Ive been away learning..........But im back

     So its been a few weeks from my last post but hopefully i have some interesting stuff to share over the coming weeks. June 15th was Farthers day here in the uk and as a surprise my lovely wife booked me in for a photography workshop in Kilkenny Ireland (i did not have a clue about it).
     As ive said before ive learnt everything i know about photography by myself so the idea of being taught by someone who actually knows what they are doing was strange, i was looking forward to it but didnt know what to expect i was entering a part of the photography world i did not know it was going to be interesting.
     The workshop was held on a lovely farm in a small village called Bennetts bridge, the teacher Susanna had travelled the world as a photographer and was now a shepherdess looking after flock of zwartble sheep and twice a year she holds two photo workshops.

A close up of some of her sheep who weren't bothered by us one bit

they just wanted to be nosey and see if we had any food.

    The workshop was to be based on composition, we all sat and talked about the basics to see how advance others were (i was a bit more in the know than most which gave me confidence) then we got sent out into the garden to take photos..... of anything....... just try and work on the composition and pay attention to the background. Well man is it hard to just go and take a photo on demand and she was walking round checking on what we had taken and then giving us tips on what to do and not to do (scary stuff).

A macro of a cool looking flower, i havent a clue what its called but i

 really liked the shape and colours so used a wide aperture for an 

abstract feel.

All was going well i was getting some good shots and i was learning along the way, little things like getting a tighter crop, making sure the background added to the shot and didnt distract from the subject also try to avoid RED! it draws the eyes attention away from the subject so if you can keep it out or make it a main part of your shot, id never noticed before but since she told us this its the one thing i notice more than anything else while out shooting.

Probably my favourite shot of the day, a busy bee

collecting some pollen with more flowers blurred behind.

     The rest of the day was spent shooting some of the other animals she had doves, a horse and foal, hens, Alpacas and of cause sheep, photographing animals is something i enjoy but never find easy so it was good to get some tips on how to approach them in an unintimidating way and it allowed us to get close really close as my photo of the sheep shows.

     Overall it was a fantastic day with some very nice people, i had fun and leant more than i expected but most of all i found it reassuring i was doing things the right way its just the little changes that can make a big difference.

Colour v's B&W

I dedicate this post Colour v's B&W, its a topic some are very passionate about and take it a bit too seriously. I have contacts on Flickr who only shoot B&W and others that never do and its always colour but is one better really better than the other ?
 There are countless groups for both yet the largest are for B&W yet there are far more groups for colour and even more that let you upload both. Its one of photography's never ending battles like Cannon v Nikon or Prime lens v Telephoto they all have very little between them its just a matter of choice and personal opinion.
 I personally love both and use them frequently when processing images, in general i start to process a shot in colour and then try a b&w conversion just to see how it looks, sometimes i can work on an image and think nothing of it colour yet a quick change to b&w and it can transform the shot to something i love, yet some shots i think will be best in b&w and its in colour they blow me away.
Here's and example of a shot i was processing recently it was taken in Knockmany forest and is of some old Douglas fir trees with a stream running through.
I started my processing as normal changing bits and bobs and doing a bit of dodging and burning and got to a point that i thought looked good.

This shot was about to get uploaded when something i stopped and thought to myself id not looked at it in b&w, so went back into Lightroom and converted it to b&w.

I instantly loved what i saw, i still like the colour one but i think the b&w has more depth and contrast and so the trees pop more but again its just personal preference, some of you will think the colour one is by far the nicer of the two but without me doing both you wouldn't have had a choice and nether would i .
So what do i think colour or b&w ? for me they go hand in hand in a good processing system and could save a shot that maybe doesn't work in one from sitting redundant filling up your pc's hard drive and giving it a new lease of life by processing it in the other.

Time for new kit but is it new camera or new lenses.

So ive had a few cameras and like I said I love my D3100 but as a photographer I think your always looking for ways to improve image quality and one of the most obvious is new kit, but whats the best way to go new camera or new lens ? Well id been looking at a d7000 as my next step up ive seen amazing shots from my flickr contacts taken with one and nearly went and got one, but I decided to go for new a lens as id done all I could with the D3100 with the kit lens yet something in me wanted to see what the camera could do with better quality glass.
 Now lenses are not cheap and I did a lot of research on what glass lens would be a good upgrade and that made me realise just how expensive they are. I shoot mostly landscape so I wanted to go for a wide angle lens the Nikon 17-35mm f2.8 or the 17-50mm f2.8 were perfect apart from the cost my budget just wouldn't cover it, so I looked at 3rd party lens and found Sigma 18-50mm f2.8 I checked review after review and all said it was top quality glass, good fast focus with brilliant image quality and less than half the price of the Nikons so I went and got one.

 

This is a shot of a stream running through Fardross forest park taken with my D3100 and the sigma 18-50mm f2.8

 

Im so glad I went with the lens instead of the new camera as the image quality is so much crisper and sharper and if anything its made me love the D3100 even more as it shows even with a basic camera if you get some good glass for the front you can get stunning shots that are brilliantly sharp and detailed.


 

Hi and welcome.

Welcome to the amateur photography blog, my name is Brent Kinley im a keen self taught amateur photographer addicted for a good year and a half now and the reason im starting this blog is because when I first started out I knew nothing and I mean nothing, id never used a dslr so knew nothing of aperture, iso, shutter speeds it was all alien to me and to start with it was trial and error or shooting in auto :( but through the internet via sights like flickr and youtube I found information and ideas and began to understand how  and what other photographers were doing to get the amazing shots I was seeing on flickr and on the web, it inspired me to try new things and when I did and uploaded them it was a nervous wait to see what people would think, yet it was those comments and bits of advice that drove me even more it fed my slowly building photography addiction and that leads to this blog, I feel that without other peoples kind help and advice I might have given up on photography and just thought I wasn't good enough and so through this blog aim to share my enthusiasm in what ive learnt and what I will learn by sharing my work and explaining what where and how, ill show things ive done wrong, new techniques in shooting and processing ive learnt, really anything that happens in my photography journey over the coming months and just hope I can help or inspire others that's know little yet have keen interest in photography to give it a go.

My beloved Nikon D3100

So like i said ive now got a D3100 its quite a basic entry level DSLR it doesnt come with all the bells and whistles of more expensive cameras, but what it can do is take a bloody good picture. Ive had it 6 months now and for most of that i only had 2 kit lenses which arnt known for being made of the highest quality glass, yet they severed me well and produced some very nice images.

This was taken with the nikon 18 - 55mm kit lens

This was taken with the nikon 55 - 200mm kit lens

As you can see from the two shots above for a basic camera with basic lenses it does a good job and i think it punches well above its weight which is why i love it so much, dont get me wrong more expensive semi pro and pro cameras will be better but they also require better glass and thats even more money. So if your only starting your photography journey i can highly recommend the D3100 its cheap and performs well with with the kit lenes so making a perfect first DSLR for starting out.

A quick look into how i started into photography and where im at now.

Like most people it started with a point and shoot then one with better zoom, but eventually i got a bridge camera Fugifilm hs10 30x zoom tilting screen it looked cool and i thought it was the bees knees.

This is one of the first shots i took that i really loved, it was the first time id really thought it out and got what i wanted, yet at this time i had no processing skills i didnt even have any processing software on my pc.

HDR was the thing that first got me processing shots, at the time i thought it was so cool this was one of my first shots to get comments and fav's on Flickr.

It was at this time i started uploading more on to Flickr and quickly i found out the camera wasnt up to the standard of most, i had a good eye for a shot yet the images lacked sharpness and detail and noise how i hated noise. So i started looking into DSLR's and quickly found out that the bigger sensors gave much better image quality and less noise.......... that was it i had to get a DSLR............

My first DSLR was an Olympus e450 again i thought it was the bees knees and for a while it was it made my image quality improve it was crisp and sharp and not as noisy. The first thing i did was start to learn apature and DoF and play around with shutter speeds.

This was the first long exposure shot that i really liked it started a small obsession with LE.

The Sheep house.

This shot was one of the first to really get a large amount of good feedback and is one of the few shots i have printed and on my wall at home, yet it shows signs of my lack of experience the house should be more the left and i still had little processing know how or id have gotten rid of the posts in the foreground.

The Olympus lasted a year until i felt the need to upgrade again, i was looking at Nikon as my next move yet i couldnt justify going too high up the range and opted for the Nikon D3100 id seen some brilliant shots taken with it on Flickr and all the reviews said it was the best entry level DSLR going. 

Thats where i am now with the D3100 and my future posts will be the work ive been producing with it and the different processing skills ive built up along the way.