Perth's first cold front for 2014

Finally, for the first time this year, we have experienced the passage of a relatively normal strong cold front.

It brought with it plenty of rain, wind, and for lucky people in south of river areas, there was lightning overnight.

I was in the Rockingham area for the afternoon so I was able to photograph a lot of the features of the front as it came in.

As far as weather goes, it was just your average winter cold front. Minor damage to homes meant that I was called out as an SES volunteer to patch some leaks.

I also got a timelapse video of the front moving in.

120 Degree panorama showing the front area of the storm.

Throughout the day quite a few people stopped by to watch the weather.

As the rain fell, so did the visibility.

Is it a funnel cloud? Nope. It's a scud. They are often causes for false tornado or waterspout alerts.
More info is in the storm spotters handbook.

Once blown over, there is no damage from the scud clouds.

April Update

Not a lot occurring. No weather. Nothing.

So that's why this blog has been seemingly unattended.

Regardless, I'm slowly building my plans for doing some more underwater photography over the coming months. I've got 2 main underwater cameras. One is a GoPro Hero 3 White edition, the other is a Canon Powershot S110 in a DiCAPAC WP ONE waterproof case.

Juvenile Pink Snapper at Point Walter. Photographed on Gopro Hero 3

The GoPro HD Hero3 White edition is a brilliant camera for the price I paid for it, unfortunately, it only can capture 5 Megapixel images in brightly lit situations. If you need high res images, or need to photograph in murky spaces, the Gopro quickly shows itself up as an inferior solution.

That being said, if you understand the above points, it performs exceptionally well as long as you remember to orient it correctly:

This wasn't bright sunlight, it was a cloudy sun filtering through trees. So the Gopro still gets nice, decent results
even if the lighting is mediocre.

The Powershot S110 is a different matter however. It is a 12 megapixel, RAW shooting compact camera with a very decent lens. I haven't done many test shots,and I'm less than convinced of the seal quality of the Dicapac case, so I only use it underwater if I absolutely have to. I prefer to get up nice and close with the gopro shooting 1 photo per second, so I just photograph everything, and sort the photos once I get home.

Another project I want to do with the gopro is to do an underwater timelapse. This involves weighting a tripod, and then swimming down with it to the bottom of the beach or river, starting the timelapse, and leaving it there for an hour or so, timelapsing the events underwater.

All in all, I'm quite hopeful to be able to get some form of good photography done while I wait for any form of interesting weather.

Basic Photographic Principles

I'll start off by saying that I'm no expert in Photography, nor have I ever claimed to be. However, I've picked up a few tricks over the years.

What I want to achieve straight off the bat is to bust some very annoying myths that have been floating about for a while regarding the art I dearly love.

The better the camera, the better the photo.

This is a huge misconception. While it is obvious that a quality camera with good optics and a well designed sensor will output high quality images, it isn't true that a low budget camera will output sheer rubbish. In the latter half of 2012, my only camera was a $90 Olympus VG-160. I still got acceptable results from it.

See here, here, here, and here.

Combine your cheap camera with some software such as Hugin , and you can start stitching some high quality panoramas in no time!

In another post I have on this blog I've explained the advantages that you can obtain by using your phone's camera more often.

The most important thing anyone wanting to take a good photograph must realise, is that the most important thing is you. It doesn't matter if you have a mobile phone, a point and shoot, or a DSLR with some good lenses, all of these can take a good image in the right conditions. And that condition, is you.

You control the composition.
You (sometimes) control the light.
You control the framing.
You (Sometimes) control the camera.

You can do all three of these things on practically any camera.
Higher end equipment allows a lot more control for the user.

The next myth, is much more annoying:

Editing/Processing is cheating.

An awesome example of pre-digital editing.

Since the dawn of Digital photography, people have always assumed that processing a photo after taking it is in some way ruining the authenticity of the photo. Well, that doesn't make any sense. What you can do in a digital editor you can already do in an analog darkroom- and for over a century it's been that way.

Cropping/brightness/contrast/desaturating etc are all necessary to do in the darkroom to get the results you are after. Why not in digital too? As an avid film photographer, I experiment with cross processing, over developing and deliberate negative damaging to create some very aesthetically pleasing art.

I saw someone open up the JPEG files from his DSLR and state that he didn't need to edit his photos. JPEG files are typically the only output from basic cameras and mobile phones. They have already been processed inside the camera and are usually acceptable to use without any alterations but still need tweaking to get the most out of them. Consumer DSLRS are designed to output very colourful JPEG's that look great to the average person. - They only want some holiday photos! 

With RAW files taken from more advanced cameras, the output is generally flat and undesirable. This is because the camera has saved the entire set of data seen by the sensor, without making any adjustments to the image. You NEED to process the RAW file in some way shape or form to get it into an export format such as TIFF or JPEG. To that end, Editing is a necessary part of any photographers workflow, and anyone who thinks otherwise is  ignorant of that basic fact. (That said, in-camera settings can be effectively utilised)

I shot this photo on my DSLR. It was a 10 second exposure. I still needed to increase the saturation after. If you look closely, I didn't use any noise reduction- NR is quite an important step.

Now I've had my opening discussion, I'll get onto the actual topic of the post. Basic photographic principles:

Composition

The most fundamental principle of art is composition, all famous works of art, from Da Vinci's Mona Lisa, down to Van Gogh's sunflowers painting, and to Ansel Adam's Landscape of the river, all have the one basic element:

Really, really good composition. None of those works of art would be as famous as they are now if the artists ignored the composition. So likewise, neither should you.

One of the images I took at Adelaide last year.. If I didn't kneel down to the low angle, I would not have the strong juxtaposition between grass, flower, fence, and sky. 

Instead, you would have seen a lot of clutter that was just over the hill and would have ruined the simplicity of the image.

Simplicity is key here. Try to find strong, defining contrasts, and make the most of them.

The object I had for taking this image was to show an expanse of land, under an ever bigger expanse of sky.

The next most important thing is to experiment. You might find the right subject and composition, but it is still not enough to shoot from the same angle. It is possible to make very different landscapes look nearly identical.

Try different angles. Try different settings. Try a different camera if you have to, just keep your mind open to any new possibilities.

Image Shot on Lucky SHD 100 35mm film, developed in instant coffee, and then scanned in. (I love analog)

Image shot with a 40 year old lens with an adaptor.

Image shot with the simple Canon kit EF-S 18-55 Lens. 4 images combined in Hugin.

Timing

An image is all about timing. Whether it be the timing of the shutter, the time of day, or the timing of when the scene is captured, timing is just as critical to an image as the composition.

Lighting
Lighting is one of those key aspects to an image, most good landscapes are shot during what is called 'Golden Hour'. That is- The first hour of light after sunrise, and the last hour before sunset. This time is when shadows are longest, light softest, and sky the most beautiful.

Shot this the other day. Not the best background as the Perth Airport is re-vegetating the area, but you still get the idea.

However, creating your own light is just as important.

Meet Cassandra. My curious, beautiful, adorable, energetic little bunny rabbit. As I write this sentence she is running around my room pooing everywhere. I'll have to get the vacuum cleaner out once I'm done.

I shot this little portrait with a Canon Speedlite bounced off the ceiling. Flash photography, when used correctly, is amazing for making good indoor photos.



I should wrap up this post, as I only want it to be short, but I hope you got something out of this, and that you can use it to better your own work.