Saturday Sanddancer Scene #38

Antonio

Hello and welcome back to the Saturday Sanddancer Scene, where members of Curly’s Corner Shop Message Board compete to have their photographs published here, this time around I asked members to submit portraits, and we had a wide and varied selection of entries. The winning entry comes from Dave Smith, a former South Shields man, now living in Chester-le-Street, Dave has an Italian wife and this wonderful charming picture was taken during one of his many family trips to the hills of Italy.

Antonio Marra was 84 years young when this picture was taken, he is a former police officer and the picture was shot in his house in Taurisano in the Lecce region of Italy, the part which we commonly refer to as “the heel”. Antonio is allowed to enjoy a single glass of wine per day and he was relishing this one after lunch on a rather dull afternoon when the light levels were receding somewhat. Dave tells me that Antonio is now over 87 years of age and is still as sprightly and lively as ever!

Dave has an avid interest in photography, is a Photoshop user, and is always looking for those ways to improve his art, this shot was taken on his Canon 400d using the kit 18-55mm lens, he used bounced flash from the Canon Speedlite 580 Ex ll. The exposure was 1/60 sec. at f5.6, and the iso speed as 400. I think you will agree this is a magnificent portrait full of genial warmth, which puts the viewer firmly in the picture, I can easily imagine a conversation with Antonio.

Well done Mr. Smith!

To stay up to date with my regular pictorial postings please go to South Shields Daily Pictures.

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Saturday Sanddancer Scene #34

Around the house

This is the latest offering from the members of Curly’s Corner Shop Message Board after a photo competition with an unusual theme. I had challenged them to produce three pictures taken in three separate rooms of the house with some sort of direct linked theme to them, not an easy task! The forum is now one of the busiest and best populated on Tyneside with over 233000 posts!

This was was the winning entry from “Rosy” one of our regular contributors from Australia, she was delighted that her picture was chosen to feature here, Rosie told me:

I live in Queensland, I’m a great-grandma and I feel the cold when the winter months come along.  I enjoy messing around with Paint Shop Pro and I just happened to buy the pink slippers (which actually are falling to pieces already) when you first posted the criteria for the competition  I thought I would have a bit of fun and see what I could come up with.  My PSP is an old version and since I put it on my new computer I haven’t added any plug-ins apart from Redfields which I used for the water ripples.  The three photos were taken in my kitchen, bathroom and computer room which I think speak for themselves.

To stay up to date with my regular daily photo postings please go to South Shields Daily Pictures.

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It may be winter outside…

…but in my house it’s spring

Taken before the New Year’s Eve festivities began in South Shields. One small Yorkshire Terrier very much at home sitting on a nice warm sofa whilst the snow was heavily falling outside.

This is an HDR (High Dynamic Range) image processed in Photomatix from one single RAW file, I gave it a small curves adjustment in Photoshop and then resized, nothing more. The intention was to produce something with a more nostalgic look, hence the warm colours, I do think the style of this particular artificial Christmas tree was a big help too.

For more regular daily postings of my latest work, please go to South Shields Daily Pictures.

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Saturday Sanddancer Scene #15

I saw three ships/boats

I have decided to choose this picture from those submitted by the members of Curly’s Corner Shop Message Board (which now hosts over 188,000 posts), it was taken by local businessman John France at Lake Windermere in the Lake District, hoping that he doesn’t mind me pushing his original through Photoshop to create this composite.

Of  his original shot John said:

“I took this picture in the fog on the edge of Lake Windermere at White Cross Bay, I took a few pics from the shore but for this one  I walked to the end of a jetty and I found the effect of only the boats and the water in the pic all the more peaceful.
White Cross Bay is very popular for kayaks and other water sports but fortunately for me it was quite early in the day
and the lake was calm and mirror like,which helped the atmosphere of the photograph enormously.
I almost forgot I took the pic on my mobile phone (nokia 97) goes to show how much mobile technology has come, don’t you think ?”

We certainly agree John, but hope the shock of this new look doesn’t cause too much upset.

Camera details: Nokia N97, 5.4mm lens, 1/1000 second, f2.8, iso100

Map

To see my latest work please go to South Shields Daily Pictures where we are currently in the middle of a series of giant American trucks from a circus that visited South Shields recently.

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Photo-shop

Edinburgh Buildings

Photo shop – get it?

The Edinburgh Buildings are on the corner of King Street, South Shields and include a photo processing shop on the ground floor where you can take your cd-rom, memory card, usb stick etc. to have your photos printed, ideal for a bit of heavy photo processing I thought, so off I went and got to work on it.

This image originally came from three separate ,jpg files (bracketed at two stop intervals) and they were processed as an HDR (High Dynamic Range) in Photomatix, before the result was sent to Photoshop to have a few extra layers and a mask added, to finish it off I flattened the image and did a bit of dodging and burning in the sky. Cool, I thought – Photo-shop!

What do you think?

Having made one or two HDRs now I’m almost hooked, so I’ll be featuring a few of them shortly in South  Shields Daily Pictures where you can catch up with my latest work.

Camera details: Pentax K100D, 28mm lens, 1/125 second, f8, iso 200

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