Tuesday, May 3, 2011

ARTICLE: Dartmoor National Park

I recently left Barcelona for several days and returned back home to the England. We spent a couple of days walking around Dartmoor National Park which is 954 square kilometres (368 sq mi) of open moorland and can be found in the south-west of England.

I took a single lens, and one that you wouldn't generally consider for landscape photography, but I decided to challenge myself with a 50mm (75mm full-frame). To take full advantage of the low depth of field it can provide, I attached a neutral density filter to the front to counter the the over-exposure that low apertures can cause in bright daylight, and yes, the weather was surprisingly warm and sunny!

So that was the challenge, to use a reasonably narrow, fixed focal length lens and using predominantly a low depth of field. Below is a nice example I've selected and the ten choice others can be seen here on the website.





Simon @ theblend

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Monday, April 18, 2011

Not enough time! :/


During the last week or two, I've really found myself caught up on one task which has been holding me back in progressing in other areas; this task is updating the shop of the website.

I've been experimenting with different formats, navigation systems, layouts, and trying to take into account any future expansion, all of which has taken time. Tied in with the other things going on in life at the moment, it has taken a lot longer than anticipated. If all goes well, it should be up and live in the next few days, which will be great as it will then open the way to working on other projects I've been waiting do.



I suppose I should be thankful that I have no-one chasing me to have this completed "now!", but it has still been frustrating to me that it has taken longer than expected to finish.

If there is something I’ve realised, it's that sometimes (usually due to unforeseen circumstances) it’s impossible to get everything done to the deadline. But if these things are important, it is much better and let’s face it, quicker in the long run, to allow a bit more time and get it done properly.

Here's to a productive couple of days, after which I can get back on track again. 

Sunday, April 10, 2011

ARTICLE: Lovebox Poster Design Competition

As part of the website update, I have been needing to complete further graphic design projects to replace the rather tired selection currently on display. I recently found out about a poster design competition organised by 'Don't Panic', the brief to design a poster to promote the Lovebox Bangbox festival happening in London in July. I thought it would be a great opportunity to get back into that graphic design thought processes again.

After deciding on a concept, I followed through on one until I was happy with the results, this is what I submitted:



Not a very complex design, and I'm sure I could remix it again and further whilst maintaining a nice simplicity. I wanted to create a bit of depth to the design rather than a plain, flat look, so decided to play off the 3d drawings of the cubes.

My way of thinking has changed over the years regarding getting everything just right when working in graphic design, especially using the digital tools available. Even in life, I much prefer 'organic imperfections' rather than 'clinical perfection', and I'm sure this will continue; although obviously, different jobs require different levels of correctness.

There have been some great entries already submitted, and I can't say i entered to win (as I'm feeling a bit rusty so to speak) but it has been a lot of fun.


Simon @ theblend

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Location:Barcelona

Friday, April 1, 2011

Kindness and Respect

This isn't really design related, but I wanted to write about something that happened last week whilst I was at at the Barcelona photography and imaging expo SONIMAGFOTO. I have a BLACK RAPID strap for my camera (which I love, the best strap out here!), the importers of them into Spain had an exhibition on, I was able to speak with this American guy about one of the attachments they have for the strap. He was told that it wouldn't fit, we couldn't see why but we tried it anyway.

After a bit of messing around, we got it on and agreed it fitted fine. He asked if I wanted to buy it but I wasn't in a position to drop 18€ on a bit of nylon strapping at that time. The American guy had a word with the importer, came back to me and said "as you helped understand that these things are compatible, i'm going to give this to you!"

It made my day!! He didn't have to do that, you don't often see that kindness here, it was very nice.

As it turned out, the 'American guy' was the founder of the company!

Big respect to BlackRapid!



Simon @ theblend

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Location:Barcelona

Monday, March 28, 2011

UPDATE: Website (re)development: Complete!

Finally, the finished update of the site http://www.theblend.co.uk/ and is now live!



The new interface is much cleaner and as a result, navigation is quicker. You can now see more collections and projects with less scrolling.

The main updates are in the galleries for the photography and graphic design pages which have been completely revised. You will be able to see thumbnails for up to 12 collections/projects, each which now has it’s own page where you can there see thumbnails for each image in that collection.

Three new collections have been added to the photography page here: www.theblend.co.uk/photography.html

The shop is currently being developed using a third-party company which will handle the printing and dispatch of the products. It will initially continue with t-shirts moving into prints, canvases in the future. The shop will be live in the next week or two.

There are further developments to come which will be implemented when the time is right, in the meantime, check out the newly updated site.

If anyone is wondering about the coffee cup on the front page www.theblend.co.uk it relates back to the first version of the site in 2006.



Simon @ theblend
Location:Barcelona

Wednesday, March 23, 2011

UPDATE: Website (re)development

It has been a week or so since I have posted anything here, but far from taking some time off, I’ve been hard at work on the redesign of www.theblend.co.uk.

I decided that with all the projects I´m planning to add over the coming months I had to make it more future proof. So (as I write this) it is still in a major redevelopment and refresh stage, and I hope to have it completed by the end of this week (27 March 2011).

The main task has been to improve the navigation of the site. Previously, taking the photography page as an example , all the galleries were accessed through one long page, which was not providing a good browsing experience. It has now been designed so that thumbnails of up to twelve ‘collections’ can be viewed on a single screen without any scrolling required. Clicking the thumbnail cleanly opens into a new window showing thumbnails for each image in that collection and providing further info.

Also updated are all the menu bars. They have been replaced with a much cleaner method and font. The goal was to be able to access any page/collection/project with no more than three clicks and little to no scrolling. I believe this redevelopment will achieve this.

PLEASE NOTE that until I post the next update on this page, it is the OLD VERSION of the site which is available, so you can do a before and after comparison!

Cheers!



Simon @ theblend

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Location:Barcelona

Friday, March 11, 2011

PHOTO SHOOT: Stop Motion

This week I finally managed to get out and shoot this 'stop motion' idea I've wanted to do for a while. Previously stopped by weather and the position of the sun, everything worked out last week. :)

This is a simple example taken from a batch I'm currently processing, I will display the other examples on my site here soon.

The essential piece of 'outdoor' equipment to achieve this is the tripod, used to keep the camera in precisely the same composition during multiple exposures.

Camera settings used were as follows:

- ISO --> 320
- Shutter speed --> 1000th/s
- Aperture --> F8
- Focal length --> 18mm
- White balance --> Sunny




Once captured in camera, the multiple shots (many times 10+) are imported into Photoshop (or equivalent) into a single document, all layered on top of each other, then it's a case of removing the parts of each image that you don't want until you end up with something like above.

---

On a side note, I've realised that I haven't been updating my Flickr stream recently, so whoever's reading this, you've all had the same repetitive images to look at, sorry about that, will sorted from now on! ;)




Simon @ theblend
www.theblend.co.uk

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Saturday, March 5, 2011

TECHNIQUE: Changes in composition when using a zoom lens.

In this post, I want to demonstrate the dramatic differences in composition that can be achieved when using a zoom lens. As you can see, you can use this technique to create very different feels for an image.

The lens I'm using to demonstrate this is a Nikon 18-200mm. To show additional changes to the effect, I have shot with the aperture both opened and closed to the max.

The subject (the sticker on the lamppost) has been framed to be more or less the same size in each of the images below but the differences in the backgrounds are huge.

The SHORTER the focal length = LOOSE / WIDE view of the background.

The LONGER focal length (note the subject is still the same size) = TIGHT / NARROW view of the background.






There is no better or worse version, they are just different effects. Can you think of some compositions that would work better shot at a short focal length? Which better shot long? Which style would work better with portraits?

When understood, this is another technique that can be applied and controlled to help create the desired feeling. One 'style' will probably work better with one subject and location than another. Experiment!


Simon @ theblend
http://www.theblend.co.uk/

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Wednesday, February 23, 2011

ARTICLE: Where's that document??

Not directly related to photography or design but if applied well, it's incredible how much it will help you continue concentrate on being creative, what is it? Good digital file management!

It dawned on me recently that I have a lot of digital files scattered over a lot of different hard-drives, phones and other devices. I realised that I had to sort this out as ultimately it was slowing me down looking for and preparing files for use. Not good. And then integrating the final work maintaining a common structure for the future.




So recently I've set up a completely revised file structure system which seems completely obvious if you think about it, but to consolidate all the files in ONE PLACE, ONE FOLDER, round them up into their
respective groups. Once there, decide how these groups can be broken down again, and again. Even this one big group (essentially the nest of folders) could be part of an even bigger group.

And you can't always rely on just using the 'spotlight' search like on the mac either. Example, I'm sure that if you spent five minutes casually browsing around some folders, you would come across some gems hidden somewhere. Therefore, not the best option.

You need to be able to almost visual where ANY particular file (or folder) is on your network. Now when I say network, i'm not necessarily talking about anything as complex as an 'office' network, I mean something as simple as a single computer, connected to the cloud with a Dropbox account, that can be accessed by any other computer or mobile device.

(If anyone doesn't know what Dropbox is, it's an amazing application for mac, pc or most 'smart' mobile devices, which is based around a folder generally located on a computer hard drive. The contents and file structure of this folder are continually synced into your online account in the cloud, which can then be securely accessed from any terminal on the planet, and best of all it's FREE with I believe 3GB of storage, payable for more).

With this kind of accessibility available, and if an organised file structure is followed, it makes all your selected files easily accessible from anywhere, leaving you to concentrate on creating.



Simon @ theblend
http://www.theblend.co.uk/

- Posted using BlogPress

Tuesday, February 15, 2011

UPDATE: Re-freshed!

After several months of inactivity, and a few weeks of updates of theblend.co.uk, I feel like things are starting to get moving again. The (not so legal) version of Dreamweaver I was using to design the website was causing a lot of problems so I finally got the legal, paid-for version. Over the last few weeks, I've had the site down for updates, making improvements, adding sections and generally giving it a refresh and tidy up ready to display work and projects that I have planned for the future.





The newest section that has been added is the shop. Here there will be a selection of limited edition tshirts available to buy and in the future I would like to offer high quality produced photographic prints with a percentage being donated to a certain charity.

Currently the site primarily serves to display recent projects I've been working on, but for the future I have some ideas of how this can be developed further.

My intentions for this blog are to provide content and information at regular intervals. Some areas I intend to write about include:


Recent projects. Comments and updates on any projects I have in progress.

Photo shoots. On return from any interesting locations I will post updates here with results.

Tutorials. If I have discovered a technique recently, it would be good to create a tutorial and share this.

Product reviews. The equipment I use, I like to get to know it thoroughly, therefore after several weeks or months I intend to report my opinions on some of these experiences.

Inspirations. Anything that sparks off an interesting train of thought. An idea, a curious photo I've seen or taken, something that has happened, someone I met.


So in relation to theblend.co.uk, this is what I've been upto over the last few months, and now with hopefully no hold backs, this will serve as my plan for the ongoing future.

I want to end this post with a quote I read recently that I thought made a lot of sense, from a Louis Gerstner, once Chief Exec of IBM:

"Making it happen is possibly more important than developing a brilliant new strategy. Execution - making it happen - is the most unappreciated skill of a business leader."

Simon @ theblend
http://www.theblend.co.uk/