Grace Dieu Abbey

A couple weeks back, myself and my buddy Rex went on a little cycle ride to a place called Grace Dieu Abbey. The ride there was pretty tough as there were some pretty monstrous hills to climb, but we did make it eventually!

As you can see it is an abandoned one that is in ruins now, but it still gave us some good photo opportunities! We also took plenty of joke photos, and they will be in my next post! After this we decided to take a different route home which was through some woods and on little country roads and we stumbled across the working monastery - which will be a further post in the next week or so!

Anyway, these are the photos of Grace Dieu Abbey:

Cycle Ride to Zouch

First of all, sorry for not posting in a while!

Anyway, a couple of weeks ago we had a really nice spell of good weather, so I hopped on my bike and went for a little ride to a place called Zouch. Funny name but I had never been and it turned out it was really pretty. I got quite into the bike ride so I decided I would cycle along and pic places that I thought would make a good picture, then on the way back I could snap them! This seemed like a good idea at the time, however as I got to the where I was about to turn around, I noticed a quiet little road that would lead me back home, and would have been nice and peaceful to cycle down. This however meant I missed all the photo opportunities on the way here! Doh! So I cycle back to where I had seen some opportunities I definitely wanted to get, then had to leave the rest as I carried on home.

In the end, I only got a few good photos from the trip, but it was really good exercise so that is a bonus!

Here are the photos from the ride:

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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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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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Lights, Camera, Action-shots!

Here is my friend Greg. As you can probably see, he is a bmx rider. And not a bad one at that!

He's been doing it for quite a few years now as a hobby and so every now and again I go and take some photos of him.

I'm always impressed with how he manages to do such cool stuff, but more impressive is that he actually has the guts to do it! I had a little go once and that was enough for me! I'll stick on this side of the lens thank you!!

So, here is a bunch of photos that I have taken. I have been 3 times now to take photos of Greg. The first time is where all but one of these photos were taken as it was a lovely sunny day, the second time was over cast and I didn't really get any good photos, and the third time the light was fading and I had just got my new camera so I didn't have time to properly set it up and I was mainly just playing around so I only got the one good photo.

Actually photographing Greg whilst he was moving was the trickiest thing. As he goes so fast and so high, you really have to follow him closely with the camera to get an in focus shot, and it is a lot more difficult than I expected!

Anyway, here you go!

The lovely day for these first ones definitely helped with the photos, as the blue and green really stand out.

These are three photos that I took in a quick burst and Greg the cheeky little devil did some editing and whacked them all together. Looks ace if I say so myself!

And seen as Greg did some editing, I gave it a whack too!

And we're back to normal! Phew!

This was my only photo from day 3 when the light was fading. Not an action shot, but I like it!

Fancy giving bmx-ing a go?

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