William Bullimore Photography

Huzzah! My brand new Canon EF 100mm f/2.8 Macro USM lens arrived today. I was so excited when I got it home that I had to have a go at using it straight away. Here are my first attempts at macro photography. Click on the photos to enlarge.

I also got a Canon Extender EF 2x II and a Canon Pixma Pro9500 printer. I haven't had a chance to use these yet. So stay tuned for some reviews of all three items over the coming days. I'll let you know what I think of each item and what I'm doing with them.

Today I went to up to Port Douglas to take some more photos of the P&O Pacific Dawn that had anchored just off shore.

But in what I'm finding is a more common occurrence, my best shots were totally unexpected. As we were leaving, we stopped at the local cemetery and I was really pleased with the shots that I got. I have previously shied away from cemeteries because I thought they were boring. However I discovered that with a bit of imagination, you can create some interesting images. Here's a couple of examples. Click on the photos to enlarge.

This work is licenced under a Creative Commons Licence.

Today I received a question on one of my flickr photos about how to take photos of blurred water. Here is the shot in question, click on the photo to enlarge:

The enquiry was from one of my contacts named kierobau and this was their question:

i like how you blured down the water a little,
so how do you do that?
a bit out of my league i guess . . .as i only have a p&s

My answer was as follows:

Hi kierobau,

As it was around noon that I took this shot, it was really sunny and normally it's impossible to get a time-lapse shot at that time of day without over-exposing the photo. In this instance, I used a neutral density ND8 filter. This has the effect of blocking out three f/ stops of sunlight coming into the lens. Thus allowing me to take a longer exposure. There are a couple of important things that need to be considered when attempting a shot like this.

1. Amount of light (dawn or dusk or overcast days are best, otherwise use an ND filter).

2. A tripod (or somewhere to rest the camera without touching it) is essential as the slightest movement will wreck the sharpness of the features surrounding the water (which is of course the only thing that you DO want blurred).

3. A remote control or shutter release cable so that you don't have to touch the camera at all after setting up the shot (framed and focused). If you don't have one, set the camera for a delayed shutter release (5 or 10 seconds maybe). Most cameras have this feature.

4. Shoot in manual mode. Set your desired aperture and shutter speed. If you are unsure as to how long to set the shutter speed on your camera, use Aperture Priority mode. As you said you only have a point and shoot camera, it shouldn't be a problem. Most modern point and shoots come with this mode these days. In this mode, all you need to do is to set the aperture. The lower the f/ stop, the smaller the aperture - so try setting your camera to 2 stops above the lowest f/ stop on your camera eg: if the lowest is say f/ 3.5, the next stop might be f/ 4 and then f/ 4.5 - so set the f/ stop to 4.5. An added benefit to this is that two stops above the lowest aperture setting is often the "sweet spot" that will give you the sharpest photo.

I hope all of that made sense. If anyone else has any more tips, that would be great.

Here's another of my "slow water" shots. Click on the photo to enlarge:

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We have spent the last few days tripping around Mossman and the Atherton Tablelands. We stayed at my sister-in-law's last night. She has been an avid photographer for 20 odd years. We got up early this morning and went and took some photos. Here's some of the results. Click on the photos to enlarge:

This work is licenced under a Creative Commons Licence.

Well we finally arrived home today from our outback adventure. Now the foreboding task of sorting through all of my shots and separating the wheat from the chaff. Here are a couple of photos that I took in the final days of our journey. Click on the photos to enlarge:

This work is licenced under a Creative Commons Licence.