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Is it Christmas already??, originally uploaded by ebotunes.

A new year, a new type of photography for me.

Back in November I bought myself a set of the limited edition White Stripes lomography cameras.

The set includes a Jack Holga and Meg Diana+ plus loads of cool accessories.
You can read all about the full kit and accessories on the Official White Stripes website.

I finished my first roll of film in the holga at the weekend and have a few left each of the rolls currently in the holga and diana+. Hoping to get all 3 rolls finished and sent off for development very soon.

Looking forward to seeing the results from my step back into film photography…

The utata weekend project for May 11th was Utata Lights Up. What better an opportunity to get out some of my “novelty” lamps and try some shots.

Not having a home studio I setup my lamps in my small hallway where I could close all the doors and eliminate any street light from the streetlamps of London.

I think the results are not too bad for a home setup, especially as I don’t even have a tripod. How did you manage to hold the camera for so long then? I hear you ask. Easy… balance it on a dining chair!

Here are my attempts:

I didn’t get them submitted over the actual Saturday/Sunday of the weekend but hey, close enough!

I’ve done some re-work on my submission for Iron Photographer 21. I’ve split the photo into 2 layers - 1 with the background and 1 with the strawberries. I’ve faded the background and brought up the red colour in the strawberries. I definitely need a bit more practice at selecting parts of the image for creating layers (there are a few highlight type halos around the strawberries) but I think it looks much better than the original and certainly not bad for a first attempt. The removal of the orange tint and contrast of colourful strawberries with the de-saturated background really makes the subject pack more of a punch!

Here they are side-by-side. What do you think?

5th of May was flickr day. Flickr launched a day-long photo project for every member to take part in - 24 hours of Flickr. The idea was that everyone grabs their camera, snaps away throughout the day then chooses their best photo to submit to the group photo pool. A companion book will be published with a selection of pictures from the event and pictures will be used during flickr-sponsored events throughout the summer.

So I didn’t have much planned for Saturday so wasn’t sure what to take photos of. I decided to just head out around London and see what caught my eye. The cut of pictures that came out ok are in my photoset. After much deliberation I have decided to submit my photo “Blue” to the pool. I’ve done a bit of post-processing to bring out the blue in the photo but apart from that it’s just as it came out of the camera.

I hope you agree with me that this is the best choice. Let me know if you do (or not!) and keep your fingers crossed for me to get published in the 24 hours of flickr book.

I’m a member of the Utata group on flickr.

The group sets regular photo challenges for members. Participation is voluntary but taking part has helped me to isolate specific parts of my technique to work on and given me different things to think about when taking my photographs.

This photo is my first attempt at an entry for the Iron Photographer series of challenges. The iron photographer challenges each have 3 unique elements which you must include in your photograph - each photograph should be a new attempt, nothing from your archives is accepted. The elements for this were:

1. fruit
2. something black
3. close up

I think the first 2 are covered quite obviously by the strawberries and black plate. Close up was a little bit harder as my lens doesn’t really allow me to get that close to my subjects (minimum distance 49cm) - hopefully I’ve made a good enough attempt for my first go at this!

To check out the other (far better) entries in Iron Photographer 21 take a look here after the 8th of May when the project will be published : http://www.utata.org/project/ip20/

That’s all for now folks - back to some Friday night E4 viewing!