Fill Factor Photography Blog | Neil Alexander Photographer

Day 56 "Look both ways" [Flickr]

MancPhotog — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 22:35:37 PST

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Day 55 "Fireworks" [Flickr]

MancPhotog — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 12:54:42 PST

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Day 54 "Careful!" [Flickr]

MancPhotog — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 03:11:03 PST

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Day 53 "The fireworks have finished" [Flickr]

MancPhotog — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 12:06:22 PST

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Day 52 "We said 'Mobile broaband from O2?'. Our survey said 'page cannot be displayed'" [Flickr]

MancPhotog — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 12:05:06 PST

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Sat, 31 Oct 2009 00:00:00 PDT

Steve McCurry Photography

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Fri, 30 Oct 2009 00:00:00 PDT

Dan Winters

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Thu, 29 Oct 2009 00:00:00 PDT

Joyce Tenneson Photography

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Mon, 26 Oct 2009 00:00:00 PDT

50+ Excellent Body Enhancement Photoshop Tutorials | Design Reviver

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Fri, 23 Oct 2009 00:00:00 PDT

Lynn Goldsmith Photography

RIP Edward James Wooley

fabfilippini — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 06:52:56 +0000

This was shot in the graveyard of the local Unitarian Chapel late last week. The light you see behind the stone is the streetlight. I also used an SB900 snooted about 2 metres camera right pointing straight into the middle of the frame. Down on the floor camera left, I used another SB900 diffused and aiming up to bring out the underneath of this near side.

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Wed, 14 Oct 2009 00:00:00 PDT

Black and White Photography: 100 Pieces of Exquisite Portrait | Inspiration

Shot of some pears in a collander lit with off-camera flash

fabfilippini — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 21:18:08 +0000

As I tweeted the other day, my latest little off-tangent project is to shoot something, anything, in a Chiaroscuro style. And this is what I’ve ended up with. Its pretty much as I’d envisaged from the outset, so that in itself is an achievement! Image has been monotoned in Lightroom with a heavy vignette. Strobist: Shot with 2 SB-900s. One camera right, gelled, snooted and exposure compensated to -2 and the other up to the left shooting into a reflective brolly exposure compensated to -3.All this done tethered to my MacBook Pro thanks to a wonderful little free app called Studio & Lightroom Tether from www.mountainstorm.co.uk.

À Bientôt

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Fri, 09 Oct 2009 00:00:00 PDT

How to distribute elements horizontally using CSS – woorkup.com

Lymm Dam

fabfilippini — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 22:11:52 +0000

Took this shot at the weekend whilst out recce-ing for a commission I have to do. I’d never been to Lymm dam before though I’ve passed it often enough. Tooled up with just my 70-200mm F2.8 & Sigma 10-20mm, and a couple of SB-900s, I went for a little pre-dawn stroll around the edge of the lake to scope out possible locations for an autumnal panorama. The weather was typically grey and gloomy and the sun was never gonna appear. The sandstone bedrock and the bountiful vegetation would have made for some wonderful detailed shots, had I been looking for the type of shot, but I wasn’t. So I sauntered on, enjoying the solace until I stumbled upon the “Wishing Bridge”. I plotted up for a brew and figured I’d have a little play here. I set up one SB-900 on a gorilla pod, and suspended it from a branch high up camera right, and then popped the other one on the tripod as close to the first as I could with a tree acting as a gobo between them and the bridge. Whacked Pocket Wizards on them both, gelled them and set one to full power and the other to half, and zoomed them both to 200mm. I then shot the bridge with the 10-20mm at 11mm, 1/15 sec at F6.3 on ISO800. It was just an experiment to see whether I could replicate a sun low on the horizon, and I think it’s a fairly reasonable effort, though I maybe overdid the light a little. The shot below is the same location, but without any light.

A-level revisited

fabfilippini — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 11:06:25 +0000

After the fiasco that has taken place with the exam boards moving the goal posts as far as my AS-Level in photography were concerned, I’ve decided to bite the bullet and re-take the AS, so that I can then go on to doing the A2. I tipped up on Monday to college only to feel a little like the mature student amongst all the kids. Though it wasn’t like that at all, having already done (and got a good grade in) the AS once, it was a bit like going over old ground. Fortuitously a couple of the other guys who are in the same boat, also managed to pay a visit to the A2 class the next night, and found it far more to their liking. After a brief phone call, I’m on it too. So I already have an assignment already. Its “Boundaries”. For my first interpretation of this, I decided to look at boundaries & transport, so I ventured out this morning to shoot the edge of a motorway, a railway platform, and the perimeter fence of the airport. All of which I successfully managed to do without too much farting about. Not bad as I only got the assignment Friday.

Whilst at Mobberley station, I decided to have another play with my new SB-900s & Pocket Wizards. There ain’t many trains through there at daft o’clock, so apart from the Signal man offering to make me a brew, I was on my own. The sun had already risen, but it was cloudy and didn’t look like it was going to make an appearance which was cool as I wanted to use the CTO filters with the SB-900’s to give me a controlled sunrise on the platform. I spent ages faffing around with setups and the lights themselves (I took me 30 mins to figure out that I couldn’t manually zoom the strobes with the diffuser on – obvious enough I guess & I felt like a bit of a dumbass once I figured it out!). So in the end, I placed one SB inside the waiting room gelled, and zoomed all the way out hanging from one of the rafters on a gorilla pod to look like a waiting room lamp, and the other one behind me on a lightstand up at about 8 feet, also gelled and zoomed to give me a dawn feel. With more time, and possibly another strobe I could have achieved exactly the effect I wanted, but I’m not far off here.

Another trip to Kinder

fabfilippini — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 12:53:03 +0000

Headed over to Kinder in the Peak District again on Saturday morning, slightly better equipped this time (I had walking boots & wide angle lens with me this time). The light was clearly going to be a vast improvement on the previous weekend, and my expectations were high. Laden with quite a chunk of kit, I yomped uphill for about 45 minutes eventually making it up to Oaken Clough shortly after dawn. The view was well worth the climb, and the peace and quiet was lovely. I stayed up there for around an hour waiting for the sun to rise up over the top of Kinder behind me and begin to kiss the tops of the hills opposite me. I decided to really take my time, and play with a few ideas and was fairly well rewarded.

I also discovered, on the way down, that my new Tamron 70-200mm F2.8 has macro functionality. This was a really pleasant surprise and is actually surprisingly good, though had I discovered this at the top, I’d probably have done some more detailed work on the broken stone wall at the top of the clough.

A recce to Kinder

fabfilippini — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 21:39:00 +0000

Sunday morning, I thought I’d head out and shoot some landscapes. I did some research regarding a potential location over by the Kinder reservoir. The forecast didn’t look great, but as I had a window, if the weather didn’t pan out then the time could productively be used as more of a recce. Which is what it turned out to be for the following reasons;

A) I got up about 45 mins too late having slept through 2 alarms, and with a half hour drive and a 15 min yomp ahead, I only managed to get out the house about 20 minutes before sun up.

B) I forgot my walking boots which meant that I was fairly restricted as to where I could go.

and C) Most importantly, I forgot to take my wide angle lens with me.

I parked my car at the bottom of the reservoir road and marched the 15 minutes or so up ttowards the dam with my LowePro CompuTrekker stuffed with everything bar the all important Sigma 10-20mm. Once I got up there it was about half an hour after sunrise, but the sky was very grey and lacking any definition whatsoever. No clouds as such just typical British greyness! So I wandered around for a bit, shot a few frames trying to exclude the sky as much as possible by focusing on the landscape itself, but its definitely a place I’ll be revisiting as I saw lots of potential for the right light. I may even venture up onto Kinder itself if I’m feeling brave enough.

I did discover however that my new Tamron 70-200mm F2.8 does have a small flaw in that the lens bracket won’t mount onto my Manfrotto tripod head with the D300 grip on as it gets in the way. Turning the lens bracket around isn’t an option, so the only thing to do was to take the D300 grip off. I do always like to ieave this on as it gives me an extra battery on the camera, and should I discover any interesting wildlife, it gives me that high-burst mode.

Once of the good things I did find out about the Tamron 70-200 was that I can’t forget to turn off the image stabilisation when I pop it on the tripod, as I frequently do with the Nikon 18-200mm as it doesn’t have any. I frequently found myself producing tripod mounted images that just weren’t tack sharp with the 18-200 and it eventually dawned on me that it was because I was forgetting to switch off the VR / IS. Fortunately, a plus side of not having the VR is that I can’t forget to turn it off!!!

I always like to check out some work by a past master or two before I head out on a shoot like this, and the previous night I chose Fay Godwin’s marvellous Landmarks book as my inspiration. I can’t recommend this book highly enough to any landscape photographer, aspiring or pro. Check out some sample images here.

Manchester Pride 2009

fabfilippini — Sat, 29 Aug 2009 23:21:00 +0000

So today was the beginning of the Manchester Pride festival which was kicked off by the main parade. I’d hoped to nip into Calumet and rent a 70-200mm F2.8 for the weekend to shoot with. Unfortunately when I got there, they were completely out. They offered me an 80-200mm (an older lens without the VR), but then another employee chipped in that they had a Tamron 70-200mm F2.8 for sale for the measly price of £490! It didn’t have image stabilisation, but hey with the high ISO capabilities of the D300 and the use of Noiseware Pro, I could afford to lose the couple of stops that the VR would give me for a lens that’s a quarter of the price of Nikon’s new 70-200 VRII! Normally I would have done a serious amount of research before making a purchase like this, but other times I like to fly by the seat of my pants! So off I headed to the Pride procession eager to try out my new toy. It’s significantly lighter than Nikon’s version, but about the same size. I had a few issues with the auto-focus, particularly when trying to zoom from from one extreme to the other. If I was focused right out, then the auto-focus would have difficulty in pulling itself in and vice-versa. Quickly panning to somewhere in between the range, and performing an interim focus would quickly resolve the problem. Now I’ve only ever used the Nikon lens in much more controlled conditions so I’ve no real comparison, but in the grand scheme of things, it was no great issue.

The frames I shot with the lens were in general wonderfully sharp, though without performing some serious tests on it similar to the ones Martin Bailey’s performed, its hard to be sure. I’ve posted the frames from today’s parade on Demotix here. Watch this space for a more detailed analysis on the lens’s focusing capabilities but on initial inspection I’m more than pleased with my bargain purchase…

Southport pier

fabfilippini — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 20:48:00 +0000

Shot this at Southport pier earlier this week. 5 exposures converted to HDR in Photomatix. Had to fix some Chromatic Aberration issues in Lightroom first as the underside of the pier was causing me some grief after processing. The problem areas were where the sunlight was coming through the dark spars on the bottom of the platform. Good ol‘ Lightroom seems to have fixed the problems though.

Creative Lighting Workshop

fabfilippini — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 20:07:00 +0000

At the weekend I took a trip down to Wiltshire for a “Creative Lighting” workshop hosted by Terry Hewlett (www.terryhewlett.com). It had been postponed twice already due to inclement weather so I was really looking forward to finally getting on with it. There was just myself and one other photographer, along with Terry, the instructor, and a model, the lovely Sarah.

We shot primarily with the Elinchrom Ranger Quadra Kit using Skyports and a host of soft boxes, umbrellas, grids etc

I shot the vast majority with the Nikon 18-200mm VR though I did get the Sigma 10-20mm out for the occasional wide angle shot. I did get a chance to borrow the 70-200 F2.8 from the other guy on the workshop though unfortunately using outdoor lighting and having to stop down the lens to balance the ambient, I didn’t really get the opportunity to see the lovely bokeh that this lens is reputed to produce at its shallowest.

We shot in 3 completely different types of location which presented us with completely contrasting sets of lighting conditions and enabled us to try several differing lighting set ups and arrangements at each location.

All in all it was an excellent workshop & I’d highly recommend it to any photographer who wants to get a better understanding of outdoor portrait lighting. It has however presented me with a little dilemma as I am now even more undecided, if it were possible, as to whether to get myself a bunch of SB900s or to go with a portable studio lighting setup like the Elinchroms or the Westcotts. Obviously a portable studio setup would be far more powerful, yet the strobes have portability on their side. Both options have their pros and cons.

The other bonus I got from the workshop was that it has given me a whole host of ideas for topics and locations that hadn’t otherwise occurred to me. The plan now is to get myself some lights, a couple of reliable models, get some serious practice in and try and develop a style of my own

For the inquisitive amongst you, the above image was processed in Nik Software’s SilverEfex. I converted it to TMax 100, reduced the brightness a little, added a couple of control points to raise the contrast and brightness on the dress and the model’s face and vignetted a tad.

Manchester in the rain (for a change...)

fabfilippini — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 07:43:00 +0000

I’ve been spending yet more time with my OM10 – a rainy day in Manchester… C’est tout.