Aperture gif animation

I was helping my sister decide which lens to buy for her camera the other day, and in going through the different options, I decided to show the benefits of playing with apertures, and what a difference these can make. In doing so, I took a series of shots from f22 - f1.8 (with my Canon 50mm f1.8).

This is a shot set up, with all the same settings, bar the adjustment of the aperture, hopefully this shows how much fun it can be to play with different apertures. I don't know about any other photographers, but my camera is 90% of the time set to aperture priority mode. I think getting the right depth in a photograph, is very often the key to turning good shots, to great shots. I think this also demonstrates how, not only at 1.8, can you knock the background out, and focus on the foreground, but get a totally different shot from f16 - f22, and create the star effect in the streetlights.

I've since turned this little tutorial into a small gif, which hopefully shows how different f stops create these different images:

First wedding of the year

Heather and I photographed our first wedding of the year over Easter, and what a wedding it was! The wedding was at Trinity Church in Bungay, and the evening reception at Waveney House Hotel in Beccles.

It was for Dave and Becky, I've known Becky and her family since day dot, so it was an absolute pleasure and honour to be asked to photograph it for them. We had all sorts of weather, which is obviously expected for this time of year (isn't it?!) and also meant that it could be perceived that these were taken on different days. A large contrast from snow to sunshine, above all though, it was a touch cold!

We were guests too, and the whole wedding felt very close and personal (my brother was also the DJ, rolling back the years!), we had an absolute fantastic day. We photographed a wedding just before Christmas where we had a dancing Nun, I didn't think we would be able to top that until the groom's family came out with their trousers rolled up and tea towels on their head and danced to Walk Like An Egyptian (a family tradition, can only imagine what Christmas is like!), and to top it off, my brother in law was wheeled round the dance floor by the bride's brother...... we don't get out much in Suffolk.....

I also had a good chance to use the 6d, along with a 60d which I synced up together to do something different for their first dance. Here are a few shots that Heather and I captured for the day.

Walking in the Snow

For the past year, me and my brother in law have been doing some pub crawling walks across Norfolk and Suffolk. We've done 7 in all so far, and the aim is to visit 5 pubs on a Saturday afternoon, trekking across footpaths. James is very much in to his writing, and obviously I like to take the odd picture or two, so it's been a good adventure for us both, as we've been documenting it through our own favourite ways. There's talk of turning this into a book, but for now, the aim is to complete 12 before the end of the this year. We set out this weekend around Eaton, Little Melton and Hethersett. My brother lives in that area, so he tagged along too. I also purchased the new Canon 6d, so was a good chance to test it out. It feels very similar to the Canon 60d I use for work, but does perform better, and the performance in low light was very noticeable. Here are a few photos from last weekend.