Ryewolf

I must have missed this, some really great shots, well deserved.

Welcome to the forums Clive

Thanks everyone, for your advice, I was using a cloth for glass, which is lint free, to clean each time I re-arranged the shot - having come across this problem before, I think this was airborn dust settling back again. The softbox and anti-static cloths sound like a good idea. I think it looked worse because they are quite small, requiring it to be closer in focus. I didn't use this image, as Colin pointed out is point of focus is a little off - I'd used autofocus, rather than selecting a focus point, but this image had the most dust specks. Many thanks, the way I look at it, the better I can capture in camera, means less time editing and touching up, particularly for something that is always going to be web-based. After all, time is money....

Thanks Colin and Phoenix. They do look fun to use, and quite considerably cheaper than Canon's T/S lenses, I've seen quite a lot of images taken with it, from portraits to buildings. I suppose it all boils done to how much use I might get out of it.

Thanks Fuji, I have been looking at investing in one of those soft boxes, saw a 90cm one that came with 3 lights for £99, so that might help. I think it's just general dust that's in the air, so maybe some antistatic spray would help. Thanks Colin, they are only going to be used on a website so no larger than 1000pixels on the longest length, that said it's still noticable, so anything that reduces the time I have to spend touching them up is a bonus. On larger products I've done it's not as bad. The grinders, however were only small - 50mm, so I did have to get fairly close in to fill the frame. I've added an image, we're not talking massive amounts of dust, but hopefully it's visible... (I thought that might happen, uploading the image to the forum - and it rescaling it has reduced the effect.)

Today, I've mostly been taking product shots as part of my work - I'm a web developer/designer, so I often get asked to do product shots, if it's a jetski it's not much of a problem, but small products, such as todays black metal herb grinders, I often find despite trying not to handlie them to much - fingerprints and smudges do show up - and using a cloth used for cleaning glass and optics - I'm still getting dust particles. Other than editing them out, just wondered if anyone had any tips for avoiding dust? - Well, other than building a clean room.. I suppose it one of those things, it's just that you can't can see them from the viewfinder and it's only after viewing them on a 24inch monitor that they become fairly obvious.

Just wondered if anyone has used Lensbaby optics? I've been looking at a Lensbaby Kit, which has the Composer Pro, plus Sweet 35 and Edge 80 optics - I know I said I'd burn the credit cards.....

​The Drake Circus one, I used to live on Union St.

I also paint and draw too. After that one I got even more complicated and did a circular repeating pattern that needed around 20 pieces per circle - these were all done in greens and kinda ressembled stained glass windows. Alas some of the pieces have fallen off - I know I kept them but can't for the life of me think where I put them. They are probably under the stairs in a box ..... labelled stuff... Yes, we are - though photography involves a lot of creativity too. It was actually your 1st painting post that got me thinking about my own paintings, which in turn led me to finding the picture of Katrina - which I thought I'd lost, now all I need to do is find all the others pictures I took at the same time.... They are probably under the stairs in a box ..... labelled stuff...

One I did whilst I was at Pymouth Art College. Oil on card, approx A2, using thinned down oil paint scraped over card using different sized 45 degree angled mounting board the apply the paint, cut into 12 squares, with each square being cut into 6 pieces then re-assembled. Tiger in the Jungle

Thanks BP, cracking shots there, particularly the first one.

There's two of them on the ledge at the moment. I remember from last year they often sat out of sight of the cameras.

I'm not an early bird, more of a night owl - but I'm prepared to make sacrifices... Though I could kill two birds with one stone and watch the sunset and stay awake for the sunrise, mid summer it's not hard to do. Yes. I've seen those Google pictures too, they all look great, hence my reason for asking, they all looked to good to be true. Often you get to places and you've got flat grey light - but hey, it's one of those things, and it never looks like it does. Then again, from my own persnal experiences of my local area, you can get wildy differing images of the same place at different times of day, during the year and under different light. I remeber last year going to Brough Castle, Brougham and Kendal Castles, it was a lovely day, but when I got to Keswick to go to Castlerigg Stone Circle, the clouds were rolling in over the hills and the light was terrible for photographs. Thanks for the input.

No, not a knock off copy of the classic film Brighton Rocks, but the ones out in Yorkshire, just wondering if anyone has been (I did try a search)? I've been thinking of going and couldn't decide if sunrise or sunset might be the best time. I know it's often a case of pot luck when dealing with outdoor locations and you can often get dramatic light and cloud at any point of the day.

Thanks Phil and Paul and Chris for choosing it. I hadn't expected it.

Welcome Ringo, that's exactly what I did when I got my digital camera last year, I used the Auto Settting for the first couple of months.

I've just been checking out the various trips, I wouldn't mind the Holy Island one (4 hours) - runs at 10am & 2pm - it is on the Ocean Explorer, max 12 people, so guessing it would be wise to advance book. Other than that, I don't really know the area at all, though I have seen nice photo's of Bamburgh and Dunstanburgh Castles at sunrise...

Nice painting, not the way I would do it, but still very pleasing. Art is very much like photography, very subjectibve, I come from a graphic design background, so I like bolder shapes and colours and less watecolour, but that's just me,

Thought I'd bump this back up, as Northumberland is a 180-190 mile each way journey for me, I'm going to have to come up the day before.... either that or set off at 11:30pm, drive through the night in order to get there before dawn.....

It could well be, anyway it's this weekend, I'm hoping to go either Sat/Sun depending on when the weather is best. I might even get the chance to try out some portrait photography, given the situation.

Thanks Nannyferret, hope everyone else is enjoying them. Day 12: Dusk: So, you're saying that no matter how many worms we eat..... Yes. There'll alway be more worms the next day?? Day 13: Worms!!! Day 13: Dusk: Let me get this straight, a bird God leaves behind wormms!! Yes!! To be continued.....

Welcome to the forums Phoenix, good to have you onboard. Phil is probably the man to ask about images sizes, I ususally keeo the file sze to less the 400k and not bigger than 1200 pixels on the longest length - but I host my images offsite, it may be different if you use the gallery facility on the forum.

A real cracker it is too, I was hoping someone would choose it. I know I posted one of a Gosling and there were several others as well, but Craftysnapper really made excellent use of the back lighting.

That said, the only place I've been asked about taking photographs was at Helmshore Textile Museum, where I had to fill in a form with all my details and basically saying that they wouldn't be used for commercial purposes. Many places, such as English Heritage, National Trust, WWT restrict photography to non commercial use, I imagine if half a dozen toggers turned up, setting up lights, tripods and 4 or 5 models you'd get asked what was going on..

Yes I hand draw them, scan them and colour in PSP7, I'll admit I'm not a cartoonist, but I do paint - mostly watercolour/gouache.