Tag Archives: alexis thomas

Surfboards

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This past December, Daria and I spent a weekend in Drousha, near the Akamas Peninsula on the western part of the island. Being so close to Latsi, we decided to head there on Sunday for some fresh fish. After stuffing ourselves with large quantities of food, we decided to take a stroll around the area, when I luckily stumbled upon a bunch of surfboards on the beach side.

This is a High Dynamic Range (HDR) picture, which is essentially a composite of 3 separate pictures taken at different exposure levels (normal, underexposed, overexposed) and then merged in post-production. I used this technique to exaggerate the boldness of the clouds without sacrificing the detail of my subject. In my mind, I was trying to produce a single image emphasizing the contrast between summer and winter.

Shot handheld with my Canon 60D, Sigma 18-200 F3.5-6.3 lens at 18mm, ISO 100, F9 and bracketed at -2/0/+2.

Exploring Astro Photography

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I was invited a few weekends ago to join a couple of astronomy enthusiasts up in the mountains (Amiantos area) for some night-sky watching. After recently having read a couple of tutorials on star trail techniques, I was itching to give it a try.

For this first picture, I located the North Star (Polaris) just before it got completely dark. I set my camera with my Canon 24-70 F2.8L lens on my trusty tripod and took a couple of pictures to make sure my composition was correct. After being satisfied that I had everything where I wanted them to be, I set my camera to Manual mode and dialed my settings to ISO 400, F2.8 with a 30 sec exposure. What followed was an excruciating hour and a half, where I manually took 140 consecutive pictures using my remote cable release (guess who just ordered an intervalometer!). These images were later stacked together using a simple freeware program I downloaded from www.startrails.de and then imported the image into Photoshop for some minor touches (contrast and sharpness).

The second picture was taken facing South East – same settings, slightly less painful shooting procedure as I only took about 75 images. 

Overall I must admit that I am pretty happy with the outcome. Key takeaways from this exercise however are:
1) A trusty intervalometer (though not a must) is definitely good to have. You just set it and then hide in your car with a warm cup of coffee while it’s doing its job. It’s not very costly (30-50 euros will get you a decent one), and it can be used not just for astro photography but for time lapse videos as well.
2) Dress warm! I completely underestimated the weather that night. Even though it was the end of May, temperatures up in the mountains can be as low as 5-6 C during the night. A warm jacket and a pair of gloves are definitely a must!

Smoke Photography

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One of my favourite websites for photography is the Digital Photography School (DPS). I must admit that most of the inspiration I get is from the wealth of information shared by both professionals and amateurs on this site’s forums.

This past October, I was reading an “Introduction to Smoke Photography” article, written by Amar Ramesh. The pictures posted by Amar were simply stunning and the technique he had used seemed fairly trivial. I was certainly intrigued by how the combination of the element of smoke, with still pictures could create such a dynamic effect. So I gave it a go..I went to a local artwork store, bought myself some black cardboard, spent a couple of hours at home taking some shots and voila!

Coffee Mug Red smoke - c

Smoking cow final - 1920c

If you want to read more on this technique, here is the link to Amar’s article on DPS.

Limassol Pier

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I was in Limassol this past February for the carnival celebrations. I visit Limassol fairly often, but this time around I decided to take my camera with me to capture some of the beautiful sunsets by the beach. While walking down the beach side, I noticed this pier extending into the water. Luckily, there were only a few people on the pier at the far end, exactly where I wanted them to be. I quickly set up my tripod and bracketed 3 shots to create this HDR. I chose to create an HDR so that I could emphasize the boldness of the clouds as well as the texture of the wooden walkway.

Shot with my Canon 60D, at F16 bracketed at -2/0/+2. HDR processed in Photomatix with some minor contrast adjustments and sharpening in Photoshop.