Tuesday 22 May 2012

Enjoy Your Local Canal Waterway

A very sunny afternoon last week was enjoyed by taking my camera with me for a walk along our local canal towpath.


A Moorhen, usually very timid. Took this using the optical zoom feature.
 

Here the "cut" is quite low, with fields and small-holdiings on both sides.


A field allowed to become a "natural" meadow.


Dandelion "clock" aka a seedhead, taken with the macro feature.


Dandelion flower, taken with the macro feature. 


A garden deck built out over the steep bank, here the cut is very deep; at least 80-100 feet.

I mentioned last time about a new Fujifilm Coolpix camera, and it seems to have far more options and features than my Samsung compact, so I thought I needed a crash course. After reading the manual, I decided to make use of the sun and get a little practical class with my camera. I took a number of photographs whilst enjoying a "walk in the country". 

As usual, i found the walk to be so very relaxing and couldn't help thinking about how little used the canal is as a source of fun / leisure activities. When I arrived back home I decided to write a new Squidoo lens about the issue. You can read the resulting article, Enjoy You Local Canal Waterway on Squidoo, hope you get the chance and enjoy it. Lots more photos contained on the page.

Monday 14 May 2012

Using The Camera's Timer For Self Portraits

Bought myself a couple of tee-shirts from my Zazzle store and decided to photograph myself wearing them. An opportunity to earn a little extra in a competition run by Zazzle. Also another chance to use the camera's timer. Something which I don't often think about. Once or twice on holiday I use it to take photos of my wife and I, just to prove we were there together.

On most modern cameras it is simplicity itself to use, and can be very useful to take shots you could not get without third party help. The only issue is composing the shot. When taking my wife and I, it is simple to arrange the camera to frame her and then after pressing the shutter I have the usual 10 seconds to join in the pose. However, taking my own picture as here, I needed several shots to get one which didn't cut off my head.

If you have never used this facility, you need to press the button which sets up the timer (with an expensive model you may need to set the time) and when the shot is ready press the exposure button. Then quickly put yourself into the shot. View the result and decide if it is what you wanted. If not then repeat - as many times as necessary!




The images shave been cropped here to show off the tee-shirts. The text on the images is what you can't see on the shirts below the respective images. Perhaps a little help with taking the shots and composing them would have been useful with these.