Ferry Bridge- Welding Plate Long Exposure- Color Recovery

So here is my first attempt of recovering the color back when using a Welding Plate as a filter. I have a very heavy green cast before editing, so it takes some time and work to recover the image. I know the color is a little off in this image, but im happy with this as a starting block.

Weymouth Harbour- Welding Glass Long Exposure

So here is my second attempt taken on the same day as the previous image, hence the similar feeling of calm; not something i had intended on! However, yet again this served as a great learning tool and as a great basis to work on. I am particularly interested in the movement of the masts of the boats in the far left...Maybe something i look at in the future...

Stone Pier- Welding Glass Plate Long Exposure

Ok this was my first ever shot using my cheap solution to a 10 stop filter! As you can see it was a very calm day with little movement, not ideal for this type of shot! But never mind! As an experiment it worked very well! Definitely something to develop further!

£100 Ten Stop Filter, or £1.50 Welding Glass Plate?

Ok so i have started experimenting with long exposures. Some say that long exposure images are cliché and out dated. I agree, they look cheesy and are completely overdone. So why am i attempting them? Because i want to! They look like fun and i have never pushed my camera to the limit of what it can achieve, and a five minute exposure is defiantly doing that! 

So first step...Buy a ND filter. So knowing nothing about the strength of filters i bought a ND8 filter for a couple of pounds on Ebay. Why ND8? Because it was the strongest one i could get under £5. So i went out to the beach. Middle of the Day. Bright sunlight. ND8 Filter. Tiny aperture. And result? Crap! The longest exposure i could achieve even at F22 with iso set to 200 was 1/60 of a Second! I was expecting to be able to just use the Bulb feature and let the exposure run a couple of minutes. So after a bit of intense investigation (Holding the filter up the sun and then googling "What is the best filter for long exposures in the day" on my phone, i discovered unless i wanted to shoot on very dull days or at dusk/dawn, i had bought the wrong filter! I needed one that would be the equivalent of around 10 stops! Never mind, back on ebay!

To my shock a 10 stop filter is priced from around £80 up to £200! No chance of me spending that amount of money on a filter i may only use a few times! Never mind, that's the end of that. Maybe i will just try and shoot in the evenings or on a really dull winters day? But me being impatient i decided i must be able to make my own. My first thought was just to buy 2 or 3 more ND8's. Screw them together and job done. However this would mean waiting for royal mail and i am very impatient, so solution? 

I had an old pair of eclipse glasses in loft doing nothing, maybe i could use them? BRAINWAVE! Welding Glass! It has saved my eyes from sparks which i'm convinced are brighter than the sun many a time, surely it would be dark enough to create long exposures on a bright day! Holding the small piece of dark glass up to the bright sky, i could just about see the shadow of clouds in the sky. But they were cast with green....not quite a Neutral Density Filter! But i thought sod it, lets see what happens....

So on a bright calm windless day i took my first two images. There were absolutely no waves in the sea, and no clouds moving overhead, so i wasnt expecting much. To be honest, what is the point in taking long exposure shots if there is no movement to record? But hey, i have come this far, lets see what happens!

And just as i suspected, the result was bright green! Completely unusable unless i desaturate the image. I'm sure i will work out a way to recover the colour to how it should be, but for now i have created simple and somewhat elegent images using a piece of welding glass and two rubber bands! Ideal!

So would i buy a Quality 10 Step Filter? No! Why would i? I know the first two images i have created aren't amazing. I have a feeling i have lost some detail in the image due to the poor glass quality of the 'Filter', and at the moment i can only take images in black and white. But so what? It was great fun taking these images, and i think although the images lack any real movement and aren't particularly interesting, the technique has potential! 

Watch this space, i may soon be mastering this technique!

Phony Photographer?

Ok so i finished studying photography at Plymouth University over a year ago, and have yet to really do anything with my degree. I tell myself i have been too busy with work to think about getting on and making any real work. A few times i have taken a few snaps, but nothing more than some half asked point and shoot shots. I find myself feeling like a phony photographer! I remember finishing uni and thinking "I am looking forward to having a little break from photography". Well i think i have done that and some!

 So what now? I decide i am to challenge myself, and get out there and make some work! The whole way through uni i was using large format camera's, usually shooting 5X4, even the occasional 10x8 when funds allowed it! However, as i find myself now situated in little old Weymouth, i no longer have the resources to support this style of photography. So i decide to buy myself a digital SLR and a few lenses and start taking some photographs!

However, i know from experience i need to set myself objectives, both short term and long term in order to get a good level of productivity! So what are those objectives? First off i need to create a Blog (Check), Website and Business cards to get myself out there into the wider world. Second, i aim to make a small project, just experimenting with techniques i am able to achieve with a Basic DSLR and a few simple accessories. Once i have done this, i will set myself a full project. So here i am, writing my first blog, taking my first step towards validating my degree!