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May 2006 Review

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1st May 2006 The first of May was a Bank Holiday, and for some bizarre reason a few of us made the decision to visit Manchester, at about four in the afternoon! We went to the Trafford Centre, and sat in Starbucks having a bit of a chat about our impending trip to Belgium and Holland in July. This shot was inspired by a shot I'd taken in London Liverpool Street Station sometime in 2005, long exposure shots of people travelling across floors always interest me!

2nd May 2006 The living room in monochrome and wide angle with some added "creative tilt".

33rd May 2006 Here's another picture inspired from a shot I'd taken in the past, again using the macro mode on my compact camera. At this point I'd won a new lens on eBay and was just waiting for it to arrive, so this would probably be the last shot taken with anything but the DSLR!

4th May 2006 It's a big thing in the factory at work. I don't know what it does, but it's quite cool. It makes a "psshh" noise every time you walk past it aswell, just to make you jump I think.

5th May 2006 Hurray! The new lens arrived! A Canon 28-135mm f3.5-5.6 with image stabilisation. It's got a bit of a macro on it aswell, as this shot demonstrates. It's a leaf actually stuck onto a window to get light through it. It came out really well I thought.

6th May 2006 Naturally a new lens meant I was to take photos at more practical focal lengths, getting some more standard shots like this flower in the garden. This one also came out really well, creating a nice shape there.

7th May 2006 It wasn't going to be long before the new lens went to Alton Towers was it?! Here's a shot of Nemesis's last wingover with added long exposure-ness, now that I could finally zoom in on it!

8th May 2006 Another Monday shot, not taking the camera any further than the confines of my bedroom. Although this one isn't too bad, full zoom with the new lens, shooting out of the window at the rooftops and aerials. Not quite zoomy enough to get any detail on that pigeon though!

9th May 2006 Another one of those "oh my god, that sky can't NOT be photographed" moments, and another easy day down. The way those two clouds blocked the light was awesome!

10th May 2006 Back to the canal for me then, avec the new lens! And there were some swans in it, how nice of them to turn up for me! A fairly low sun made photographing them a right pain.

11th May 2006 This is me buggering about with various cameras and a mirror and stuff, I like the depth of field effect, you can just about make out what's going on in the mirror, but the image on the screen confirms it for you!

12th May 2006 Skips! They fizzibly melt! Not a great photo.

13th May 2006 A trip to Alton Towers and no picture of a roller coaster? What's going on? It was wet all day, and I mainly shot pictures of friends in the park for this gallery, but once we left, we went to find the Chained Oak; if you've been on Hex, you'll know what it's all about, if not, it's an Oak tree, with chains on it.

14th May 2006 And a trip to Drayton Manor on the Sunday, I love this shot, for a "snapped" shot, it seems really well composed, when it really wasn't, it was just a point and shoot, there's loads of symmetry in it, right down to the position of the CoasterForce members, I also really like the way the structure is symmetrical, but the human intervention breaks the symmetry a bit, making it more real. The gloomy day with its white skies worked in my favour too.

15th May 2006 It's my (old) phone. And it's a Monday. Garfield would understand this theory I think.

16th May 2006 I think I'd taken my car through the car wash, and got a shot of the badge while it was clean! It was still a bit moist though!

17th May 2006 I love my light trails, and I thought I'd try more than just some squiggles! Photography is often referred to as "Painting with Light" and I thought I'd take a bit of a literal approach to this theory! My writing isn't normally that neat! I impressed myself!

18th May 2006 I wandered out onto the common outside work during a lunch break and snapped these buttercups. It was a bit breezy and they were quite hard to capture!

19th May 2006 A wet Friday night, and I was running out of time for a shot, considering I was getting up early to drive to Donington Park in the morning, so I ventured outside and got this shot of a lone car going down the road. A bit of monochrome gave it an interesting effect.

20th May 2006 So I went to Donington Park for the British F3 and GT championship second round. Now that I had a lens with a reasonable focal length I might be able to shoot some track action! I did manage to shoot some track action, but I also shot a load of supercars with water droplets on them from the pretty terrible weather we had all day and I couldn't resist using on for the photo of the day! The rest of the photos from the weekend can be found here.

21st May 2006 Again, with all the racing on Sunday, in the morning I'd decided I'd just use a track shot for Sunday's picture, but again, I was far too happy with a different shot to not use it for the photo of the day! The podium at Donington is part of the grandstand, so if you're in the grandstand, you can look down and see it, and with the wide angle lens on, this meant for some very unique podium shots! I did get quite a lot of champagne in my eyes, and over my camera, but it was worth it! Again, photos from the weekend can be found here.

22nd May 2006 Pixels! The macro mode on that new lens isn't too bad really. I was listening to music on iTunes at the time and decided to test it.

23rd May 2006 Frozen peas! I don't think the camera handles greens too well, because I had to add quite a bit of green in photoshop, as you can probably tell because they are a bit over-green now!

24th May 2006 Admittedly not my own idea, but I couldn't resist giving it a go after seeing it on someone else's photography page. It's not edited in any way (apart from the usual tweaks), but it's not particularly "real" either!

25th May 2006 I got some rather tasty apples from the shops and decided to go for another two-dayer of a photo of the day. Now you see it...

26th May 2006 ...now you don't!

27th May 2006 This was taken at Mark's housewarming party in Manchester where Phil taught some people to firebreath! Kir was very good at it, so he got used as the photo of the day! I'd left my camera on ISO 1600 because of taking photos indoors, so all the fire is way too over-exposed, but the area around is lit well, so it's not too much of a problem!

28th May 2006 On the Sunday after the party, we all went for a walk to Heaton Park in Manchester, because we heard there was a fair going on, this tunnel thing was quite interesting with all its moss and stuff, and was about the only photo I took in the park, so it got used by default!

29th May 2006 Another Bank Holiday?! Yep! And a rather out of the blue trip to Alton Towers with Big John and Tanya. Again, I didn't take any photos in the park (there's only so much you can shoot!) and I took John and Tanya to check out the Chained Oak. We tried to recreate a scene from the Hex video, but failed fairly miserably, so I just used a rather generic shot of the tree itself for the photo of the day.

30th May 2006 A very cool ornament that sits above the fireplace in the living room, I don't know how it was made, probably just clever carving, but it just asked nicely to be photographed, so I happily obliged!

31st May 2006 A lot of people have asked me what this photo is, I honestly thought it was fairly obvious! It's a speaker. I don't have this Hi-Fi system anymore, it was a bit impractical for my desk and had a fan in it that whirred far too much. I think I took this photo because I knew I was getting rid of it fairly soon.

© Martyn Hoyer