Blink, and you just might miss it.

Over in a beat.

A moment. The sound.

All that I hear, is all that I want to hear.

Caught up with the time?

When the time is write and the mood is set, I will arrive here, yet again.

“your my only hope”

With nowhere to go, you become stranded.

If I could just make it, then I’m sure I will be ok.

So i have started with an image, that if you follow me on twitter @teamdubb you would have seen posted last weekend. This was taken with my iPhone just after I had taken a shot of the fog coming over the island. The next image, is the image from my Nikon. I think you will enjoy it.

No Diving.

At last!….

I’ve been away from wordpress for long enough now. Things have just been way to busy to even think of posting here! Until now….

Had some quality time with my Nikon this week…well, 35 mins last Thursday to be precise. But those 35 mins were all that was needed! I was at kalles inn with the family for the weekend when suddenly this massively thick fog came creeping across the water! I jumped to the chance of getting some shots! I had some crackers that I will post but for now, here’s a little taste…..enjoy.

Photography Project

I’ve had a lot on my plate of late. One great way of getting away from it all, is by sticking a camera in front of your eye and start snapping! But I came to the conclusion that it’s time I started a Photography Project. I thought long and hard about this, and decided that I would have the most fun taking photos of something I love. That, my good friends, is Clouds! I’m a cloud gazer! I absolutely love clouds! I could sit for hours watching one by one trying to visualize different things in their fluffy goodness! Have you seen the album sleeve for The Verve’s latest album Forth? If you have, then you can tell I love it! If you have not? Then you must check it out! One of my all time favorite albums too. Ok, back to photography, and back to Clouds! So, after I had decided that my subject would be clouds, I searched out as many images and videos I could have looking for inspiration. Now, I know that there are some wonderful and extremely helpful photographers that I am in contact with on social networks like Twitter and Facebook, and they bang on about Get It Write In Camera! Now, I’m all for this and since being in contact with these fine people, my urge to photoshop my images has worn off to such an extent, that my time in cs5 is minimal. But, and this is a big important but, there is one process that I have learned from a fantastic Australian photographer Matt Lauder. After watching one of his videos on the website Vimeo about how he made his images more colorful and stunning using the threshold, in cs5 to find the white and black points of the image and set them in curves. This improves the image more than 100% and is well worth doing. I will be posting all of my Cloud images to my flickr page and then finally, once I have a set that I’m happy about, I will post that to the blog along with a video of the photoshop process I used. I’m hoping that you will join me on this process and view and even sometimes comment on the images as any criticism is really appreciated. Good or Bad. I’m also hoping that this will give me a little more development as a photographer and in the end, maybe a few cool prints out of it. Hey, if all goes tits up then at least I’ve had some fun doing it! Enjoy, and please feel free to check my flickr page out for images, the link is here in the blog.

Coolness

Matthew Watkins Wed Jun 1 8:08pm

Family Practice.

Had some quality time with the Family of late. Much needed. Managed to get some great practice shots in too. The shots are nothing special, but I’m just working on different colours, backgrounds, light, angles etc. If you got it. Use it. But remember to have fun too. Which we did.

Also, by the looks of things, I’ve found my logo text at last. Looks good don’t you think?

Coolness

Matthew Watkins Fri May 27 5:00pm

Kalles Inn

Some homework for me. I say homework as I’ve been given the task of taking photographs of Kalles Inn for the new website. These are a few shots from my workplace Kalle’s Inn. Here is one of 4 restaurant buildings we have on the area. This is a traditional Lapland Kota building. Here we can seat up to 60 persons and there is overnight accommodation for 12 persons. The menu we mostly serve in this building is a Cream Soup of Finnish Chantarelle Mushrooms followed buy Finnish Salmon that’s roasted in front of the fire as you can see in the 4th image. For dessert we serve a Vanilla Creme brulee topped with Finnish Cloudberries. As of late i have been introducing more and more main dishes into the menu by roasting Wild Boar, Beef Inner Fillet, Moose Inner fillet and once a whole piglet for a medieval themed wedding! The roof of this building has small fiber optic lights that make up the star sky from the night it was built. The first and second image were taken on Aperture priority at f5.6-f8 using a Polorizer Filter. The third and forth images were taken on fully manual f8 at 40′ second.

The next image is another of the restaurant buildings on the area. This is a little special. It is shaped like a lighthouse! It has a Wood Burning aitokiuas Sauna that can sit 10 – 15 persons and a wood burning hot tub outside that can sit 8-10 persons. On the Third floor there is a restaurant that can sit 8-12 persons. This is the ideal place to spend the months of the midnight sun.

For the image i used an ND filter taken at f20 at 25 seconds plus a polarizing filter. Minor adjustments in Photoshop again and for my eyes, this image is perfect. How about yours?

Coolness

Matthew Watkins Thur May 19 9:01pm

The Krisp Kalm Kvarken.

I finally get to post my images taken a few weeks back. There was no work for the weekend so what do we do? Pack up way too much stuff, and stay at our work place overnight. Well, it was Eurovision Night. Yeah, i know, how sad is that? Well its an excuse for the family to get together and laugh and joke and make fun of the artists performing! We arrived there pretty early in the day so i decided i would venture out to see what shots i could get. It was extremely still and the water was so calm! Here is a Google map shot From where i was shooting if your at all interested.

There are some great locations to shoot around this area and over the summer, i will hope to get as much done as i possibly can. OK , back to the photo’s. I love the effect on the water in these shots! Looks as if you can walk across it all the way to Sweden! These shots were taken around noon time using my Nd110 filter. I think I’m using this a little too much now but I’m really enjoying it! Only a slight Photoshop adjustment needed for each of these. I was using my polorizer filter along with the ND so i was ending up with a touch of vignetting only at the top of the image. So i just cropped out that if i did not want to use it and then just a slight exposure adjustment in each. Also, obviously, i processed 2 shots into black and white which I think work really well.

There’s enough chit chat now so time for the images! I would love to hear what you think off them in the comments section. Good or Bad, criticism is invaluable and much needed and appreciated!

Coolness

Matthew Watkins Thur May 19 8:29pm