CAPTURE NEW HORIZONS

Anyone who visits this blog on a regular basis will know that I am always on the look out for new photographic possibilities, day or night, and I usually have a camera ready to take the shot when I see something interesting.  Well this is definitely the case with these images as this is the view outside my bedroom door at the Fraser Suites in Al Seef, Bahrain. Looking straight down from the 18th floor to the pool and seating area on the 7th floor the shape of the pool, the table and chairs and the balconies of the intervening floors provided some very interesting architectural shapes for this picture.   The shot at the top of the page was taken on the new Fujifilm X100T, with its fixed Fujinon 23mm f2 lens.  The images was converted to mono in Silver Efex Pro2 rather than using the onboard mono converting software. The second shot was taken on the X-T1 with the 56mm f1.2. -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------...

The whole of the FIA World Endurance Championship paddock was treated to a warm Bahraini welcome when Bahrain International Circuit Chief Executive Shaikh Salman bin Isa Al Khalifa hosted the traditional Party in the Paddock on the eve of track action for this weekend’s 6 Hours of Bahrain. The following 80 second timelapse video was put together using 1445 separate images shot on the Fujifilm X-T1, fitted with the XF10-24mm f4 zoom lens.  The camera was set to shoot 1 frame every two seconds and for each part of the video 120 frames were taken before moving to the next location. 6 Hours of Bahrain - Party in the Paddock by fiawec The final video was produced in Windows Movie Maker with each frame set for 0,05 seconds to give 20 frames per second.  The music was downloaded from the Free Music Archive .  The track is called 'Misson' by Box Cat Games.  ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------...

Six months ago I bought the ultra wide XF10-24mm f4 Fujinon (15-36mm equivalent), the sixth lens in my Fuji line up.   I have always had an ultra wide angle lens in my photographic arsenal and while the Fujinon 14mm f2.8 (21mm) is an excellent wide angle lens, there were times when I missed the extra field of view offered by my old full frame 17-35mm f2.8 Nikon.   So I decided to add the newly launched Fujinon wide angle zoom to my inventory in May of this year. The zoom range of 10mm to 24mm is very flexible making this lens a good all rounder. Here is an image at 10mm and here is the same scene at 24mm So six months on, what do I think? Well I have to be honest, while I enjoy using the lens, it hasn't been used as much as I thought it would be.  The build and optical quality is fantastic and it is a joy to use, but it is a big lens.  I find myself reaching for the 14mm and 18mm primes a lot more times than I thought I would. ...

I arrived in the Kingdom of Bahrain for the penultimate round of the FIA World Endurance Championship at 2:30am this morning and after getting to my hotel for a few hours sleep I headed to the Bahrain International Circuit to begin the set up for this weekend's event. This is my third trip to Bahrain and the number of times that people have said to me 'be safe' or 'take care' as if Bahrain was a dangerous place to visit.  The reporting by the foreign media has not helped this perception and I know this small country has a few political issues but my only experience is the warm and friendly welcome we always get when we travel here. Today was the set up day and this gave me the opportunity to get out and take some images of this very photogenic circuit out in the desert. The images were taken on the X-T1 or the X100, which I have brought to Bahrain to do test later this week. --------------------------------------------------------...

Photographically speaking autumn is probably my favourite time of year.  The colours of the leaves and vegetation are vibrant, the sun, when it appears, is low in the sky producing a nicer light later into the day and, of course, sunrise is later so there is no need to be up and about at 3am, it is more like 6am at this time of year.  I'd like to say I traveled a long way to get these shots of the autumn leaves but I wouldn't be telling the truth.  These shots were actually taken in my back garden and with the sunlight hitting the leaves through the trees at the back of the house I grabbed the X-T1 and 60mm f2.4 macro to take a few images before the light faded. Sometimes you just don't need to travel far to get interesting shots, you just need to keep your eyes peeled and camera at the ready. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- PLEASE SUPPORT THIS BLOG BY VISITING ...

At this time of year getting up to catch a sunrise isn't as big a chore as it is in the summer thanks to the sun coming up over the horizon at a more reasonable 07:35.  This morning the promise of clear skies had me heading out to Seacliffe  because the combination of a reasonable sunrise time and a low tide gave me the opportunity to get some closer shots of the Firth of Forth Outer Marker, which is normally inaccessible due to the tide with Bass Rock in the background. When I arrived at Seacliffe the horizon was just a purple glow so I decided to walk to the waters edge and set up the tripod to capture the scene out towards Bass Rock and Tantallon Castle.  I decided to get some movement in the surf by selecting a slow shutter speed of around 1/4 second.  This meant setting up in the surf and I quickly discovered that my right boot isn't waterproof like the left one, but I ignored my wet sock and continued shooting with the surf lapping around my ankles. ...

East Lothian is known as the Bread Basket of Scotland and agriculture plays a big part in the local economy.  Today was the East Lothian Ploughing Association Tractor Ploughing Match at Hedderwick Hill in West Barns and so I decided to grab my camera bag and head down to grab some atmospheric shots of the vintage tractors and competitors. I used to cover some of the ploughing matches for the Grantham Journal in Lincolnshire when I was a staff photographer at the paper but I haven't been to one of these events since 1999.  However I do remember that the images I came back with for the reports in the Journal were always some of my favourites as there is plenty of colour and human interest. Unlike my time at the paper the images I took today were for my own pleasure so there was no pressure to come up with an image my editor would be happy with but I still approached it with the same attitude.   I decided to fixed the 56mm f1.2 to my X-T1 and put the 3 stop ND fi...