Browsing tag : Project52 2016
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Week 33: Hot
Posted onThere are certain aspects of this photo that I really like. The motion blur in the chef’s utensils was created by using an unusually slow shutter speed. Below about 1/60th, there is a danger of the whole picture becoming blurred by the camera movement created just by trying to shoot freehand. However, I seem to have managed to get away with it here. This slow speed was partially an intentional effect and partially a result of my not wanting to raise the ISO any further. I am beginning to notice that my Canon 7D does not perform well at ISOs above about 800 so, unless I want a grainy effect, I tend to stick to below that figure.
By Ben Reeves
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Week 32: Soft
Posted onAirsoft is probably the most misnamed sport around. For one thing, most modern guns use electric motors to propel their ammunition, not compressed air. Furthermore, with said ammunition being 6mm plastic ball bearings, their impact is far from “soft”! A lot of people are put off by this fact. Many of my friends, on discovering that I was taking an interest in the sport, said that they had tried it once, but found getting shot too painful to keep it up. Fortunately, I am rather less skinny than most Thais and the force of the impact is significantly dampened by my slightly excessive body fat. The only thing that caused enduring pain was the extensive exercise to muscles unprepared for it, causing my legs in particular to ache for several days after.
By Ben Reeves
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Week 30: Colourful
Posted onThe theme was “Colourful” and I was fortunately back in Phuket, where colourful streets are the norm, particularly in the older parts of Phuket Town. The city’s old Sino-Portuguese architecture and brightly-painted streets mostly hail from the 1850s to early-1900s, during which the island experienced a major economic boom as a result of the tin mining trade. A minor side-road off Phang Nga Road presented this lovely line of multi-coloured terraced shop-houses. I nipped down there during my lunch hour one day and literally snapped just three photos. This is the third.
By Ben Reeves
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Week 27: Patriotic
Posted onTalking technically, I am very pleased with how the shot came out. I boosted the clarity in post-production, which brought out the grime and damage of around four years of abuse the helmet has taken, but the colours shine through regardless. The lighting effect, while very cool, was entirely unplanned. It would have been better had the metal roof in the background not been exactly the same colour as the cloudy sky, but there wasn’t a whole lot I could do about that (other than use a different background, I suppose).
By Ben Reeves
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Week 26: Haze
Posted onI actually legitimately like this photo. I think it is quite striking, particularly after I elevated the clarity in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom. Shooting into the sun was a little awkward because it meant that I also had to boost the shadows and that can make things look kind of odd. In this case, I got pretty lucky and it created a nice effect. I quite like the [sadly unintended] effect whereby the hotel ruins look really stark and kind of colourful while the paradise of Nai Yang Beach beyond looks almost hazy.
By Ben Reeves
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Week 25: Food
Posted onWhen it came to Week 25, photographic assignments were very thin on the ground because the weather was absolutely rotten. We had something like a solid week of rain or, at the very least, blanket cloud cover – not particularly good for taking enticing travel photos, though hardly surprising for this time of year. It’s called the rainy season for a reason! Anyway, as a result, I had to quickly find a restaurant to review on deadline day so that I could get my “food” photo.
By Ben Reeves
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Week 24: Below
Posted onI had wanted to return to Angkor Wat anyway, primarily to get better photos. The first time I visited, in August 2013, the weather on the day of our visit had been overcast and not that great for photography. It wasn’t even bad enough to be interesting – it was just a big bundle of ‘meh’. Added to that, I was still using my Canon 400D, which I bought with my first student loan instalment in 2005! Shortly before the trip, the light meter readout had decided to stop working. Fortunately, it came back just a short time after arriving at Angkor Wat, so I was able to come away with some good shots, but not many.
By Ben Reeves
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Week 23: Movement
Posted onThe effect I wanted was of motion blur – the background sweeping past while the runners and mostly sharp, with perhaps a little blur in their legs and arms. It’s simple enough to achieve. You just track the runners fast enough and use a slow enough shutter speed. I was shooting into the sun, which was pretty stupid, but the background was nicer in that direction. That made autofocus a little tricky at times and obviously put the subjects in a bit of shadow, but one was fixed with persistence and the other with post-processing. From hundreds of photos, the one I picked really popped out at me.
By Ben Reeves
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Week 22: Light
Posted onDespite the ease with which I got this photo, I am actually quite proud of it. It almost seems like a cheat to get a perfect shot within a mere 18 taken last thing before leaving the office. The conditions weren’t even that tricky for the effect I wanted, requiring next to no post-production editing. I intentionally wanted the background very dark because it’s just an office kitchen – not the most picturesque place.
By Ben Reeves
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Week 20: Nature
Posted onWhile certainly not the picture I wanted – either of the docks or nature – I am actually quite proud of this week’s Project52 photo. Better than any other shot I took during the week or even during the time in Singapore, I feel that this perfectly shows the interplay between the natural and urban landscape. It shows how much we depend on nature’s beauty to hide the ugliness of our own constructions, particularly the essential but unattractive stuff like docklands. The green-painted cranes even try to mimic the trees themselves.
By Ben Reeves
