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Canon EOS 70D, Canon EF 100mm f/2.8L Macro IS USM lens, 1/250 seconds @ f/5.6, ISO 100.

This week’s challenge was make lots of bokeh. Not really a challenge for me, but it seems the guest posts are heading that way (the first one was freezing action, and I shoot a lot of football). Oh well.

Yesterday was our eighth wedding anniversary, and the Internet tells me that I’m to get my wife salt. So I got her some flowers. Anyway, I decided that I’d shoot some salt as the bokeh for this week’s challenge. Problem was, the salt shots were pretty boring. So I went and grabbed one of Melissa’s necklaces, shoved it in the salt, et voila. I pulled the blues way up, because the colour in actual piece of jewellery is very subtle, and made the image look very washed out.

If you look close enough, you can see my red ring in the clasp.

Canon EOS 70D, Canon EF 100mm f/2.8L Macro IS USM lens, 1/125 seconds @ f/2.8, ISO 320.

When this week’s photo challenge was Portrait of Your Love, there was only one person I could make a portrait of.

So here’s Melissa. I set this up in the front porch.My long lens is currently set up for football (ie, it has the extender on it), so it’s too slow for shooting a nice wide-open portrait. But 100mm isn’t too bad, so I grabbed the Macro. In terms of lighting, my first idea was to use my umbrella, but it’s as big as the front porch, so I wouldn’t be able to see past it. Not so useful when you’re trying to take a photo. Instead, I blu-tacked a gold-white reflector to the window and used that to bounce the flash onto her. You can see the effect this had most in the background – it’s the back of a real estate sign, so it’s pretty much white. I then made lots of inappropriate comments, and fired away. I went for a tight square crop, because it seemed to fit the challenge best in my opinion.

Also, there’s another part of these portrait challenges. Each one has to be of a different person. So that’s going to be interesting.

Canon EOS 70D, Canon EF 70-200mm f/2.8 IS II USM lens @ 80mm, 1/800 seconds @ f/2.8, ISO 100.

The theme for this week’s photo challenge was Outdoor: Hot/Cold. In the southern hemisphere, this challenge was loosely interpreted as “show a photo of cooling off in the heat”. So I thought that I should get some people and throw buckets of water at them. So I did.

I got Susan and Melissa, and had them throw some water at each other. There’s a full album over at Dr yomcat shoots. The shapes that the water make are quite cool. As both models knew the water was coming, and it was a rigged photoshoot, the poses and stuff suck (you should see the pre-water photos), but it was fun. Not sure how good a job it did at cooling them off. It was a scorching 23.5° when I took the shots.

Canon EOS 70D, Canon EF-S 24mm f/2.8 STM lens, 1/80 seconds @ f/4.5, ISO 640.

I recently stumbled upon a photo challenge website. The way the site works is they put up a challenge every week (it appears to be on Sunday evenings), and then people go out and take photos. There are three curated posts a week, and then a random one. There are also overarching themes. It seems like a good idea, so I’m somewhat taking part.

The theme for fifth week (and the first one I’m doing) was B&W Barrier. Indeed, black and white photography is one of the overarching themes. I’ve never set out to shoot in black and white before, so this is going to be interesting.

Anyway, my first thought was to find a piece of plywood, but that didn’t last long. And then I thought of shooting the breaker wall at Lyall Bay, but that didn’t happen either. Instead, I took Melissa to her meeting in Brooklyn, and then went around Owhiro Bay a bit. There was nothing interesting and relevant around Red Rocks (well, a car did get stuck, but I had the wrong lens on to get it, and it wouldn’t make a good monochrome image).

I saw this balustrade on the bridge at Owhiro Bay. The sky was pretty boring, but there are some nice textures in the balusters. I’m not 100% happy with the left end of the photo, but cropping out the headland there doesn’t quite look right. I’m not cloning anything out either, as Cam puts so eloquently.

Canon EOS 70D, Canon EF 100mm f/2.8L Macro IS USM lens, 3.2 seconds @ f/11, ISO 100.

So, today is my birthday. And when I showed up at work this morning, I found a knitted birthday pig on my desk. According to the note, I need to feed him. Any ideas are welcome.

Also, I have a printer. So I’ll be making prints once I get some paper.