Archive for 2009

On this day, 40 years ago, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first human beings to set foot on the surface of the moon. To celebrate the anniversary of this incredible achievement, we have decided to post a few of our favourite lunar photographs.

Eiffel Tower

The moon can often add an additional dimension to an otherwise normal photograph. Recently I was visiting the Eiffel Tower in Paris when I noticed the moon rising above the city. I moved into a position where I could photograph the Eiffel Tower with the moon behind. I took a bracketed sequence of shots and then combined them as an HDR image so that I could balance out the illuminated tower with the moonlit clouds and the streetlights below.

Lunar Eclipse

On 3rd/4th March 2007, we were lucky to be in the right place at the right time; watching a total lunar eclipse under a clear night sky. We set up our 400mm f/2.8 lens and stacked a 1.4x and a 2x teleconverter to give us a focal length of 1,120mm! Camera shake was amplified at this huge focal length, so to minimise vibrations we used a shutter release cord and set the camera to “mirror lock-up” mode. Mirror lock-up raises the mirror in the camera early and therefore reduces vibrations when the shot is taken (putting your camera into “live view” mode would also achieve this). At this focal length the moon travelled surprisingly fast across the viewfinder so we need a shutter speed of at least 0.6s to get the moon sharp (note that serious astro-photographers would have used a tracking mount to move the camera at the same rate as the Earth’s rotation).

During the height of the eclipse, the moon goes red as the only light reaching it has to travel through the Earth’s atmosphere. The moon also becomes much dimmer so we had to push the camera all the way up to ISO 1600 to capture the phenomenon. You can see the full gallery showing the progression of the lunar eclipse here.

Moon Beam

This is an experimental photograph that we took last year in Botswana. There was a lot of dust in the air so the moon was not very bright. This allowed us to take a long exposure of the moon as it ascended without the shot completely blowing out. The resulting image looks like something out of Independence Day – a beam of light coming from an alien spacecraft!

Every now and then it’s good to step outside your photographic comfort zone. This is what I tried to do last week when I started a project to photograph flowers. The initial idea was to produce huge prints that had a studio-like quality about them. The key things that I really wanted to get right were composition and lighting. Although the concept of photographing a beautiful flower on a black background is a bit of a cliché, there is a reason why it is so popular – the results can be really striking.

In order to create a series of massive prints, I needed to take very high resolution images. The problem with making big prints from 35mm DSLR files is that they often require interpolation to get the required dimensions at an output resolution of 300dpi. The only way of avoiding this is to use a camera that already has a high native resolution, i.e. lots of megapixels! I’ve always wondered about the quality that digital medium format systems could offer and since I was recently given the opportunity to borrow one, I thought this project would be the perfect chance to try it out and see for myself what all the fuss was about!

The camera that I used was the Hasselblad H3DII-39, a 39mp beast with a 48×36mm sensor (approximately double the size of a 35mm frame). The huge sensor size results in astounding detail, low noise levels and subtle tonal gradations. The 16 bit files at ISO 50 have amazing vibrancy and dynamic range.

After getting my hands on the camera and spending a bit of time figuring out how to use it, I started to set up my first shot. I was using a 120mm f/4.0 macro lens. The close working distance coupled with the large sensor meant that typical apertures necessary for a decent depth of field and sharpness were around f/16 to f/32.

Photographing the flowers against a black background often meant the Hasselblad’s metering system wasn’t able to provide accurate results. Each photograph would have different amounts of the frame filled with the flower, meaning that most of the metering modes (centre-weighted and averaged) were fooled. To get reliable exposures I used a Sekonic light meter and I reduced the contrast by using a reflector to shade the flowers.

Due to the small apertures and working distances, a tripod was essential to prevent camera shake. Using mirror lock-up and a shutter delay of between 5-10 seconds allowed the camera vibrations to dampen before the image was recorded. This is very important, since the high resolution of the Hasseblad’s sensor makes poor focus and camera movements immediately obvious, especially when blown up to 100%. However, if everything remains sharp then the level of detail captured by the 39 megapixel sensor is just astounding.

Apart from enjoying something a bit different, I have learnt that branching out and diversifying your subjects can really improve other aspects of your photography, both technically and creatively.

Enter our current photo contest: Pet Photo Competition

Update! Click here to view the winning pictures from this competition

We are excited to announce the second Burrard-Lucas photography competition! With over $2,000 in prizes, this contest promises to be even bigger than the first!

This is a travel photography contest with the theme “Mysterious Places”. Let your imagination and creativity run wild!

This competition has been generously sponsored by Lensbaby and SmugMug. We have some fantastic prizes on offer…

Prizes

1x Overall Winner:

1x People’s Choice Winner:

2x Runners up:

8x Highly Commended:

The “People’s Choice” winner will be selected by public vote at the end of the contest.

The deadline for entry is 31st October 2009. Please read the rules before entering.
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I have recently returned from a fantastic ten-day trip to Indonesia. I started in Tanjung Puting National Park on the island of Borneo where I spent several days photographing Orangutans. I then flew on to Java where I explored the ancient Buddhist monument of Borobudur and some spectacular volcanic scenery.

Kalimantan, Borneo

Indonesia is the world’s fourth most populous country and as a result there is tremendous pressure on the land. Large-scale deforestation (much of it illegal) threatens the survival of many endemic species. Tanjung Puting National Park is a large area of protected wilderness in southern Borneo which was established in the 1930s to protect Orangutans and the unique Proboscis monkey. The park is very remote and it took me two days just to reach the village of Kumai on the boundary of the park. The interior of Tanjung Puting can only be accessed by boat and so I spent the next four days sleeping, eating and chugging along on a colourful “klotok” (river boat).

My primary base in the park was Camp Leakey. This research facility was set up in 1971 by Louis Leakey who was mentor for three world famous primatologists; Jane Goodall and Dian Fossey (known for their work with Chimpanzees and Gorillas respectively), and Dr Birute Galdikas, who has been based at Camp Leakey since 1971 and is a leading authority on orangutans.

Over the years, orangutans orphaned by deforestation and the illegal pet trade have been taken to Camp Leakey and returned to a life in the wild. These rehabilitated orangutans live alongside and breed with wild orangutans in the area. I was fortunate enough to photograph both rehabilitated and wild orangutans during my time in the park.

Observing these lively primates was fascinating because their behaviour can be so human; the mothers were tender & caring and the youngsters playful & mischievous! However, the highlight of the trip was when I came face to face with a dominant male orangutan whose size and strength was quite awe-inspiring! Dominant males such as the one shown above can have an arm span of 2.3 m and weigh over 118 kg – females by comparison weigh just 45 kg!

Borobudur, Central Java

Having survived the mosquitoes, leaches and ferocious ants of Borneo’s rainforest, I flew on to Yogyakarta in central Java. Here I got up at the crack of dawn to visit the ancient Buddhist monument of Borobudur at sunrise.

Borobudur was built over 1,000 years ago in the ninth-century AD. The monument comprises six square platforms topped by three circular platforms, and is decorated with 2,672 relief panels and 504 Buddha statues. A main dome, located at the centre of the top platform, is surrounded by 72 Buddha statues seated inside perforated stupa (shown in the first image above). The monument looks out over the twin-volcanoes of Mt. Merapi and Mt. Merbabu.

Mt. Bromo, Eastern Java

The final leg of my Indonesia trip was to Eastern Java, home of the picturesque Mt. Bromo. I first saw pictures of Mt. Bromo a few years ago and I was instantly captivated by the mythical prehistoric nature of the landscape.

Photographing Mt. Bromo at sunrise involved rising at 3.30am and getting into a jeep that looked like it was designed for driving on Mars! I suffered an uncomfortable 45 minute drive along a steep and bumpy track in order to get to the view point before the sun came up. I hastily set up my gear and took some long exposures while the stars were still visible and the landscape was lit by the first hints of dawn.

Later in the day, the light was not good enough for taking photographs, so I decided to capture the steam billowing out of Mt. Bromo by shooting a time-lapse clip. As I shot the sequence, the clouds rolled in overhead and added an extra dimension to the scene. You can view my time-lapse clip here.

Kawah Ijen, Eastern Java

The last stop of my trip was Kawah Ijen, a huge volcanic crater with a one-kilometer-wide turquoise-coloured acid crater lake. To one side of the lake is an active vent where gaseous sulphur billows out from the earth. Local people funnel this gas through ceramic pipes in order to cool and condense it. The sulphur drips from the end of these pipes and freezes into solid rock. The miners then hack the sulphur into slabs and carry up to 90kg of it up the treacherous path to the crater rim and a further 4km down the side of the volcano. Each miner will make the trip two or three times a day and will earn a total of around $5 per day. I can safely say it is the hardest job I have ever witnessed!

While trying to photograph the miners at work, I got a first hand taste of what their working conditions are like. On one occasion I got too close and the wind blew the noxious gasses over me. I almost fell over as I was hit by a stinging, burning pain in my nose and throat. Many of the miners had just a flimsy scarf wrapped around their faces and were right next to the active vents – I have no idea how they survive it! Here are a couple of pictures me in action: before being suffocated and while being suffocated! After my “near death” experience, I decided to keep a safe distance from all manner of mining operation!

For a few more photos from my trip to Indonesia, please visit my photoblog.

Enter our current photo contest: Pet Photo Competition

We would like to thank everyone who entered our recent Wildlife Portraits competition. Matthew and I have been overwhelmed by the response and have spent the last week sifting through the 3,500 photographs that were submitted.

The overall standard of photography was fantastic and we had an extremely difficult task in whittling the submissions down to a final selection. We had to be very harsh and eliminate any photo that wasn’t technically perfect. We then took into account more subjective factors such as composition, originality, atmosphere and character to pick the images that stood out the most.

In the end Matthew and I unanimously settled on Thomas Vignaud’s Tompot Blenny as our winner. The perfect framing and spot-on exposure combine to beautiful effect. Thomas has used the strobe light masterfully to gain a sense of the blenny looming out of the darkness. Ultimately however, it was the blenny’s characterful face and frilly appendages that clinched it for us! Congratulations to Thomas – he has won a Olympus SP-570UZ digital camera.

We have also selected two runners-up and eight highly commended entries which we feel exhibit the wonderful quality and diversity of the images that were submitted. All of the photographs appearing here fought off stiff competition and deserve special praise.

Given the success of this first competition, we have decided that we will launch another photo competition soon! If you would like to be notified when this competition is announced then please subscribe to our blog via RSS feed or email updates.

Now without further ado, click here for the winning pictures!

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While Will was exploring the historic sights of Rome, I was the other side of the world experiencing the incredible natural beauty of New Zealand.

I’ve just returned to the UK… I’m exhausted from the jet lag and the 24 hour journey but somehow I’m still finding the energy to write this post. The trip was a milestone for me (though not a very significant one) in that it was the first time that I have managed to fill an 80gb portable hard drive! The main reason for this is that I was shooting almost exclusively with the Canon 1Ds MK III. The 21 megapixel files from this camera munch through megabytes at a disturbing rate!

New Zealand is an amazingly diverse country, famous for its stunning landscapes and unusual wildlife. High levels of rainfall across the whole country lead to a land of verdant hills, snow capped mountains and glaciers that stretch down into temperate rainforest. The downside of this is that when the weather turns nasty, your camera can be rendered unusable. I discovered this during a 3 day spell in which I only managed to take about 20 photos! On the whole, however, the weather was good during my trip and it didn’t hinder me too much. I managed to explore both the North and South Islands and visited a variety of locations that gave me a good flavour of the country. Amongst my favourites from the trip were White Island, the gannet colony at Cape Kidnappers and the Franz Josef glacier.

White Island is recognised as New Zealand’s most active volcano and is located within the Bay of Plenty. People can reach the island either by boat or helicopter. I left from the mainland at sunrise which ensured that I could explore the island without any large groups of people getting in my photographs. The hour long boat journey was choppy, but I was filled with anticipation and suspense. We made landfall on the island at an abandoned sulphur mining factory. The buildings had been destroyed in an eruption in 1914 that killed all 10 of its workers.

Shortly after landing at the dock, a helicopter arrived to take me up and get some unique perspectives of the island’s features. The pilot was absolutely brilliant and he was more than willing to let me have the door taken off to improve my mobility and the quality of my images. Leaning out of a helicopter at 5000 feet with nothing but a harness holding me in was definitely one of the most exhilarating experiences of my life!

Since the only native mammals of New Zealand are a few bat and seal species, most wildlife photographers tend to focus on the country’s birdlife. One of the best parts of my trip was photographing the Australasian gannet colony at Cape Kidnappers. Unfortunately most of the birds had left either for Tasmania (the adults) or the Great Barrier Reef (the chicks) but luckily a few stragglers were left behind for me to photograph. It was great being able to crawl up close to these beautiful birds, despite having to lie down in all the excrement and cemented feathers!

My final stop in NZ was the Franz Josef glacier in the Westland. From here I did another scenic helicopter flight into Mt. Cook (Aoraki) National Park. Just after the sun had risen up above the peaks, we soared along the Franz Josef glacier and into the midst of the highest mountains in the Southern Alps, including the likes of Mt. Tasman and Mt. Cook. Once again I had the door of the chopper removed, but this time the 13,000 foot altitude took its toll on my fingertips – they got so cold that I couldn’t feel the shutter button on my camera. In the end I resorted to deftly forcing my frozen index finger onto the top of my camera in the hope of hitting the right button. This was probably my most painful, but also one of my best photographic experiences to date!

I hope you enjoyed looking at some of my photographs. Will also visited New Zealand a couple of years ago and has a few pictures on his photoblog.

Over the Easter weekend, what better place to visit than Rome? I was fortunate enough to spend last weekend exploring some of the historic sights of Rome and the Vatican City.

Although I tend to focus on nature photography, I believe that photographing a broad range of other subjects makes me a better photographer. I therefore spent the weekend snapping travel shots, some of which I have included below.

St Peter’s Basilica, Vatican City:

St Peter’s Square, Vatican City:

Ancient Rome: