Selected B&W Flowers

It is summer and rainy and cold and windy. Yucky weather all round. So, I may as well take time to go through some of my older photos I've shot with the Tamron 18-270mm PZD and play with some Photoshop at the same time.

The idea for the images below comes from some other B&W photos I've seen on Flickr. Below my results.

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Attention!!!

Who says a winter day cannot yield good beach photos! I have no clue what these poles were used for in time past, but, they really added interest and character to a scene that would otherwise have been just another plain beach photo.

Well, I was not too happy with how these turned out in color, so I did a quick black and white conversion in Photoshop and I am very pleased with the dramatic effect. I would also like to re-iterate how pleased I am with the performance of the Tamron 18-270mm PZD. This lens is now such a natural part of my kit and I find using it more and more over my other lenses. This hold true especially for general family outings like this particular day, where I do not want to drag my whole camera bag along with me.

Canon 600D, Tamron 18-270mm f3.5-6.3 Di II VC PZD. Focal length 18mm, Exposure 1/200sec at f8, ISO 100, Focus auto, VC on, Flash none, Filter none. 

Canon 600D, Tamron 18-270mm f3.5-6.3 Di II VC PZD. Focal length 18mm, Exposure 1/200sec at f8, ISO 100, Focus auto, VC on, Flash none, Filter none.

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Beauty and the Beast

On our way back from our outing (see previous post), close to home we have a new section in development. The workers had their earth moving equipment parked close to the road with quite a view in the background. Time was on my side and allowed a couple of quick pics before the sun dipped too low.

Canon 600D, Tamron 18-270mm f3.5-6.3 Di II VC PZD. Focal length 25mm, Exposure 1/320sec at f11, ISO 400, Focus auto, VC on, Flash none, Filter none. 

Canon 600D, Tamron 18-270mm f3.5-6.3 Di II VC PZD. Focal length 23mm, Exposure 1/200sec at f8, ISO 400, Focus auto, VC on, Flash none, Filter none.

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Flower in the cold

It has been a while since I've last posted to this blog. Needless to say it is now winter over here, so being a winter rainfall area, my photography has also entered a slow period.

The other weekend we had a break in the weather, and even though we were all battling with a cold, we went down to the beach just to get out a bit. While on our trip I spotted this little flower. This photo was deliberately taken at maximum zoom so I can get some of the busy background out of focus.

Canon 600D, Tamron 18-270mm f3.5-6.3 Di II VC PZD. Focal length 270mm, Exposure 1/400sec at f8, ISO 100, Focus auto, VC on, Flash none, Filter none.

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Parliament buildings

Parliament buildings in Wellington. I am pleased with how the building textures and colors came out. Processing was mainly done in CameraRaw 7 with CS6. Please refer to the following how-to that I've typed up to see what processing I've performed on these images: http://teach-me-photo.blogspot.co.nz/2012/05/photoshop-statue.html

Canon 600D, Tamron 18-270mm f3.5-6.3 Di II VC PZD. Focal length 25mm, Exposure 1/1000sec at f8, ISO 400, Focus auto, VC on, Flash none, Filter none.

Canon 600D, Tamron 18-270mm f3.5-6.3 Di II VC PZD. Focal length 42mm, Exposure 1/1600sec at f8, ISO 400, Focus auto, VC on, Flash none, Filter none.

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Premier John Ballance

The statue of Premier John Ballance stands in front of the Parliamentary Library on the Parliament grounds in Wellington. Walking back to our offices after going to a customer one morning, I decided to take a shortcut through the parliament grounds to take a number of photos before the worst of the winter rolls in. I will post these over the next couple of days.

To start off, this statue was post processed in Adobe Photoshop CS6 Beta only. Most tweaking was performed in Camera Raw.

Canon 600D, Tamron 18-270mm f3.5-6.3 Di II VC PZD. Focal length 42mm, Exposure 1/640sec at f8, ISO 400, Focus auto, VC on, Flash none, Filter none.

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Tug

I've always had a little fascination with tug boats. Usually these tugs are operating where I cannot get close enough to them but I was lucky enough the other day.

Although the Tamron performed beautifully, allowing multiple shots of the two tugs in action (only one shown in this blog)  at different zoom levels, the normal photos were too busy due to the background.

Oh well, since I've recently installed the Beta version of Photoshop CS6, I thought it best to play a bit with the new Oil Painting effects in CS6. Below the results for your enjoyment.(click the photos to view them in full size)

Canon 600D, Tamron 18-270mm f3.5-6.3 Di II VC PZD. Focal length 142mm, Exposure 1/200sec at f8, ISO 200, Focus auto, VC on, Flash none, Filter none.

Canon 600D, Tamron 18-270mm f3.5-6.3 Di II VC PZD. Focal length 219mm, Exposure 1/125sec at f8, ISO 200, Focus auto, VC on, Flash none, Filter none.

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