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.