London Photo Walk - April 2017
Come and join me on the first of my London Photo Walks for 2017!
Click the audio player just below to listen to the audio, or watch the announcement on YouTube instead. Can't listen or watch right now? All of the details are below if you'd prefer to read instead!
On Sunday 30th April I'll be hosting my annual walkabout in London. As always this is a completely FREE event and a chance for you to come and meet myself and some other like-minded photographers. With limited spaces available I would encourage you to register your place as soon as you can using the form at the bottom of this post (those of you viewing this in your email may need to open it in their browser), or head on over to the events page to register.
As is very much the tradition with all the walks I host and as past attendees will attest; we will start out at one of London's best coffee shops - The Department of Coffee and Social Affairs on Carnaby Street. We'll then hit the streets, with plenty of stops for discussion (and more coffee!). We'll cover a couple of miles before then ending with a meal to discuss the day (optional)
What, Where, When?
Date: Sunday, April 30th
Meeting Time: 13:00 (UK Time)
Finish Time: Circa 17:30 (UK Time)
Meeting Location: The best coffee shop in London! If you've been on one of my walks previously you may well be familiar with The Department of Coffee and Social Affairs, on Carnaby Street (W1F 7HD). I'll be there from around 12:00, so if anyone wants to meet for a delicious pre-walk coffee, stop by and we'll get acquainted. This rather small, but superb coffee shop is located at the North end of Carnaby Street down one of the small alleys. Look out for the Black signs.
Transport: To get to Carnaby Street you'll need to take a short walk from either Oxford Circus (Central Line) or Picadilly Circus (Bakerloo Line)
Register
To remain up to date with any possible changes to the walk and to register your FREE place, be sure to complete the form below. I look forward to seeing lots of you there!
[NOTE: registering for this walk will subscribe you to the Blog. You can unsubscribe at any time, but to ensure you remain up to date with changes to the itinerary, please be sure to remain a subscriber until after the walk]
Postcard Photographs of London
I went out and about in London last week with my good friend Paul Griffiths, host of the Photography Live and Uncut Podcast & YouTube channel. I find it much harder to produce my best Street Photographs when I'm with someone else, mostly because I'm distracted by the chat, but on occasion it's good to get out there with someone else and discuss photography as well. On this day I captured photographs a little different to my usual street style
All of the photographs you see here in this post were made using an Olympus OM-D E-M1 Micro Four Thirds Mirrorless Camera and the Olympus M.Zuiko 17mm f/1.8
On this particular day I was quite pleased with some of the street photographs I had made, but I was more pleased with the postcard style photographs of London I had managed to capture towards the end of the walk. We were very fortunate to have a beautiful sunset combined with typically dramatic British clouds, giving for a sky that was asking to be photographed. So, whilst I've photographed Big Ben so much to the point I often don't even look at it when I'm walking by it, this day I simply had to get a shot!
Big Ben (The Elizabeth Tower) at Sunset
The post processing here is a simple shadow lift in Lightroom and a little bit of sharpening. I used the brush and applied some added clarity to the clouds as well.
We made our photographs of Big Ben with the dramatic cloud back drops and moved on to the south side of the river. The sky was still glowing at this point and so more photographs were in order. The vibrant gold had somewhat faded by by this point, but the clouds had shifted. I opted for an in-camera HDR here because I was shooting in the direction of the sun but wanted to maintain some detail in the Jubilee Bridge. I set my Olympus OM-D E-M1 to bracket for 3 stops and exposed half a stop over, meaning I captured all the details in the shadows. I didn't have my tripod or even my Joby Gorillapod with me, so I simply rested the camera on the wall.
Post Processing here included taking the image in to SilverEfex Pro2 and applying the Full Dynamic Range Smooth filter to really enhance those clouds. Then, back in Lightroom I bought the shadows up and the highlights down.
After a few minutes we ambled towards South Bank, which from where we were walking would take us under the London Eye. Another tourist attraction that I often don't look twice at because I find it awkward to photograph. Again, having it seen it so many times now (especially as I get in to London at Waterloo Station) I tend to walk on by without shooting it. But, another positive of walking around London with someone else is that you'll often find yourself stopping to wait for them and sometimes shooting things you perhaps wouldn't usually photograph. This is an example of just that:
The next day I was back in London for work and spent the day at the office, not really getting out. In England at this time of year (December) it's dark by 3:30pm and so by the time I had left the office it was pitch black. But I like this! If you're a subscriber to my blog or read the monthly Olympus Magazine you may recall I was featured back in June - even though the work shown in the magazine was photographed during the darker winter months.
From my office in the rather palatial St James' area of London I prefer to walk the route back to London Waterloo, rather than jumping on the tube. The difference in time is negligible, but the photographic opportunities are much better. My route often takes me back through Covent Garden.
One of the great things about London though is that it's never really that dark. The quality of the light isn't fantastic, but if you look for the illuminations and sources of light you can usually get a shot worth sharing. And with the incredible dynamic range that the E-M1 offers us, we can be sure that we're going to get some details in the shadows:
I took a little detour through the market in Covent Garden, which is always illuminated, no matter the time of year, but at Christmas it's really quite special:
This last one is for the Star Wars fans among us :) Like many people out there, I'm counting down to the 17th December as much as I am Christmas. I've booked my tickets to see The Force Awakens at the London Science Museum where I'll be watching the movie in 70mm format! Exciting times!
You can download all of the Hi-Res files in a Zip file right here (13.4Mb), or you can view each photograph in full size by clicking each photograph below. (Just click the download link beneath each picture to download them individually). Alternatively, you can click to enlarge, right click on the image and then choose 'Save As' if you're using a Windows computer
All of these photographs are 2560 pixels on the longest edge (suitable for most Macs and widescreen laptops and monitors).
For more posts like this and information relating to Olympus Cameras, photographic techniques and general musings - be sure to subscribe to the blog!
Thanks for stopping by.
Richmond Park Free Wallpapers
Let's be honest, there is only so much you can do to be creative when shooting a subject such as a Deer. In particular, Red Stag Deer at Richmond Park.
Of course you can play with the light, hope the stags rut and do something interesting, but mostly everything you would expect to see has been photographed time and time again and is all readily available to view online with on quick Google search returning many of the same photographs.
So, how to be different?
I've been to Richmond numerous times now, mostly with Neil Graham and each time I've come away with what I would consider to be safe shots. The sort of photographs you'd see in the results of the Google search I mention above. So today I intentionally looked for different things to photograph and also had in mind other compositions. Thanks to the EVF in my beloved Olympus OM-D E-M1 I could also better judge exposures and can, as a result, more easily experiment when shooting in to the light, as you'll see below in a few shots.
Now I'm not suggesting that these photographs of mine are revolutionary and brand new or that i'm the first to produce photographs like this (of course I'm not!), but for me as a photographer they're certainly a departure from the standard type of shots I've made before on previous visits to Richmond Park and as a result, to me at least, they're something a little fresh and dare I say interesting. But that's down to you, the viewer to decide.
Whatever the case may be I've processed, cropped and exported these so that they will be ideal desktop wallpapers / backgrounds and they're all available for you to download for free
You can download all of the Hi-Res files in a Zip file right here (13.3Mb), or you can view each photograph in full size by clicking each photograph below. (Just click the download link beneath each picture to download them individually). Alternatively, you can click to enlarge, right click on the image and then choose 'Save As' if you're using a Windows computer
All of these photographs are 2560 pixels on the longest edge (suitable for most Macs and widescreen laptops and monitors).
All of these photographs were made using an Olympus OM-D E-M1 Micro Four Thirds Mirrorless Camera and the Olympus M.Zuiko 40-150mm f/2.8 PRO with the MC-1.4 1.4x Tele Converter fitted. As a result my effective focal length on the day was 112-420mm. The maximum aperture of this combination is f/4. This was constant throughout the entire zoom range.
1. Golden Mist
2.2Mb - Download Here
2. Morning Dew Drops
2.9Mb - Download Here
3. Stag in the Mist
2.8Mb - Download Here
4. Basking
2.5Mb - Download Here
5. Hot Breath
3Mb - Download Here
Copyright Notice
Please enjoy these photographs. But be kind: Do not edit these photographs and claim them as your own. Don't sell them without my permission. Do not use commercially without contacting me @ michael@rammellphotography.com - a license for photographs made at Richmond Park must first be obtained. Whilst I own the copyright to these images, I would need to first obtain a license to sell them.
All works are Creative Commons Licensed:
Richmond Park at Golden Hour by Michael Rammell is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Based on a work at www.michaelrammell.com.
Gear for Street Photographers
On April 18th I'll be hosting another great photowalk in London! If you're a subscriber to the blog then you may have already seen that this walk will be something slightly different to the usual walk.
Previously, walks have started in the morning with us stopping for lunch, however, this walk will start at 1pm and see us take in quite an extensive route. We'll make a 4pm stop in Covent Garden, whereby those wanting to join the walk at a later time can meet us then.
The idea behind the later start is so that we can stay out later and photograph London at night! The sights and scenes change when the sun goes down and of course the way you shoot will also have to change: higher ISO's, lower shutter speeds and pockets of illuminations. There's more though: long exposures and cityscapes.
After the sun sets we'll stop for a bite to eat before heading back out into the city to photograph some long exposures of The River Thames
Tripods
With this walk starting at 1pm, so the idea of carrying around a large and heavy tripod for the entire day may sound very unattractive indeed, so I wanted to propose that those of you joining us have a good look at the Gorillapod's from Joby.
I've got the Gorrillapod with a ball head for my Olympus and it's excellent: fits neatly into my bag and has a ball head too. It's incredibly light and superbly useful! I've tried a few other solutions, but to be honest the Gorillapod is the best of them all.
They come in different sizes and there options with and without ball heads. If you're interested in picking one up you can get them reasonably priced through Joby's shop on Amazon, right here:
Gorillapod for CSC's (Fuji, Sony A7's, Olympus etc)
http://bit.ly/joby-gorillapod-csc-ballhead
£23.66
Gorillapod for DSLR's
http://bit.ly/joby-gorillapod-slr-ballhead
£39.99
Join Us
If you're interested in coming along for the walk simply register your interest over on the events page. Or, if you're a member of Ready Steady Pro, or The Guild of Photographers you can confirm your attendance using the events page for those Facebook communities too.
See you on April 18th!!