Take a picture once a day, whether you need to or not

[IainC]

The crematorium is amazing. 

Any chance you can get in and shoot it at night / with your own light?  That structure could carry some serious light painting - but looking at the crop you are constrained by the buildings nearby aren't you? 

Thanks for all the nice comments. The crematorium is a pretty big building - those doors are probably 6 or 7 metres tall - and it sits in kind of a bowl surrounded by the rest of the cemetery. You're limited to the perimeter of the circle it sits in if you want to take ground-level pictures, and by the trees surrounding the top of the bowl if you try and photograph it from further away. I'd really like to go there at dawn and take some photos with the sun coming up behind it, but that would require special permission that I'm unlikely to get as it's inside a walled and gated cemetery.

[Merusk]

I think if you showed them the pics you have and offered to share the ones you want to take for their free use you might be surprised.

[IainC]

In case anyone is interested, I wrote an effortpost about Soviet cameras.

[apocrypha]

Also, I own about 8 lenses for m39 and m42 mount cameras and every goddamn one of them has a different filter thread size.

 

[Engels]

Manzanita beach, Oregon coast.

[Endie]

I got given a Nikon D7200 for my birthday, so I no longer have the excuse of just using a phone camera.  It's the first SLR I've had since an Olympus OM-20 many years ago and wow is it complex.  And I say that not just as someone who can program in a range of languages but also as one who plays Eve.

[Khaldun]

You can ignore a lot of it, though, unless you want to play with advanced options of various kinds.

[Endie]

You can ignore a lot of it, though, unless you want to play with advanced options of various kinds.

But what if one of them does something awesome?

[apocrypha]

It's the person taking the picture that does the awesome stuff.

[IainC]

Set it to take RAW shots, use centre-weighted averaged metering, to not have the touchscreen trigger the shutter, to use drive mode and that's about it. After that, you only need to fuck about with aperture, shutter speed and ISO unless you are doing something super specific even then you'll mostly only be doing something like switching autofocus or metering modes. I almost never go into the menu on my 70D unless I'm fucking about with wi-fi or custom white balance, there's a reason that the buttons on the outside have the functions that they do.

[IainC]

Medium format

Lavra by Iain Compton, on Flickr


Fallen Soldiers by Iain Compton, on Flickr


Bored by Iain Compton, on Flickr

And an unposed portrait shot with one of my old Soviet 35mm cameras.


Zenit-14.jpg by Iain Compton, on Flickr

[Pennilenko]

I have no idea why you went into game development when you very clearly should have been a photographer.

[ezrast]

Professional photography is about marketing yourself, dealing with clients, and taking good pictures. In that order.

[Merusk]

Sounds like most service careers.

[apocrypha]

Unfortunately, for 99% of the time, being a professional photographer is about doing repetitive, mundane stuff like product photography and weddings. Nice photos like Iain's are not the ones that make you the money :(

My advice, if you enjoy photography don't try and make your sole living from it, just carry on enjoying it and if you can make some money out of it on the side then that's great, enjoy that too :)

I love the way that medium format film lends itself to centred compositions. The shots from what looks like a hunting trip are great, and wouldn't work nearly as well with a rectangular format. Particularly like the middle one, with the dark-haired woman and the gun on the table. Really nice Iain.

[Khaldun]

I like the medium format shots a lot.

Old camera has a great vintage look. Not surprising, I guess.

[apocrypha]

Spring time in Lancashire, UK.

[IainC]

Went to see Public Image Ltd last night. Really ace gig and I got my camera past security. Unfortunately the only long lens I have here is an ancient 100-300 with a variable aperture but I still got some keepers by cranking the shit out of the ISO.



John Lydon by Iain Compton, on Flickr


John Lydon by Iain Compton, on Flickr


John Lydon by Iain Compton, on Flickr

[IainC]

I took a last walk around Kyiv with my camera before I headed off to Slovakia. Captured a few landmarks that I'd never got around to and found some neat little corners that I hadn't spotted before.


Verkhovna Rada by Iain Compton, on Flickr


Soviet Modernism by Iain Compton, on Flickr


Hidden Temple by Iain Compton, on Flickr


Dark Skies by Iain Compton, on Flickr

[Count Nerfedalot]

is that a dragon silhouetted on the side of the central spire?
 

[IainC]

is that a dragon silhouetted on the side of the central spire?
 

It's St Michael oppressing minorities.


Kiev_May-17.jpg by Iain Compton, on Flickr

[IainC]

I was randomly strolling with my camera in the new town that I just moved to and stumbled across a classic car rally just down the street from my apartment. I took a bunch of normal photos then got bored of doing bumper-height 3/4 shots while waiting for everyones' fat kids to stop climbing all over the car I was trying to photograph, so I started shooting details.


1939 Jawa Minor Roadster by Iain Compton, on Flickr


1970 Porsche 911T by Iain Compton, on Flickr


1946 Jaguar MkIV by Iain Compton, on Flickr


Bugatti Type 49 Engine by Iain Compton, on Flickr


1966 Jaguar E-Type Series I by Iain Compton, on Flickr


1960 Austin Healey 3000 by Iain Compton, on Flickr

[apocrypha]

Nice :) What beautiful cars.

[RhyssaFireheart]

Beautiful pics, Iain!  I grew up going to old car shows with my dad and I love looking at the details and just beauty they have.

[Nebu]

Iain, your eye is amazing.  Some spectacular pics.

[Count Nerfedalot]

The cathedral in silhouette is so much more dramatic and interesting than the daylight shot. Very nicely done.

[Surlyboi]

[IainC]

Here are some more medium format photos. Zürich and Kosice.

Medium Format Zurich-27.jpg by Iain Compton, on Flickr


Medium Format Zurich-2.jpg by Iain Compton, on Flickr


Medium Format Kosice-19.jpg by Iain Compton, on Flickr

And one from an almost 50 year old Soviet 35mm SLR (Kiev 10, worlds first automatic 35mm SLR).


untitled-28.jpg by Iain Compton, on Flickr

[Khaldun]

[Khaldun]

[Khaldun]

[Khaldun]

[IainC]

This is great.

[IainC]

A while ago I bought a super-gimmicky Soviet camera (I *know* right?) and I just got around to actually shooting a roll of film in it. To my considerable surprise, it works perfectly. It's a panoramic camera that has a rotating lens which shoots a single exposure across two 35mm film frames.


untitled-65.jpg by Iain Compton, on Flickr


untitled-63.jpg by Iain Compton, on Flickr

Here's a short video (by me) showing how it works.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BFjfpqzBlWE/?taken-by=serialforeigner

And some more medium format stuff.


untitled-18.jpg by Iain Compton, on Flickr


untitled-28.jpg by Iain Compton, on Flickr


untitled-30.jpg by Iain Compton, on Flickr

[Khaldun]

Really like the monument.

The panoramic is interesting. Distortion in the second shot is strong but it still works.

I went to a show recently by a guy who shoots with a large-format camera from the wing of a very low-flying crop-dusting airplane in the U.S. Midwest. Some stunning stuff.