Historic Dockyard - British Tattoo Exhibition

These are the 100 hands, part of the British Tattoo Exhibition at Chatham Dockyard until the end of September. Had a fab day there with Julia, James and of course Tedster, having a wander around the exhibition itself and the Dockyard in general. Think James was suitably impressed with what's on show there as he's either never been before or certainly not for a good many years. Given it's Tedster and I's favourite place we were happy to show him around.
 

Coney Banks!

So, having had another dry day today, Sunday, Tedster and I set out again for the Coney Banks to get some fresh air. Not that I wanted to be going too far anyway and especially not by bus given they are not very good on a Sunday and probably even less so with Covid-19 and mask wearing, the Coney Banks has become a favourite place since we can't travel too far most of the time. Like our local fields the mowers have been round and cut all the long grass so it looks quite different now from the long wild grass and flowers areas that were there in the height of the summer months. Still we clocked up just over 9000 steps so not bad considering I'm not getting out every day now for the walk into work and not even after work sometimes if the weather is bad. Which it has been over the weekend so far. In fact indoors has felt chilly enough to pop the heating on this morning just to take the edge off the place! And as I'm the one paying the bills I don't feel the least bit guilty over this ;-) Took the M5 along with its 15-45mm kit lens, ran the images through LR when I got home and been experimenting with the Auto Tone - which works quite well most of the time, and also split toning in the form of a type of cinematic look. Using blues for the highlights and oranges for the shadows. It's very subtle and I think some investigation on Google or YouTube is in order, but I quite like the consistency it gives one's images.
 

A Trip To Hurstwood Woods

So, having gotten frustrated with the rain this week stopping me from venturing out after work most afternoons this week, I thought I would step along to Hurstwood Woods this Off Friday. Whilst there was a shower not long after I arrived, I was ensconced under the trees at this point and managed to avoid getting wet or having to break out the brolly! Took the Goldie along for the ride and am still enjoying using this camera again. Can't believe the rechargeable AA batteries are still holding up after my initial charge up the other week! Well impressed although I always make a point of carrying spares whatever camera I take out for the day. Anyhoo, enjoyed being out in the fresh air, some sunshine and the peace that comes with these sorts of natural "venues". A few dog walkers strolling around, including a very exuberant dog that raced around whilst his owner strolled along, talk about walking himself! I remember these woods from my school days at Horsted, sometimes we'd take an afternoon walk along there and look for stuff. I've been reacquainted with them during Lockdown and the need to find places to visit that are on my doorstep. Initially because we weren't supposed to travel too far for our daily "exercise" and now because most of my favourite haunts involve a bus journey or two and I'd rather avoid mixing with the great unwashed as often as possible. So places such as this and the Coney Banks have become my new favourite places. At least the seasons have caused their own changes in these areas and like most record photography no two days ever produce the same images. Plus for infrared, these places are just right if the weather holds up ;-) This particular image was shot whilst sitting on one of the few dry benches, underneath the tree who's foliage you can see at the top of the image. Processed in Lightroom using my own home grown presets, I preferred the cream colour of this one although I have a similar pink version too. Infrared is a very unusual style of photography and whilst in recent years I have loved my deep black and white camera images, it's been nice to get used to some faux colour again.
 

More Goldie Fun

 So, in spite of the heavy showers this morning Tedster and I braved the rain to go mooch down to the Coney Banks and took the Goldie infrared camera along for a spin.

Saw this deflated football lying on one of the paths and took a low shot. Somewhat ad hoc framing as the camera is too old for luxury like a flip screen, so it was more point and hope!

Used the revised pink Lightroom preset and then having played around with the calibration settings on another image of some graffiti on a side hoarding, I created a virtual copy of this image, applied the purple tweak and then brought both images into Photoshop to allow me to use the purple image to just colour the football. Really like this effect although it's time consuming and so not appropriate for the number of photos I take when I'm out and about! As I said on Facebook, any colours within these colourful infrared images isn't real, obviously, and so creative license isn't held back in any way because you can pretty much do whatever you want to them, colour wise.

Some people tend to leave them as they come out of the camera with the cyan foliage and brown skies, but I've seen all manner of other combinations, purple/green and blue/yellow to name but a few. There are quite a few filter options out there for anyone interested in conversions, or you can opt to go full spectrum and use an external filter to dictate what the camera captures. All good fun and brings a different viewpoint to one's photography.

Goldie Infrared

So, dug out the old Goldie Infrared camera in the week, charged up the AA batteries and amazed to find both the batteries and the camera still work happily!

I'd forgotten how interesting this camera is with it's colourful rendition of the infrared world around us. Prior to editing in Lightroom, the images have cyan coloured foliage and brown skies. Some judicious tweaking of colours using the calibration tab and the HSL tab in Lightroom allows me to convert it into something like this, choosing either pink or yellow foliage with blue skies. In Photoshop it would be classed as channel swapping but obviously in Lightroom that isn't possible so you have to come at it via a different approach. It's a technique I have honed over the few years that I've had my collection of converted infrared compact cameras. From the 720nm which I bought first, to the 850nm deep B&W which I really love and which is my infrared camera of choice more recently. Hence the reason why the Goldie had kind of been mothballed in the cupboard! It'll definitely start getting some use again now though.