Fog

Still no luck with the light. There may be some sunny spells tomorrow, but for the the last couple of days it has been totally overcast. Also the snow is mentling. So the landscape looks rather dull. the only good thing is that it's very foggy today, so maybe I'll be able to capture the atmosphere.

In the meantime - hope you guys had a great Christmas and wishing you all the best for the New Year!

Where is the light?

So, here I am in the winter photography wondelralnd. It's all amazing, loads of snow, beautiful countryside. The only thing that is missing is the light! I had some good light on the first day and a little yesterday morning. Today it's pretty cloudy and I checked the weather forecast which is not looking much better. Oh well, I'm just going to relax and if the right moment comes I'll be ready to shoot.

Winter photography wonderland

Today I'm travelling to a real winter photography wonderland. I'll be spending Christmas in the countryside in the North which is currenlty covered in snow. I'll have to make sure to set up my White Balance correctly - there is nothing worse than a grey or blue snow!

I'm planning to take a lot of nature photographs, mainly landscape and close-ups. I'm hoping for some great frozen flowers and other plants. I'm also taking my analog camera with me with a black and white film, which should be justperfect for the winter shots.

Pinhole photography

Pinhole photography is a technique of taking pictures with a camera obscura.

How does a pinhole camera work?

Light passes through a small diameter hole (pinhole sized, thus the name) formed on the opposite wall of an image. The brightness will be proportional to the brightness outside. If the hole is not sufficiently small, light on the matte screen creates a circle of size proportional to the size of a pinhole. Therefore, increasing the diameter of the pinhole reduces the sharpness of the image. Reducing the diameter of the pinhole improves the sharpness, but reduces it's brightness.

By selection the hole size will let enough light inside the camera to illuminate the photosensitive material (for exmaple fim or photographic paper). Resulting image is different from the image produced by modern cameras as it's more blurry (soft).

Depth of field in pinhole photography: Angular magnification is constant for subjects located in any distance from the camera, so the depth of field ranges from zero to infinity.

Quick RAW photo conversion

As a Canon user, I use Canon's free software Digital Photo Professional for quick RAW photo convertion.

It's really easy and efficient, here is my workflow:

- Select your pictures in DPP
- Click Batch convert
- Choose the folder you want the pictures to land in
- Always select TIFF 16bit - this is way better than 8bit and any jpeg!
- Select Output Resolution (here is a quick tip: choose 72dpi if your picture is for the web, 300dpi, if it's for print and 400dpi if you're printing in a photo lab)
- Choose the file name

I use Digital Photo Professional for the corrections in White Balance and the exposition of +/-2 f-stops. For everything else I use Photoshop.

Grey Card Camera Calibration

Ever wondered how to calibrate your camera with a Grey Card? Here is an easy way.

Remeber that there is no "standard white", that's why it's always better to calibrate using a grey card which reflects exactly 18% of the light.

1. Select your ISO - changing the ISO will ruin the calibration, so rember to calibrate each time you change the ISO!

2. Switch to Manual exposure.

3. Set the correct exposition as metered from the grey card. Make sure that the frame is fully filled by the grey card. Use spot metering.

4. Place the card at a 45 degree angle to both the light and your camera.

5. You may have to switch to Manual focus, Autofocus will not work as there are no contrasts to "catch on". Take the picture as slight out-of-focus.

6. The histogram should be a narrow stripe in the middle of the scale.

7. Set custom white balance.

8. After setting the custom white balance as the grey card take another picture of the card - see the difference?

Bubu, a wonderful store in Warsaw

On my recent trip t Warsaw I discovered a real hidden gem - a store with hand made jewellery called bubu. It's located in an old district of Warsaw - Powisle, on Solec Street.

The store is really charecterful with dark green walls and picture frames full of original hand-made jewellery. Each piece is unique, so you can be sure noone else will wear the same thing as you!

The owner of the store told me that very soon (probably before Christmas) bubu will have an Internet store, which I'm really looking forward to! I will stay tuned for that and will let you know once the store is live.

I'm really looking forward to wearing some of the pieces, I can already hear my friends asking "wow, where did you get those earings?". Really bubu's jewellery is something special!

Their website address is: http://2xbu.com/ and you can also find them on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/bubu.store

Turn a Room into a Camera Obscura

Last weekend we decided to turn one of our rooms into a Camera Obscura. Who would have thought - it actually worked and it was not just an optical illusion!

The room was completely dark and we put some black material to cover all holes such as those under the door. We covered the window with black tape in which we made a small hole. At the beginning a tiny one and the we enlarged it to the size of a small coin.

The effect was quite surprising - we could really see the reflection of the reality outside on the floor of the room. Upside-down, of course!

We then took some pictures with a digital camera, tripod, long exposure. We were putting diffrent items on the floor so that we could see the reflection on them. Its was quite a creative process and definately more fun than making a camera obscura from a shoe box!

Halloween party

Well done to everyone for organising some fantastic Halloween events here on Sunday! Around 280 people followed a special family trail round some of the park’s supposed haunted spots and the evening, over 100 people joined mini ghost-hunts! What a great day! Next year we'll join the event again for sure and bring more friends with us:)

Help for pets

Coming into Christmas this year I want to do something for pets in rescue/foster care etc and was wondering would any of you like to come on board with this idea.

What can be done for poor animals in shelters? I've seen great stuff people do on Facebook with posting pictures of animals waiting to be adopted. This way everyone can help. Even if you can't adopt a dog or a cat yourself. Maybe one of your friends will?

I've also seen people collecting not money but cat/dog food on the streets, or outside supermarkets. Just think how much our home pets eat and how little is needed to help a homeless animal. Food for thought:)

Social Work

Social work is a professional and academic discipline committed to the pursuit of social welfare and social change. The field works towards research and practice to improve the quality of life and to the development of the potential of each individual, group and community of a society. Social workers perform interventions through research, policy, community organizing, direct practice and teaching. Research is often focused on areas such as human development, social policy, public administration, program evaluation and international and community development. Social workers are organized into local, national, continental and international professional bodies. Social work, an interdisciplinary field, includes theories from economics, education, sociology, medicine, philosophy, politics, psychology, and as well as anti-oppressive and anti-racist discourse.