The gulls circle.......

The gulls circle
Originally uploaded by YvonneSherry

Today I visited Kensington Gardens with the intention of taking a few photos of Anish Kapoor's sculptures. After seeing photos of this exhibition on a blog, I thought they would be the perfect subject for my photography homework (yes, I'm back doing homework again).

I arrived at Kensington Gardens just before 3pm, all to aware of the diminishing light levels. My plan of action was to quickly walk around the gardens, take a few snaps of the exhibition and be out there by 4pm. However, my plan went wrong almost as soon as I got there....

I've never been great at photographing buildings, people, objects.......basically I just like wildlife photography too much. I walked in the park and was immediately drawn to the huge numbers of swans, gulls, pigeons, geese and small birds that were gathered round an unusually large number of visitors. I was transfixed by the opportunistic gulls hovering and diving trying to snatch the bread thrown at the geese and swans.

Conditions were not great. The low lighting meant that I could not select a fast enough shutter speed so several of my photos exhibit slight motion blur. This is probably one of the clearer shots, but I also got some close ups of the swans and the general feeding frenzy that ensued. I've uploaded some of these to flickr.

By the time I meandered over to the sculptures, lighting was poor. I took a couple of shots, but I didn't manage to see all of the exhibition.

Will I go to Kensington Gardens again to visit the exhibition? Probably not. Will I go back to take more photos of gulls and swans? Yes, most likely next weekend.

Experiments with food dye......

Glasses of fire
Originally uploaded by YvonneSherry

Some months back I read an article in a photography magazine with tips on how to create an image such as this. At the time I had only just started using my camera, and my first attempts failed miserably. However at the beginning of January I decided to try this again and this time the photo was greatly improved (although still quite different from the image I had originally envisaged).

Since posting this picture to flickr several people have asked how I was able to slant the water and yet keep the glasses straight. So for anyone interested here are the main steps: -

1) Tape the base of the glasses to thick card or wood.
2) Raise one end of the card/ wood using anything to hand.
3) Fill the glasses with water and have your camera set up ready to go
4) Drop an equal amount of dye into each glass (blue food dye was used for this photo) and quickly take the photo while the dye is still mixing with the water
5) The rest of the effect was achieved using Photoshop. This involved straightening the image, cropping and inverting the filter.

The image I had been trying to achieve involved the dye streaming down from the top of the glass through the water creating spirals. However, short of being an Octopus it is pretty hard for one person to do this even with the assistance of a remote. A second or two hesitation to drop the dye in each glass meant that the dye had already collected in the bottom of the glass. However using blue food dye (which when inverted looked a burnt orange colour) and letting the dye mix with water at the bottom of the glass resulted in a 'fire like' look. A fortunate accident.

I've posted more food dye pictures on my flickr page. There is also a group on flickr dedicated to food dye pictures 'Fun with Food Dye' which has some inspirational pictures.

The problems with snow......

Seats with a view
Originally uploaded by YvonneSherry

I've been waiting what seems likes weeks to take some photos in the snow. I'd been in Boston during the initial snowy phase in the UK, and so felt I'd missed my opportunity for picturesque snowy scenes.

I was made up when snow started to fall in London shortly before Christmas, but sadly it was relatively shallow and the white snowy flakes lasted only a couple of hours before the surrounding area was a dirty slush.

I spent Christmas in Preston, and although no more snow fell, I found some of the scenes I was looking for. However, it was much more difficult than I had originally thought finding the perfect shots. Apart from the technical issues that snow can present in digital photography, I found that many of the photos I took were just plain boring. Too much of the white stuff without the contrasts, colours, objects and details that often make an interesting photograph. In my case it was not so much practice makes perfect, but practice makes some improvements.......

I managed a few photographs which I'm quite proud of (see http://www.flickr.com/photos/yvonnesherry/sets/72157625538955389/) although they do not hold up to many of the stunning photos taken by others - see flickr group ‘Great Britain’s Big Freeze - UK SNOW.’

Unlike much of London I'm hoping for snow early January to try again - but hopefully I'll be more prepared.

Please do comment on this blog or post links to any interesting snow photos.