Lunar Halo

Lunar Halo from South Wales, UK 2/2/15

Last night was the first time in what seems like ages that I used my camera to take photos of something other than my baby daughter. She’s been the cause of many a filled memory card recently. This time, however, while my daughter was sound asleep (read crying and grumpy) in bed, my attention was drawn to one of the most recognizable celestial objects in the night sky. The moon.

This was no ordinary moon, it looked different, angelic. It was wearing a halo.

Christmas Camera Cost Crash

Christmas and New Year have passed, we’ve made New Year’s Resolutions to make more of an effort with our photography so what better time of year to treat ourselves to new equipment to pack into our camera bags. The aftermath of Christmas normally means that money’s a little bit tight, but if you have a little something saved away, there’s so much is available for us to buy at a fraction of it’s original retail cost. It’s brilliant and you’d be daft to miss out. I’m already on the hunt, but I’ll let you into my little secret.

You mean the January Sales?

By all means, you can buy new equipment, from your local camera store or giant online retailers the the January sales, or you might even have picked up a bargain from an impressive Black Friday deal that you didn’t need to get into a riot for. Fellow photographers are humble souls.

But no, the January sale, that normally starts on Boxing Day, isn’t what I’m thinking of here.

This is a time of year that we should be grateful. Grateful for people spoiling themselves, their partners or their spoilt brats with upgrades to their photographic equipment over the festive season, sometimes even when it’s unnecessary, because they have perfectly good, functional cameras, lenses and other equipment that are going to get left behind.

Almost everyone I know has to pinch a penny, even a little bit, at this time of year. It’s about this time when they realise that they’ve got something of value that’s been replaced by a newer model by Santa and often take to the online garage sale with plans of making it to the end of January without having to resort to serving that lonely can of Spam for breakfast, dinner and tea.

eBay is a gold mine. If you can get over the snobbery of only using brand new equipment and venture into the second hand market, then the world is your oyster. Only one of my 3 lenses is brand new and it hardly gets as much use as the other two, and they’re great. I might actually list that lens this afternoon!

I’ve done some snooping and found some great deals.

If you’re not really sure what you want and fancy a look around here’s a few helpful links:

Canon Equipment for Sale

Canon DSLR Cameras on eBay

Canon DSLR Lenses on eBay

Nikon Equipment for Sale

Nikon DSLR Cameras on eBay

Nikon DSLR Lenses on eBay

But if you have a bit more of an idea of what you specifically want, you can filter out certain models or equipment.

Canon 7D for sale at less than half price on eBay

The Canon 7D was released in 2009 at around £1700. It’s a perfectly capable, advanced, digital SLR camera and has been popular amongst the ranks of professionals. Since then, the 7D Mk2 has been released. People have upgraded and the Original 7D is now less than half the price and there’s a few available!

Canon 50mm f1.4 for sale on eBay

Almost everyone I know has the “Nifty Fifty” f1.8 lens. and it’s a brilliant little lens for the money. I upgraded recently from that to the f1.4 version that Canon offers and I wouldn’t look back. And I upgraded to a second hand model and it still exceeds all of my expectations.

Ok, I may be a little biased towards Canon, but the results are there for Nikon too if you just scratch the surface of eBay.

Have you ever bought second hand? What were your experiences?

Facebook Viral Capabilities and Privacy

I share my personal photographic projects on my Facebook Page – Photos by Dan, not my personal profile. My “likers” or fans are mainly made up of my friends and one or two of their friends. All 175 of them. I’d love to present my work to a wider audience and for some of my images to become viral around the internet, but I don’t want to be one of these people that beg for shares or likes, and don’t really want to pay Facebook for the privilege.

As long as I get at least one like per photo shared, I’m generally happy. It means I’m not doing it for nothing. It wasn’t until a recent post I made made a massive impact. Massive to me, not so massive in the grand scheme of things.

115 Likes 1 Share 22 Comments 2878 Reach

These statistics are mammoth compared to my other images. Admittedly, it’s a rather large announcement on my behalf, and with my likers being friends of mine, they have shown their compassion by liking the first and possibly only image of my daughter on Facebook until she’s old enough to have her own account.

But from what I can tell, at least 2878 people have seen this image. I guess that’s down to Facebook telling the friends of people that liked the photo, that they liked it and displayed it on their timelines too. So friends of friends of friends get to see it. This also corresponded to the number of likes it got. I got likes off the usual crowd, but there were complete strangers in there.

This got me thinking.

One of the very personal photographs I took and shared has been seen and in some instances “liked” by a lot more people than I expected to see it. While this isn’t an issue for me and this single photo, there are people who share just about every photo of their children that they take on their profiles. Just have a think about how many people could actually get to see those photos! With a rough calculation according to my statistics, for every one person that liked this photo, around 28 other people saw it.

I fully admit that I haven’t gone into Facebook’s privacy settings as much as I possibly should have and am seriously considering setting aside some time to set them up properly, even though their goal posts will likely change in a few months.

What I’m trying to say is, just be careful when sharing images. I maybe stretch to the worst case scenario, if they’re of your children, your home, or even photos as they happen on your holidays. If you’re on holiday, posting photos then the people that can see them know you’re not home, and can see if there’s anything worth stealing from your home by looking at the pictures you posted a few weeks back, especially the ones that you tagged the exact locations.

As much as it’s an easy way to share photos with your families and friends, you never know who might be looking at them. Stay safe on the Interwebnets. Happy New Year!

Fatherhood Photography Frenzy

There has been a lot going on recently for me. I became a dad. After a 7 month pregnancy, it seemed as though enough was enough and the miniature person that I had helped to create decided that she wanted out. Being as stubborn as her mum, she got her own way!

My initial thoughts as a keen photographist throughout the pregnancy were that I would have a person on tap, at anytime to fulfil my portrait photography needs. This would be brilliant. Loads of practice with the possiblity of building a portfolio with aims of getting into a new genre of photography.

As if cutting the pregaration (pregnancy & preparation) time short wasn’t enough of an emotional roller coaster for me, shortly after being born, my tiny, gorgeous daughter was taken away and covered in wires and tubes and attached to machines in the Special Baby Care Unit (SCBU) in the Royal Gwent Hospital taking firm residence a mansion sized incubator. This wasn’t something that we’d planned.

Remember, Remember the… What?

Being in work all day, working as hard as I do, I just about completely forgot that it was the 5th of November. Bonfire night. That’s not a good start to getting some good images of some pyrotechnic displays placed directly into the hands of the average British Joe.

The thing is, that it’s quite cold outside today, I’m cosy, warm and tired in the house and there’s not really anything that I think I can do that’s any different to every other good firework photograph without much effort.

The majority of the big, professionally organised firework displays seem to have all passed without me noticing too.

Maybe I’ll buy some sparklers and get some funky ideas on the go with them. I’ve stored plans in memory for quite a while, just waiting to put them into practice.

The dog doesn’t seem to be at all phased by the noise either, no barking or anything, so it’s a bit of a bonus.

Maybe next year.