Fun in the dark

Unfortunately, this post is not as seedy as the title makes out!!!

Have nothing to do at 11 O'Clock at night? go out and take photos! At least that is what me and my buddies did. We cycled over to the multi-storey car park in Loughborough and started to shoot photos of things about! Having never really shot before in the dark, it was a huge learning curve, but playing with exposures, shutter speeds and apertures it started to come together. It was especially good because I got to use my new tripod and remote shutter!

After we had taken photos of the only good thing we could actually see (the tower below), we decided to ride the bikes with the lights on whilst using a fairly long shutter speed. As you can see from the photos we played around with different colours and flashing lights and different patterns to try and produce loads of different effects.

Eventually we moved onto the basketball court near to home which was so dark I had to use a torch to set up my equipment, however in the photos you would have no idea as the street lights in the distance bring everything to life.

Shooting at night is now going to be a new challenge of mine, as I love the way things can be seen in photos when in reality things were very dark or pitch black!

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Five Locks

After going to Kirkstall Abbey, Hana, her parents and I went to Five Locks. For those of you who don't know it, it is 5 locks in a row on a canal, pretty simple. And for those of you who don't know what a lock is..... well, for boats to go up and down hill on the canal, they have to enter a lock, close the door, let it fill up/empty out, then open the second door and they can carry on going as they will be level. It's really quite clever!

Anyway, enough of that engineering/canal lesson, here are the photos! Don't forget to check out the other photos from the day here - Kirkstall Abbey, Flower Power.

Flower Power

Whilst at Kirkstall Abbey, there were plenty of flowers to take snaps of, and with it being a sunny day, it was a photographer's dream! So I got out my zoom lens, set up my tripod and snapped away at this colourful lot!

As you can see from the photos, there were a load of crocuses all over the place, but also were some daffodils, and a couple other kinds I didn't recognise.

The first load of these are all the different angles of the crocuses, but I couldn't pick my favourite so I put a few up!

Also if you want to read my other blog about where these were taken then just click here - Kirkstall Abbey.

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Kirkstall Abbey

Recently, I went to Kirkstall Abbey in Leeds with Hana and her parents. We went on a beautifully sunny Sunday, which is quite odd considering that it has only just turned into spring, and it is England! We never get sun!

Kirkstall Abbey is an old abbey that is now open to the public to look around the remains of it. It has some real character and some huge windows, plus it is placed in some beautiful gardens filled with flowers - three guesses as to what my next post will be?? There is also a little river running by the side and a courtyard in the middle with some brilliantly green grass.

Here are some of the photos taken on the day:

1. The abbey roof

2. The river

3. An entrance in the building

4. Rocks lining the wall

5. In the courtyard

Don't forget to check out the next TWO posts arriving in the near future, taken on the same trip! I'll post the links to them here when they're up!

Here is the first: Flower Power

Loughborough Centre Park

As I was walking through the park to go to the cinema whilst Hana was visiting, I took my camera along to take some snaps. It turned out that we were actually in quite a hurry so I only got to take a few pictures! Hopefully I will go back soon and take some proper snaps!

Here are three I took whilst there:

1. A duck

2. Plant pots

3. Top of a tower

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Supercars

At the beginning of the year I went on a ride in TWO super cars. It was pretty awesome. It was a present from my parents for my 21st birthday buy I only got round to doing it 10 months later! Seeing as I had just taken my car back home, my mum drove me to the place which wasn't too far from Loughborough.

Now I love cars. I don't know all the technical stuff about them all, but I can appreciate the statistics and I know a good car when I see one. So when I turned up at this place and there was over £3 million worth of cars, you really have to be amazed.

The two cars that I got to drive were an Aston Martin DB9 and a Ferrari 360. My mum was my designated photographer whilst I was in the car driving, so she snapped a couple of these, and the rest were taken by myself as I ogled over them!

1. A McLaren MP4, an Audi R8 - one I have driven before, a Ferrari 458 Italia - my favourite ever car!

2. A bunch of cars

3. Me in the Aston Martin DB9

4. Setting off

5. Parked up

6 & 7. The back of a £250,000 Lamborghini

Sadly there are no photos of me in the Ferrari, but I can't blame my mum as she isn't a photographer and it was raining and getting dark!

Find Beauty Friday #23

So folks, it is my second time hosting Find Beauty Friday with Aimee from Dear Harper. Last time I did this, I was pretty hungover and really unprepared, so this time, hopefully it will be a lot better!

Aimee hosts this blog link up every Friday, and it is a fantastic way to get your photos seen and to see other people's work. It also gets you seen by many bloggers and if you all follow each then everyone gets new followers and more exposure - awesome! Go an check out Aimee's blog (clicking the link above) to see previous Find Beauty Friday posts and more exciting and interesting things!

My photo this week is from a bike ride I took, which you can read about here - Photography Cycle Ride. All of my favourite photos from that cycle ride are on that post, however I saved this one for this post as I thought it would be just perfect for a Find Beauty Friday post!

So... enjoy the link up, check each other out and give everyone a follow to help us build the community!

An InLinkz Link-up

Photography Cycle Ride

The other day I decided to go out for a bike ride with my camera. Now, having played rugby for 7 years before I came to university, then stopping and replacing it with fast food, beer and playing xbox, I was a little worried about how far I could actually cycle! Nervously I set off, wondering if I could make it to the place I had in mind, with my camera equipment in my backpack!

Surprisingly enough, I climbed the hill all the way to the place where I wanted to get to, and didn't feel too bad! So I carried on and on until I started to feel a little tired then took a country road to go and see what I could discover.

Luckily enough for me, I picked a great road to turn down, because all of these photos were taken within 50 metres of me actually turning onto the road! I also really enjoyed the cycle ride, not including some of the crazy drivers out there who give you the tiniest bit of space, and I think I am going to do more of them!

Here are the photos from the day:

1. A yellow flower

2. A garden fence

3. A cool house with a windmill attached to it!

4. A bush in the garden of the house

5. A field

6.  A spiky bush

There is another flower picture but it is going to be posted on Friday, so keep an eye out for it!

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Macro at the Park

As I said before in my post 'Playing with a new lens' I got a new lens for my birthday, and so I have been out an about trying to capture new things I couldn't capture before. I bought the lens with it in mind that I would be able to get even closer Macro photos, and in some ways, this is the case, however the minimum distance you can stand from the subject is a metre with this lens, so it gives a different effect than I expected, but it is a really nice surprise. Obviously the zoom is a lot further, however the focal distances etc are all different and so it takes different picture to what I have taken before.

Anyway I walked down to the park as it has always had some bright colours etc, and attempted to capture some macro shots to give it a try out, here are the results:

1. The fence

2. Swing chains

3. A spring

4. A swing chain

5. Tangled up chain

Okay so 3 out of 5 are the chains of swings, but they were really interesting, honest!!