Went out with a friend last night to shoot a bit of astro. We went to Norah Head lighthouse on the Central Coast and I managed to get this despite battling the light from the lighthouse. Really like how it turned out.
It was nice being out under the stars again. I love the solitude and the perspective you get when you’re out shooting, particularly the moments between shots, standing there, staring up at the stars. It really makes you realise just how small a part of the universe we are. And how lucky we are to be here at all.
It was quite a cold, rainy day today but the clouds parted for just long enough for a lovely sunset and for me to take a few shots. About an hour later, it started raining again! Was perfect timing I guess.
My photo group’s home photo challenge for this week was a vintage theme. I decided I’d take the theme literally and took a few shots of some of the old film cameras in my collection, as well as editing a few photos from earlier in the week to look a bit like film.
It was a fun theme and I’m happy with how the shots turned out. It was fun going through my camera collection too. The Canon TLb was actually my grandfather’s film camera from the 1970s and it’s still in pretty good condition. The Olympus doesn’t work very well anymore unfortunately but I still use the Pentax quite regularly.
I have a few others I didn’t photograph as well, I might do those another time.
A young woman Sits by the lake As the sun sets On another day
I took this shot yesterday evening while going for a walk along the lakefront. I loved the way the light was hitting the water and I was trying to work out a way of showcasing that when this young woman sat down for a breather right where I was looking at shooting.
Normally I would have asked if she minded being in the shot but with social distancing at the moment and as I was shooting telephoto and she was a fair way away, I couldn’t really ask. So I decided just to snap a quick shot but make sure she was in silhouette.
I like how the shot came out and it’s really about the contrast between light and dark so the silhouette works really well for the shot.
For what it’s worth I’m not really someone who likes taking photos of random people but I started out with street photography where having people in the shot can often add to a photo so I developed my own set of rules for what I was comfortable with and I’ve pretty much stuck to them ever since.
My rules are, if I can ask first I will but when that’s not possible, if someone walks into my shot or if having someone in the shot adds something interesting to the photo, then I’m okay with it. But the shot mustn’t put them in an unfavourable position and I prefer not to have them be obviously recognisable if possible. And if anyone would rather not have been in a shot, I’ll delete it no questions asked.
Basically I try not to be a dick. It’s not that hard really and it’s worked pretty well so far!
Some photos from a quick walk along the Belmont lakefront yesterday evening. I set myself a theme to only shoot things that had blue in them in some way.
