Back to my future

Inspired by the photos of Irina Werning featured on this blog last week, I dug out a couple of my own old photos when I went home at the weekend. Here is my own take on the Back to the Future theme. Both these photos were taken in the same playground in Plymouth (where my gran lives) several years apart. The photo on the left was taken when I was around three, the photo on the right was taken when I was around nine. Next time I go back to Plymouth, I will try to remember to recreate this scene again. For those of you with your own blogs, why not take your own Back to the Future photos and post about them?

Kayaking along the canal

I went home last weekend. On the Sunday, since the weather was nice, I took my Dad’s kayak for a short paddle along the local canal.

Back to the future

I came across these photos the other day. What a great idea they are! The photographer is Irina Werning and in this series, old portraits are revisited. Below are a few of my favourites. You can see more at Irina Werning’s website here (beware, some of the photos feature semi-nakedness!).

1983 & 2010 – © Irina Werning

1984 & 2010 – © Irina Werning

1956 & 2010 – © Irina Werning

Weekly Photo Challenge: Abundance

Weekly Photo Challenge: Refuge

Weekly Photo Challenge: Curiosity

The theme for the photo challenge on The Daily Post this week is curiosity. As I have been quite busy this week, I have not taken any new photos (sorry ). Therefore, I once again delve into my archive.

Walk through a farm

Last weekend, I went for a walk near my parents’ home. Here is a panoramic photo of one of the farms I walked through.

Weekly Photo Challenge: Boundaries

On The Daily Post, a weekly photo challenge has recently been announced.

Each week, we’ll provide a theme for creative inspiration. You take photographs based on your interpretation of the theme, and post them on your blog anytime before the following Friday when the next photo theme will be announced.

I have decided to take up this challenge, posting a photo taken by me onto this blog every Thursday based upon the theme for that week. This week, the theme is boundaries. I thought about giving a brief description of the photo, but instead decided just to let it do the talking. Besides, I do enough writing at work! So here, open for your own interpretation, is my photo for this week…

I have to admit, I cheated a bit this week. I took this photo one year ago. Next week, I will try to post a photo I have taken specifically for the challenge.

How to create a silhouette

I wanted to use post today to talk briefly about a photographic technique that I sometimes employ… creating silhouettes. A silhouette is where the person or object within the picture consists of just an outline with the rest being filled with just a single shade, usually black. The example I will use is a photo I took whilst in Plymouth over Christmas. When taking a silhouette, you generally want the person or object you are silhouetting to be dark compared to the background. Taking a photo into the sun is perfect for this.

You will notice that the person in the photo (my cousin Gemma) and the arch surrounding her, is dark. The background (the sea) appears properly exposed. This is what I want for my silhouette. To achieve this, I focused my camera by pointing it at the sea, not Gemma. If I had focused the image on Gemma, I would have ended up with something like this

Here you can see Gemma and the arch in more detail. Also, the background is very light. I don’t want either of these things.

Ok, back to the first image. You may notice that, although small, there are a few details of Gemma still showing. Nothing against Gemma, but I just want to have a black outline. For this I will use paint.net (paint.net is a great and simple piece of photo editing software. You can download it free here).

After opening up the image in paint.net, I go to Adjustments, Brightness/Contrast. Increasing the contrast makes lighter areas of the photos lighter and darker areas darker. Not only does this remove detains on Gemma and the arch but it gives more definition to the waves in the background. Once I am happy with the image, I click ok.

Finally I rotate the image slightly and crop it so that both side are roughly symmetrical. I could at this stage make the image black and white, but I quite like the watercolour effect that retaining some of the blue in the background gives.

This effect is simple to achieve but ver effective in my opinion. By removing the details in the subject, the viewer is left to fill in the gaps themselves, making the photo more dramatic as a result.

The great Crokinole project

What with my recent obsession with board games, I have come across a fair few interesting board game ideas. Once such idea was to build a Crokinole board. For those of you that don’t know (most of you I expect), Crokinole is a traditional Canadian game that involves the players flicking small wooden disks across a circular board, trying to land them in the high scoring centre regions. After getting my dad on board this project over Christmas, we went out to our local hardware shop to buy a large sheet of wood. Over the next three days, we cut, glued and sanded the wood into something resembling a Crokinole board. Here is a photo of me putting the finishing touches to the surface of the board.

In the end, I was quite pleased with how it all turned out. Needless to say, me and my dad spent much of the remaining time I was home playing Crokinole.