Lessons For Matron.

Ice Waterfall.
Waiting for the sun.The big Bamboo!

Kettle fish!


For those who don't know, My mother is a fellow blogger, see Views from the castle! Any way recently she has become more involved and interested in the photographic side of things so much so that she asked me for advice about a camera. She has outgrown the small point and shoot that I got her for Christmas a number of years back. She did not want a big professional type SLR with changeable lens's, or another small camera, but something in between. In the end we settled on a nice Camera with a good telephoto lens that can also take good close up Macro shots as well.
At this point I think I should point out that as a boy all I wanted to do was to be able to paint! which is something that my mother, brother, and one of my sisters can do, but sadly I was blessed with my dads rather un-artistic genes, who's only style of painting could at best be described as the Jackson Pollock school, if his work with emulsion is anything to go by. Well to counter that the school I went to had a dark room! but sadly due to my other hobby that of blowing things up in chemistry labs, I was banned from going any where near, any way at that point I didn't have a camera. I remember watching a programme about a Picture post photographer called Bill Brandt, which also included the work of the famous war photographer Don McCullin and from then on all I wanted was an SLR camera. To cut along story short when I awoke on Christmas morning and unwrapped a rather pathetic looking 35mm Agfa compact camera needless to say I was a little disappointed. My disappointment didn't last long though as the next thing I unwrapped was a Patterson darkroom kit! The little camera with a fixed 35 mm lens turned out to be the best teacher I ever had, that coupled with the darkroom kit taught me all the fundamentals of photography that still hold true today even in this age of digital and photo shop! I still have that Agfa in fact I used it for years when I was in the army. It was whilst doing the training for the army that my mother bought an Olympus Om10 SLR so as she could take photos of me on my passing out parade, well that was thirty years ago, and I will not forget the fact that she gave me that camera. Since then I have used Cameras in all the jobs I have done, in the army, security and again now in the Fire Brigade, I have since become a teacher in photography for a while and have even won a National competition in Black and white photography, and all this because I can't paint! and because of that little Agfa. So there is my history in relation to photographs, I do not consider myself an expert in photography all I can say is that I have a little understanding in it built on the back of years of triumphs and disasters.
Well on my mothers post she used her new Camera for the first time and took what most people who left comments thought were good shots! I agree with them, they are good, but with just a little thought, and a little bit of knowledge on the camera it's self they can become so much more. In this age of digital cameras, gone are the days when you took the shot not knowing the outcome until they came back usually disappointingly from the chemist and at great expense! now you can see the results instantly, which gives you time to re-take the shot if it's not quite right. The photos above were taken this morning roughly mirroring the one's Matron took. To be fare I must point out that I have an SLR camera but I used it only in full auto which is something I don't normally do so as to best mirror the performance of her camera. The difference is only the point of focus. This concentrates all the cameras sensors on the centre so as to get the best reading. I'm not saying my pictures are better, what I'm saying is that they are sharper, this then gives us the viewer a more pleasing result photographically speaking. I hope this helps!