.

I should have taken some additional shots at higher ISO settings so see how the noise would have added to the nice black and white grainy look I like. I think there is enough texture here anyway.

Denburn

Originally uploaded by mike.horrocks

This image is currently the oldest in my Flickr photostream.

Taken on the 24th February 2004, which is approximately a year into my experience of using a digital camera. This shot was taken using my Sony Cybershot P7.

It still remains what I consider to be a good photo, however there are many aspects that looking back on now I would alter.

For example, it is obvious that the tree on the left hand side of the shot is a significant distraction. It would also be nice to see more contrast in the sky.

Being more critical, another change that would improve the image for me would be for the prominent clock tower to be slightly further to the right.

Otherwise, it is a fairly successful picture in my eye, which should serve to capture what the Denburn/Union Terrace Gardens area looked like six years ago.

Snowy Kirkhill Forest

Originally uploaded by mike.horrocks

A new year, a new blog.

I promised myself I would get more active with promoting my photographic work, and this is the result.

So, during the holiday period I took a walk into the forest near where I live. As is fairly obvious from the photograph, there had been a fair amount of snow.

This was the highlight photo for me from a four-five hour trek around the forest. It was taken in colour and converted to black & white using Apple’s Aperture 2. A red filter was applied to bring out the sky and some small adjustments using the shadows/highlights tool were also done to enhance the sky.

Lessons learned from taking photographs in the snow.

1. Set your camera to overexpose by up to a step to compensate for the vast amount of white. Because your camera is trying to expose for middle grey.

2. Take a waterproof bag to protect your gear if the weather turns. The weather did turn on this trip and I hid my camera away in a plastic bag to protect it from the elements.

3. Be aware that a screw in filter may not unscrew due to the extreme cold. I was stuck with my polariser filter after I was unable to remove it until I got home and used a hairdryer to warm the filter enough to loosen it.

The highlight of this walk was being one of only a couple of people out and in very many cases making an impression on virgin snow.

The lowlight was missing the opportunity to photograph a couple of young deer drinking from a stream.