Re-jig and some backlighting

As you can probably tell I've given the format of the blog a bit of a re-jig this week, at the expense of actually going out and taking photos. After my over the top posting of images from 4 different shoots last week I've left nothing new in reserve for this week so will have to return to last week's well in pursuit of inspiration. I decided that I'd go with a theme this week for my images, the theme of backlighting. As a rule you're not generally supposed to shoot into the sun in photography, but seeing as I'm a maverick who plays by his own rules (one of them being to break the conventions of society) I decided to give it a crack. If you're doing people shots into the sun you generally need a flash to light your subjects features, but if you're going for a more abstract silhouette feel then this isn't necessary. Right, enough of the shit talking, time for some photos.

This first shot was taken in Green Park with my Canon 70-200 f/2.8 lens, a very nice bit of kit indeed. I was getting loads of weird looks from people that day who apparently didn't like me pointing my giant lens at them so I basically had to go completely behind this guy to avoid his steely glare. I had another magic photo lined up, a guy was smoking a cigarette on a bench and I contrasted the white smoke against the back of a dark tree, but he was well and truly on to me, looking round every 20 seconds or so with a surly scowl, so I never got the shot. Maybe his wife didn't know he smoked? Or perhaps he was a criminal like most people who smoke. Anyway, this was the one I got, I waited a while for some suitable people to walk past to balance up the image.



Photo number 2 was also taken in Green Park, although this was a little further down, actually, maybe it was St James Park, I never really know which is which around there. I had to move round to such an angle that the fountain was in front of some dark foliage, the obvious shot from straight on rendered the fountain almost invisible as the white water was lost in the white sun sky background. Again I waited for some walking people to give it another point of interest. I like the way the reflection off the water shoot out between the two characters, not really planned that way but a cool effect.



Last but not least this one was taken on my photoshoot with the glamourous houseguests of last week. I'd been down on the Southbank before and seen these guys selling hot nuts and deeply regretted not getting a shot of the steam coming off the cooker. This time round I gave my friend Kate some money to buy some nuts off him while I took the shot. I wasn't especially happy with how it turned out so I got her to go back and pretend to buy them again so I could shoot off a few more till I was happy. Not entirely sure the nut guy know what was going on, his English wasn't great, but he's a man and as such will do just about anything a pretty girl asks him to.

4 Sides of London

As I mentioned last week this is supposed to be a weekly blog, now, no sooner had I finished posting last week's entry than I went out and took some images I was quite pleased with. The compulsion to do an ad hoc entry was strong, but I told myself to wait as I may not have any photos to post for my standard Monday/Tuesday update and I would look foolish. I obviously didn't think this through too much as when you're looking for work there are loads of opportunities to get out there with your gear and get snapping, so for today's installment I'll be featuring 4 shots taken on different outings over the last 7 days.

This first one was taken on the way back to the tube after an afternoon's shooting, after I'd put the camera away for the day. As I approached this guard I loved how the light reflected off his sword, how there was some light on his face, but not much elsewhere. I waited a few minutes for the crowds to clear, deliberately underexposed the image to highlight the sword, and made a point of having the sword cut diagonally up through the image for a dynamic composition. The lesson here is to always keep your eyes open even after the camera's gone away, you can always whip it out again.




This next photo was taken when I went to the Chelsea Huddersfield FA game at Stamford Bridge. The story here is the lengths I went to to smuggle in my giant white lens, a lens which attracts a lot of unwanted attention when it's brought out at a major sporting event. The lens is too big to fit into a normal pocket, but I've got a North Face super warm winter jacket which is actually 2 jackets in 1, and the inner jacket has large pockets, pockets big enough to fit a giant lens. So, on an unseasonably warm February day I arrived at the game wearing my warmest double jacket with a lens hidden between the layers, on my back was a camera bag which looks like a regular backpack but with a semi-hidden compartment on the bottom which housed my camera body. I'd mentally prepared myself, come up with lines to feed security, loaded the backpack with jumpers to avoid suspicion about carrying an empty bag, the whole nine yards. Well, I got to the gate, scanned my ticket and walked striaght on through to my seats without a security check it sight! Was sitting 2nd rown behind the goals so managed to get some nice shots, was hard to pick a winner but I've gone with England midfielder Frank Lampard celebrating his second goal.




This next one was taken on Sunday morning as a few of us headed out to Regents Park for a kick of the footy (a real footy, not a soccer ball). Glorious brisk clear London morning, lovely blue skies, great light from a sun low in the sky. I took most of my shots with my big white lens, but I think the best shots were taken at the end when I whipped out the super wide angle. My mate Andy wanted a shot of him doing an exaggerated kick so I lay on the ground and got him to run up and kick virtually right on top of me. Lens was set to 12mm (18mm equivalent) so I managed to get his whole body in shot. I love how the extreme wide angle distort the perception and makes his boot look massive.




Last but not least I've got a few houseguests from Adelaide staying with me at the moment. Yesterday was a glorious clear day so I took the opportunity to take them on a walking tour of some of the sights and brush up on my portrait skills. I tell you what, when you combine great light, quality lenses and glamourous models the photos basically take themselves. I took close to 400 shots and of those less than 50 shots were shots I would consider poor, the strike rate of over 80% was phenomenal, but not as phenomenal as the light on the Thames as the sun was setting. This image was taken with my Sigma 10-20 lens set at 14mm and my flashgun, I've done virtually no processing of the image apart from a very slight boost in contrast and saturation of the RAW image, but no more than your average camera would do when processing jpgs. It looked just like this.

It begins...

A mate of mine, Chris, emailed me the other day. He included a link to a photography blog that he started recently whereby each Monday he uploads one or two photos from the last seven days and explains a bit about the shots. You've probably guessed what's coming next but for clarification purposes I'll tell you - I've decided to do exactly the same thing!

I'm not sure which day I'll make my update day, I'll see how things pan out over the next few weeks and what seems to work best, but rest assured some of that patented Billo insight will be beamed directly on to your personal computer through the miracle of technology on a weekly basis from this point on.

So, time to get the ball rolling I guess. This first shot below I took not more than 2 hours ago, there is this church about 5 minutes walk from my house that I've noticed before but never paid much attention to. I was walking past it on Tuesday last week and noticed the whole thing was illuminated in this magnificent purple light, it was out of this world. I didn't have my camera and tripod with me at the time but vowed to return at a later date and capture it. Well, tonight was that later date but to my dismay they hadn't turned the purple lights on and it looked just like it always does, but as I'd made a point of turning up just at the right time (30 minutes after sunset) I figured I could still capture some nice images. I used my Sigma 10-20 wide angle lens (set pretty wide at around 11mm) and took 3 images with a 1 stop bracket between each. After reviewing the images I decided on the best exposure and set the camera to manual for the rest of the shoot, every 7 minutes or so I added another few seconds exposure to compensate for the declining sunlight. This image was shot at ISO 200, f/4.5, 8 sec and the glamorous model is none other than yours truly.




The second photo was taken on Saturday and features my friend Teresa. She wanted some shots of her round London and I wanted to practise taking photos of people so it was a happy marriage. I was looking to get some shots that were a bit different to the standard "Me standing in front of Big Ben" but if was harder than anticipated. This photo was taken in Trafalgar Square looking West from the National Portrait Gallery, I was hoping there would be a bunch of pigeons in this spot as a silhouette of pigeons in flight would look pretty cool, but unfortunately there were none so I had to make do. I got Teresa to flick her head round with the intention of the sunlight catching the back of her hair, it's pretty much worked out as I'd hoped. I converted the shot to B & W and boosted the contrast in Lightroom afterwards but besides that it's pretty much untouched.