Montag, 31. August 2009

Trace of the Autostadt


Mercedes SL (1), originally uploaded by topfloor.

Did some bokeh - hunting shots at f/1.0 from Wolfsburgs Autostadt.

Btw., I discovered a cool site for german photoblogs - foto-radar. Give it a try, you might like it.

http://foto-radar.de/

Happy shooting!

Sonntag, 30. August 2009

Skybridge


Skybridge, originally uploaded by topfloor.

This week, some of my shots were included in the top notch selection of All Day I dream about Photography http://www.adidap.com/2009/08/27/adidap-flickr-round-2009-05-10/

Freitag, 21. August 2009

Fast Forward - mini project


Fast Forward, originally uploaded by topfloor.

Photowalking usually stands for walking the streets of a city, snapping photos of subjects of your interest. This can be people, architecture, deails and wide shots.

On my second day in Brighton I choose to do a more focused photowalk by giving myself a mini project to follow . . .

Shooting low down with shallow depth of field and the focus pane very close to the camera, having the main subject clearly out of focus (blurred).

To do this I choose a 50 mm effective focal length with f/1.4 maximum aperture, using a 3-stop ND filter to be able to shoot wide open in the sunlight. Putting down the camera on the ground was easy. Usually I shot a focus stack (shooting burts while turning the focussing wheel on my lens) so I could later choose the best picture at the computer (the camera I used was a rangefinder, not a DSLR, so DoF preview was not an option).

This is one of my first shots. What I found out is that sometimes f/1.4 was resulting in a too thin layer of sharpness so I sometimes had to stop down the lens a little bit (f/1.8 or f/2.0).

Have fun if you try this out for yourself.

Bend for fetish - cool Phototechnique


Bend for fetish, originally uploaded by topfloor.

On a recent trip to Brighton / UK I could observe this photographer (Lomokev) shooting shoes and legs.

He choose a very low point of view by plaing the camera on the ground, using a right angle viewfinder to compose and focus the subject. Equipment he used was a

Canon 5 D
with a 50 mm f/1.4 Canon lens
and a Canon Angle Viewfinder C.

The results of this technique can be seen here . . .

http://www.flickr.com/photos/lomokev/sets/75334/

and here with other subjects . . .

http://www.flickr.com/photos/lomokev/sets/82556/

Hope you enjoy plaing with this technique; of course a angle viewfinder is only an option and not a must.

Happy shooting!