Strawberry Plunge

Posted on March 2, 2013 by Alexis Thomas

I had this itch over the last 3-4 days to try a new technique. One of my favourite professional photographers, to whom I owe most of my knowledge in photography, is Mark Wallace. In one of his recent Exploring Photography video tutorials, he demonstrated the technique of high-speed photography by using a very simple setup – a tripod-mounted camera and an off-camera flash. So I decided to give it a try and photograph a strawberry plunging in milk.

The technique itself was fairly trivial. Simply set the camera to manual mode with a long exposure (over a second) and a small aperture to get a decent depth of field. Turn all the lights off, trigger the camera, drop the strawberry and just as it hits the surface of the milk, trigger the flash. Needless to say it requires a lot of coordination and patience before you get a decent shot, especially when you are trying to do this all by yourself without someone helping you or any wireless triggers!

Shot with my Canon 60D and Canon 100mm F2.8 macro lens at ISO 100, F16 and a 4 second exposure. Flash was set to manual at 1/16th power.

Long Exposure – Taking the shot

Posted on February 23, 2013 by Alexis Thomas

Continuing from my last post on Long Exposures, here is a picture of my actual set up (taken with my smartphone camera), and the final result. One of the problems with using a 10-stop ND filter is that there will inevitably be a slight distortion in the temperature of the picture. This can be overcome by shooting in RAW and fixing the White Balance during post processing, which is what I did in this case. I also made a slight adjustment in contrast to arrive at this end result.

Set up:

Final shot:

On a side note, the large wave I was talking about, came out 5 secs after I took this picture, so you can see how close I was to disaster!

Shot with a Canon 60D and Canon 24-70 F2.8L lens at ISO 100, F22, 30 sec exposure using an N 3.0 B+W solid filter.

Studio Photography

Posted on January 25, 2013 by Alexis Thomas

Finally got a chance during my photography class last Wednesday to give Studio Photography a try. It was my first go at using external light sources, rather than simply shooting with a standard flash gun. I must say that the technique itself is fairly straight forward, especially if you have a light meter handy. You simply position your lights, tether your camera to the light kit, take a reading on the meter and then just dial in the settings.

The truly difficult part however, is managing the model herself. I definitely see the value of communicating constantly with your subject, asking her to move around and try new poses that would really make her shots come out flattering. I managed to take roughly around 300 shots or so over the course of 2 hours, and happily ended up with about 10 or so that look fairly decent, one which is shown below.

Taken with my Canon 60D and Canon 24-70mm F2.8L lens, at ISO 100, F9.0 and 1/125 shutter speed. This shot was taken with a single softbox to the right of the model.

Monkey Business

Posted on January 10, 2013 by Alexis Thomas

On my way back from Myanmar in December, myself and a few colleagues of mine decided to take a private tour in Bangkok, to visit the Bridge on the River Kwai. Despite the 3 hour drive to the outskirts of Bangkok, the scenery was great and well worth the trouble. For me however, the real reason for wanting to visit this place was to finally see in real life the actual bridge from one of the movies I used to love as a child – “The Bridge on the River Kwai”. Can’t tell you how many times as kids my brother and I used to whistle that tune pretending to be marching as the soldiers did in the movie.

As nice as the tour was however, the real highlight of my day was what I got to experience on our way back to Bangkok. As we were driving through the valley, we witnessed an entire herd of over 50 monkeys crossing the road. We immediately asked our driver to pull over, quickly got out of the car with our cameras, and followed them to a nearby resting area where conveniently 2 locals had set shop selling bananas! As my colleagues were busy feeding them with one banana after another, I was even busier taking one shot after another. I managed to snap a bunch of decent pics, but my favourite was this one below of the mother carrying around her baby.

Shot with my Canon 60D and Sigma 3.5-6.3 18-200mm OS lens at ISO 400, F5.6, 1/800 sec.

New Year’s Resolutions

Posted on January 1, 2013 by Alexis Thomas

Happy New Year to everyone and I wish happiness and health to you and your loved ones!

Can’t say I am a big fan of New Year Resolutions, but in the spirit of the season I would like to set some goals for myself (photography-wise) for this new year. Since the whole point of why I created this blog is to keep myself dedicated in a hobby I really care about and enjoy, it only seems fitting to set some goals that will help me achieve just that. So here is a fairly short (and hopefully achievable) list for 2013:

Explore Cyprus! I’ve been fortunate this past year to have the opportunity to travel a fair bit and in the process I’ve managed to take some decent photos. Even though I feel that it’s easier to find great photo opportunities when you are travelling abroad (compared to the familiar surroundings of Cyprus), this certainly is to a great extent psychological. Cyprus has some great scenery and all it takes is the will to go out and explore. So no more excuses here…the goal is to visit some new places and take at least 3 new pictures depicting life in Cyprus (either portraits of people or scenery).
Long Exposures: Last summer on my trip to New York, I forked out a fair bit of money in purchasing a 10-stop solid ND filter. The whole point of such filter is to reduce the amount of light coming through the lens (by 10 times in this case), so I can slow down my shutter speed and capture movement in a single frame. The results can be truly astonishing (see examples), and over the last couple of years this technique has become very popular among both professional and amateur photographers. So my goal here is to finally take that filter out of its box and experiment by shooting some landscapes (minimum of 2 pictures posted on this blog), particularly in Black & White.
New types of Photography: I am more or less happy with the variety of pictures I’ve managed to take over the past few years. There are dozens of other photography types however that I haven’t yet experimented with e.g. aerial, street, stock etc., and feel that I should so as to stretch my skills and improve. This year’s resolution therefore is to post 3 entries with photographs from types of photography that I have yet to experiment with.
Frame a Picture: For all those of you who’ve been to my apartment, you can attest to the fact that I only have one single picture (though fairly large) hanging in my entire apartment. This is a B&W version of the Havana Car picture I posted on my blog this past August. I made the conscious choice that I would hang more, so long as these pictures were my own and they had to fit-in with the rest of the decor. Suffice to say that I failed miserably so far, and the empty IKEA frame hanging in my bedroom is a testament to this failure. The goal therefore for this year is to take one picture that fits the above-mentioned criteria and is worthy for me to enlarge and hang anywhere in my apartment.

I will post updates of my progress against these goals during the year. Have a great year everyone!

The ancient city of Bagan

Posted on December 21, 2012 by Alexis Thomas

A few months ago, if someone had asked me where Myanmar was, admittedly I would have struggled to pin-point it on the map. Upon visiting this country, I witnessed a place undiscovered to many tourists, traveled to by only few and somewhat daring individuals. At it’s heart, in the Mandalay region and roughly a one and a half hour flight from the old capital of Yangon, lies the ancient city of Bagan, one of the richest archaeological sites in Asia. The city is famous in the region for its sheer number of temples and pagodas – roughly around 2200 which have survived today out of the 13000 that were originally built in the 11th to 13th centuries.

After my first trip to Myanmar back in early September, a number of locals advised me to find the time to visit this ancient city, promising a lifetime experience and a sight like nothing I had ever witnessed. At first I was apprehensive, but a couple of colleagues convinced me to go and thankfully I did. It was a truly unique experience and I sincerely hope I get the chance to visit again.

These temples and pagodas are considered holy and as such you can only walk inside and around them completely barefoot, which made the task of taking this picture only that much challenging! After watching the sunset on a private boat cruise, we decided to head back to the hotel for some rest. As we were driving back, I started itching for an after-sunset picture of the skyline. We asked our guide to pull over at the nearest temple, and with flashlights on hand, we started to climb the top of the temple barefoot – a somewhat scary ordeal given that we had to walk on the steep rooftop of the temple on a 15 cm wide ledge, carrying a flashlight, tripod and camera. Thankfully we managed through, and I was happy to shoot the following picture during the twilight hour.

Taken with my Canon 60D and Sigma 18-200 F3.5-6.3 OS lens at ISO 100, F5.6 and bracketed at -2/0/+2.

PS: I would like to take this opportunity to wish everyone a Merry Christmas and all the best for the New Year! See you all in 2013!

Bagan Road Workers

Posted on December 16, 2012 by Alexis Thomas

Just got back from a week-long trip to Myanmar and Thailand…and what a week it has been! In this short amount of time, I managed to squeeze in 2 days in the ancient city of Bagan, 4 working days in Yangon, and a 24 hour layover in Bangkok on my way back to Cyprus. As I am writing this blog post, I feel like I haven’t slept since I left Cyprus; it was rough, but admittedly I had an awesome time!

What I am even more excited about, is that I’ve managed to get some decent pictures out of this trip, which I am hoping to post on my blog over the next few weeks. This first one is one of my favorites from my first day in Bagan. As we were getting the tour around the ancient temples, we noticed a bunch of people doing some road work. On closer inspection, we realised that all of them were women dressed up in their traditional Burmese lungi and wearing identical hats. They were covered by a cloud of dust from sweeping the road, and with the sun rays piercing through the dense tree canopy above them, it created an almost dreamy effect. Suffice to say that I quickly pulled out the camera from my bag and started running towards them. I took a few shots, but this one came out best. From the look on her face, one can say that she was really baffled by my presence!

Taken with my Canon 60D and my Sigma 18-200 F3.5-6.3 OS Lens at 200mm, ISO 250 at F7.1.

Break dancer

Posted on December 4, 2012 by Alexis Thomas

Last Wednesday, I had the opportunity to join my photography class on an on-location photo shoot at the Rebel Dancers studio in Nicosia. There were 4-5 different classes going on at the same time, ranging from Belly Dancing to Break Dancing, mostly attended to by teenagers and the occasional adult. The owner there was nice enough to allow twenty or so photographers lagging all their cameras, tripods and flashes to enter any of the classrooms and shoot at free will.

I must say that getting a decent shot was by no means an easy exercise. Freezing motion in a precise and eloquent way, is truly a tough skill to master and requires a bit of luck to be on your side as well. You are in a studio indoors with harsh, unflattering and inadequate lighting, constantly fighting motion blur, taking shot after shot, praying that at least 1 of those shots comes out tack sharp. I brought with me my Canon 24-70mm F2.8L lens, a fairly fast lens one might say, but even at F2.8 and an ISO bumped all the way to 3200, I could barely get 1/100 – 1/250 sec shutter speeds.

I must have taken close to 500 shots, and this was one of only two or three shots that according to my criteria came out half decent. By no means a stellar shot, but given the amount of effort that went behind this exercise, I believe it earned a place on my blog page!

Taken with my Canon 60D camera, at F2.8, 1/250 speed at ISO 3200.

A 94-year old face

Posted on December 1, 2012 by Alexis Thomas

One can look at a portrait of someone and immediately sense the hardship of that person’s life and wealth of experiences. This is my grandmother, who is about to turn 95 in a few months and is every bit as energetic and well spirited, as she was 35 years ago when we first met. Unfortunately last week she lost her balance and fell, ending up in the hospital for a fairly minor and routine procedure. Surprisingly enough, this is the first time ever in her life that she had to see the inside of a hospital as a patient. But even laying on a hospital bed recovering from her operation, her spirits are still high and her mind 100% there. Wishing her a fast recovery and many more years of good health and happiness!

Kalopanagiotis Bridge

Posted on November 26, 2012 by Alexis Thomas

This past weekend, I decided to take a break from scuba diving (that has more or less consumed every one of my weekends for the last 4 months), and headed up to the mountains for a change of scenery. Nothing beats going up to my family cottage with the company of good friends, and spending 2 days of playing board games, watching movies, walking the nature trails and cooking loads of food.

This is a picture of an old bridge taken near the well known sulphur springs of Kalopanagiotis. I mounted both my ND2 and my ND4 filter on my Sigma 18-200 lens, to slow down my shutter speed and capture the flow of water. Taken with my tripod-mounted Canon 60D camera at F22, ISO 100 at 2 seconds.

Light Paintings

My journey into photography

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