YouTube channel started, Queensferry crossing video.

Finally gave in and started a YouTube channel, still work in progress and I guess like my photograph with time and experience it will get better. I’m not a person that likes to be recorded so I will have to think of a way I will do this without getting myself caught or heard on camera. I have a few good ideas already and I have a friend who is very good with project planning and storyboards, so we’ll see what happens.

Anyway here’s a short video of images captured while walking over the new Forth Queensferry crossing which opens today for traffic.

Thanks for visiting.
Jacques

Royal Botanic Gardens Edinburgh Part I

Autumn 2012 I visited the Royal Botanic Garden in Edinburgh. It’s a amazing place and well worth a visit.

http://www.rbge.org.uk/

First part is about the amazing architecture and second one will be more about the outdoor areas. The attention to detail when they built the John Hope Gateway (building you enter through) is amazing. Here’s a few examples to show things that pop into your view as you walk through the building. 

Photographs by Jacques …

Glasgow transport museum Part 2

Second part of the Glasgow transport museum tour.

Slowly it has dawned on me I might have found the part of photography I like the most. People say look at the bigger picture, I think I prefer to show the smaller part of the bigger picture. Everyone’s seen the bigger picture but the small things in life pass us by!

Camera: Canon 1D Mark III
Lens: Canon EF 24-105 L IS USM
All indoors photos:
Aperture: F4
ISO: 3200
All outdoors photos:
Aperture: F4 or F8
ISO: 200

Description are below the photo to first give you chance to decide for yourself what it might be.

Easy one, a train lantern.Front of the train with the lantern. The side of a tram.A classic truck radiator and radiator cap.Norton motorcycle.
Fire engine’s pumps.

Now the outside of the Glasgow Transport museum.
Small conclave on the right hand side of the building.
Love the way the angle of the connecting plates draw your eyes to the roof and onwards to the sky.
Just had to take this photo. Another excellent example of the brilliant art around the building. This is the bicycle racks.This is a curved window, see if you can make out the landscape reflected.
If you are ever in Glasgow made a point to visit the museum. In part 3 I will show you the Glenlee which is moored behind the museum.

Photographs by Jacques…

 

 

Glasgow transport museum Part 1

I have visited the museum a few times and always find new things. The more I visit the less I look at the bigger picture and get pulled into small details of the huge machines and building. As I look at each photo I feel my eyes being ‘forced’ into certain direction depending on the shapes in the photo.

This is Part 1 of a possible 3 part post.

Canon 7D was used. ISO was mostly 800, Aperture of F4 or F5.6 were used.

The last 3 photos were taken with my Canon 1D Mark III with the ISO pushed to 3200 and aperture of F5.6.

Photographs by Jacques …

Blast from the Past Part III

Blast from the Past – Part 3, Feb-March 2011

A few more photos from 2 years ago. The photos were taken in the areas surrounding Bathgate and West Calder in Scotland. It’s nice to look back over these photos as they bring good memory back of struggling with learning the basics of photography. The camera did 90% of the work as I didn’t know enough yet to get the best out of it.

Bathgate Korean War memorial

Torphichen:


The Knock, Bathgate:

West Calder Park:

Photographs by Jacques…

Bangour village – Take 1

Bangour village, Scotland:

Every now and then we get surprised by what is on our doorstep. Bangour village was one of the biggest surprised so far for me as I have been living 5 minutes away for the past 7 years. At almost a 1000 acres it’s a very big site of derelict buildings all boarded up and spooky enough to give anyone the willies.

When I was told of Bangour village I immediately researched it. Here’s a few website to look at if you are interested to know abit more about Bangour village:   Wikipedia,  undiscovered Scotland, Bangour.co.uk and Bangourvillage.co.uk. The site is over 100 years old and was used for the movie ‘The Jacket’ in 2005.

The photos below were taken a few days (May 2012) after I was informed of the village, I dug them out today to go through as we are planning to revisit Bangour village this week and we popped in today for a walk.

These photos are my 1st attempt at black & white, I will be doing some research before we go back this week for tips and tricks to get the best out of a black & white photo. I think black & white does the site more judges than colour photos. As I was going through my coloured photos to decide which once I was to convert I found that photos you expect to be brilliant in black & white looks dull. There is a trick to it and I intend to work on getting it right.

After our next visit I’ll do a ‘Take 2’ post to show how I got on concentrating on getting the best out of black & white.

Photographs by Jacques…

Forth bridges at night – Night photography II

Night photosession at the Forth road and train bridges.

We haven’t been out for a while for a night photo session. After days of snow, rain and cloudy weather it was time to get out and get some photos done.

I used my Canon 1D Mark III with my new Canon 24-105 mm F4 L IS lens for this session. I think need to invest in a wide angle lens for photos like these in the future. At 24mm I didn’t get the whole of either bridges in the photos. Time to do some homework to see the best wide angle lens to use. I started at F22 to see how hard I can push it last night and settled on F10 with either 30 seconds, 15 seconds or 10 second exposure.

The wind plays such a big role in night photography. The photos looks great on the camera but once you get it on a large computer screen you can see what the wind has done to your ‘near perfect’ focus. Editing the photos afterwards gives you another level to change things if you aren’t 100% happy with the results.

It was great fun and I think I prefer night photography over day time. So much to do at night to force you to try new things to get the best out of the light and subjects. The best part of all is you can take almost anything that would be boring in daytime and transform it at night, having a famous and brilliant subjects like these on my doorstep is a extra bonus.

Forth bridges:

Probably the photo of the evening for me.

A few photos at different angles and spots of the train bridge.

A train decided to add some extra effects to the long exposure. Other than that it’s the same image as the 1st one.

I tried to cut the spotlights out to get a better image of the bridge, didn’t work to the extent I hoped but not that bad either.

One of the best scenes of the evening for me.

The road bridge at low tide.

From below the road bridge.

I hope you like these photos, I really enjoyed taking them.

Photographs by Jacques…