The 50mm challenge

After reading a bit about Ansel Adams and what kind of kit he carried, I found out that he only carried a couple of fixed lenses. In light of this it means that He didn't have the luxury to zoom in or out at will in order to take some of the awesome shots that he took.

So I thought maybe I should set myself a challenge in order to push myself and concentrate on composition and framing. I would take only pictures using my Nikon 50mm f1.8

So last Saturday I went out to Kangaroo Point cliffs to push myself to think outside of the box.

Usually at Kangaroo Point cliffs the average person would take something like this:

Unfortunately these shots are a dime a dozen. google "brisbane" and you see a lot of the same. Mount Cootha is another example where you see a lot of these types of shots - There is nothing wrong with taking these types of shots, don't get me wrong. I take these kinds of shots from time to time as well. It was just on this night, I wanted to really challenge myself and I wanted to do something a bit different. 

So I looked at the immediate surroundings and I found this:

Given that its been quite awhile since I last visited the area, I was surprised to find that the area had changed this much. So I went around with the nifty fifty and arrived with these.

50mm ISO 200 f1.8, 4 secs

50mm ISO 200 f1.8, 4 secs

50mm ISO 200 f1.8, 4 secs

By the end of the shoot I was feeling pretty pleased with some of the results. Its definitely made me think more about how I position the camera and try to be more creative with my shots.


Then me and my mate Dan headed down underneath the expressway at southbank end to shoot the bridge.
Found a little walkway underneath to play around with.

50mm ISO 200 f8, 1 sec

50mm ISO 200 f20, 8 secs

50mm ISO 200 f8, 1 sec

Then went underneath....

50mm ISO 200 f5.6, 3 secs

50mm ISO 200 f5.6, 3 secs

 And then I setup a nice little shot of the walkway.... and then a random appeared out of nowhere.....

50mm ISO 200 f5.6, 5 secs

All in all not bad for only 1 fixed lens....





 

Egg Experiment

Thought I'd try out some "Home studio" lighting yesterday so I grabbed 2 torches and an egg.

I used two LED Lenser P7s to light up a little present that I received from my father in law a couple of days ago. What I wanted to do was to see if I could present the egg in two different ways - using focused and unfocused light in order to highlight different portions of the object at hand. Firstly had to set the mood...

Then using the focus, narrowed the beams on the back of the egg in order to highlight the elephant inside:

180mm, ISO 200, f11 Exposure 2sec

Then unfocused the beams in order to highlight the shell.

180mm, ISO 200, f11 Exposure 2sec

All in all quite surprised with what 2 torches can do and the difference that a little bit of focus can do...

Starting out

Welcome to my photo blog! I thought it would be a great idea to finally create a blog to keep a record of my eventual progress and experiments along the way. It's one of those things that I've always wanted to do (kind of like a 365 day project, but more casual).

I will be uploading my experimental stuff over time and show how I do it.

Thanks for visiting!

Az