Okay, so I struggled to draw the massed instruments of the Castletown Silver Band dancing at their annual rave. If AI is so clever, let’s see what it can do with the words ‘brass instruments dancing.’
I typed the words ‘brass instruments dancing’ into Adobe Express BETA version. Time taken to come up with eight finished illustrations: 45 seconds. Some do look rather odd, but this one comes pretty close to what I had in mind.
But illustration is like music isn’t it? It’s the little imperfections that bring the performance to life! That’s what I’m telling myself 🙂
A RSPB St Aidan’s this morning: volunteer wardens Tom and Evelyn, rivers MEET cafe crafter Miss B, moorhen footprints and a six-spot burnet on knapweed.
We also saw a drake common scoter, spoonbill, bittern, a juvenile kestrel dustbathing and preening and a gatekeeper blundering into a web amongst the grasses and being instantly caught by a spider.
A mallard – possibly a youngster as it seems to be in the process of growing secondary wing feathers for the first time – standing at the cascading outlet of Newmillerdam lake this morning.
Meanwhile this adult female and her mate were paddling alongside the Boathouse Cafe.
Barbara’s mum and her friend used to go into town on the access bus on a Friday morning and she’d often come back with a brush. This bannister brush from Wilko’s was a bit of a bargain at £1.49.
I drew the brush and my camera bag in Procreate on the iPad, using Procreate’s Technical Pen.
Portraits, landscapes, nature, still life, movement and street photography . . . I feel that I’m got to know my Olympus DSLR and its 14-42mm kit lens a whole lot better in the past week.
My final module in Ben Hawkins’ Complete Beginner’s Photography Course is street photography, so I’ve set the Art Filter my Olympus OM E-10 DSLR to ‘Grainy Film’ and headed to Ossett Market.
Sitting on a bench looking down at the flip-up screen, I can snap away without being spotted. So apologies if you’ve ended up on one of my photos.
I like the low viewpoint that I get from a bench but to get the feel of a market I tried browsing the bookstall while ‘shooting from the hip’. But I’ve been spotted… .
“Are you capturing the moment?” asks the man on the mobile phone accessories stall.
How can I do street photography without including a pair of street preachers?
As we head home we meet Ruth Nettleton. As she’s the local historian who wrote a centennial history of Ossett Town Hall, I photograph her with the current restoration work behind her.
Yes, I know that the portrait module was Tuesday, but how could I resist Winnie and Pepper – a 2-year-old St Bernard and his aunt – when I spotted them in the courtyard at Nostell?
But before I could get the shot I was after the two of them came to life, checking out the camera so closely that I might as well have switched to macro.
Today’s module in Ben Hawkins’ Complete Beginner’s Photography Course explores movement, so he suggests techniques to freeze or alternatively blur the action of speeding vehicles or to capture traffic trails at night but I’ve headed for Coxley Beck to try some long exposures of flowing water.
For these one- to two-second exposures a tripod was essential and, as with the macro flower shots yesterday, using an app on my iPhone to trigger the camera and set the focus point made things a lot easier than squinting through the viewfinder. It also cut out any chance of camera shake.
After the portrait module I’m back on home turf with ‘Nature’ today in Ben Hawkins’ Complete Beginner’s Photography Course.
He suggests getting up at dawn for a dew-fresh close-up of grass blades but yesterday, as the late afternoon sun backlit a patch of our front lawn, I went for his alternative suggestion of adding the ‘dew’ with a fine-rose watering can.
My usual approach to flower photography is to snap away and hope for the best, so it was interesting to try his more considered approach, using a tripod and setting up the shot with a bit of extra care.
Remote Control
This is where the ability to remote control my Olympus DSLR with an iPad proved useful (you can also use a smart phone). It enables you to control aperture, shutter speed, ISO ‘film speed’ and focus without crouching down to look at the subject via the camera’s viewfinder or flip-up screen.
Leaf Veins
The final challenge was to photograph a backlit leaf. My Huion light pad wasn’t bright enough so I sprayed the leaf with water and stuck it to the studio window.
The whole beginner’s course is designed for a digital camera with an general purpose ‘kit lens’. Mine zooms from 14-42mm, which in traditional 35mm cameras that would be 28-84mm: ranging from a wide-angle (28mm) that doesn’t distort perspective too much to a short telephoto (84mm) that is useful for portraits.
When I bought the camera it also came with a dedicated macro lens and a modest telephoto zoom (80mm to 300mm in traditional 35mm terms) so I’m impressed at how well the everyday kit lens has performed as a macro lens on the leaf.
