Wednesday photos

Gosh, is it Wednesday already? I left a bit earlier this morning for several reasons. The first is that I got up earlier than usual - Junior screwed up the setting of his alarm clock, and it woke me up at about 0545. Didn't wake him up though. As usual. Second was that I wanted to get down to the water before the sun came up - in order to photograph it as it came up. Third is that I wanted to feel no guilt whatsoever about stopping and taking photos. Normally, I just belt along and point the camera in the general direction of what I want to photograph and hope for the best. This morning, I wanted to try out some of Cav's tips. As Cav has noted previously, I am ugly, so there will be no photos of me to spoil your viewing pleasure.

Cav has lots of good advice about framing the shot, and the rule of thirds. I have tried to apply them here - judge for yourself what works and what doesn't. I started where my ride meets the water, took a photo, rode a few hundred metres, took another and then did repeat, repeat, repeat until my ride left the water.

Photo 1 - didn't quite get the rule of thirds correct - but the shot is framed at least by the land on the left. Sun is just about to come up.

Photo two - boring. Rule of thirds has been ignored, shot is not framed. The water was nice though - it was totally flat in places, with just the slightest ruffling here and there.

Photo 3 - still haven't got the hand of it. At this point, Cav will be saying, "You're ugly and stupid. Why am I wasting my time trying to edumacate you?"

Photo 4 - improving slowly. The sand bar helps to add interest to the shot.

Photo 5 - almost got the thirds bit right - not quite balanced 2/3 sky and 1/3 water, but close. Again, the land to the left frames the shot. It helps that the water is smoother and the sky has a bit more colour as the sun starts to peek above the horizon.

Almost, but stuffed it with a lack of framing. Notice that the sun is not in the middle - I have remembered to offset it to add some interest. Colour is getting better all the time. Yes, the photo is tilted - I think I was riding when I took this.

This should be better, but I'm not sure it grabs me. It's framed, the sun is offset and the thirds are about right. However, the bit doing the framing is boring.

Now we have some trees for framing, and a rower. I reckon this photo would be much better with a bit of cropping.

More of the same rower. The dark blob on the far right is the rowing boatshed. He's heading for home.

All these were snapped with my very battered and chipped Canon Ixus, which cost me about $200. Canon release a new generation of Ixus every 12 months or so. They start out close to $400, but when they reach the end of their life, and the next model is about due, they fall to below $200. Best time to buy one is when the new model is on the shelves and retailers are dumping the old stock.

All these photos were shot at high resolution, and came out at about 2mb each. I used a photo application to reduce their quality to 50%, and that shrunk them to under 200kb. That's because most of the colours in these photos are the same - they compress really well.

Thanks for the tips Cav - they've been a big help.