Sharing The Roijoy

We all have views and stories regarding this current year. For me personally, it hasn't been too bad, a little strange at times, but nothing disastrous. Meanwhile I know people personally who have been, and are, going through the mill. I was busy doing a shoot when a section of a room at a location I was working at, began to stimulate my imagination. And the image above is the result of all of that. Below you can see how I made it using other photos that I have taken in the past along with doing some illustration work on my computer.

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On my way to a meeting, I glanced the other way up the road where I had parked my car. I immediately saw a scene that could offer some nice compositions for some stock photography. This action was taking place too far up the road in the opposite direction for me to go in for a closer look, and still be on time for my meeting. I happened to have a Nikon 800 in my camera bag with a 70 - 200mm lens attached. Very quickly I was able to capture a few frames without diverting up the road and I would let the resolution of the Nikon give me some options for the final crop. Above you can see the frame I captured for the image at the top of the page. The final crop is shown as a lighter rectangular area within the scene. From the various frames I captured this was the tightest I went to  for a crop.  The Nikon 800 body can resolve at up to 36 megapixels.  When shooting to make the most of the camera's resolution, you have the latitude to make fairly aggressive crops to images and s...

We needed to have some pictures showing night scenes but logistics and model availability meant we could only shoot in the daytime. So what do I do? This first image was shot by the beach, in the Caribbean, at noon on a very sunny day. To achieve this look I changed the exposure setting on my camera away from what might be considered the complimentary setting for shooting in bright day light. I was going to have to do some retouching but wanted a good base image to work with. Light during nighttime often displays with a pronounced amount of blue, so capturing an image with lots of blue already in would be a good place for me to begin. So I set my camera light meter to read the light as if it was coming from a tungsten source. This would push the overall ambience toward a blue tone. However, I wanted to keep the skin tones warm and not blue. To make this happen, I shot with a speedlite and set the lighting to expose the foreground only. I also put an orange filter on the f...

2020 just keeps on doling out more twists to each story. A lot of people now wonder if there is anyway out of the wormhole we all seem to be existing in. This is a straight forward shot of the vehicle on one of the local dirt roads with marshland on the right side of the scene. I stood on a ladder and took a selfie using the self timer function and cut out the image. Next I illustrated the ladder digitally and placed it into the main image. Once I was happy with the ladder position, I positioned the selfie cut-out onto the ladder and sized it down to a scale that I felt worked for the composition. Once I was happy, I also added shadows and highlights to the ladder to help with the illusion. I did further work blending the ladder where it appears to enter the clouds. With all of this in place, I went ahead and digitally created the 'This Way Out' sign and blended it into the composition. Finally I did some overall toning to the image. Main Image Location: Sit...

Individual ideas, theories, advice, solutions, and more are all heavily amplified with easy access to social media. Whether it's the perceived anonymity, or the buffer of non face-to-face confrontation, many people are able to speak as experts dismissing any arguments that counter their own viewpoints. So who's wrong? Who's right? Who knows. But whatever the approach or proffered solution, there will be consequences. The main image here is a self portrait as I balance on a stool. I added some ants taken from an older photo and then drew the strings that would suspend me once the stool had been taken out of the picture. After finding someone to model for me, I took a quick shot of a hand holding a pair of scissors. The hand and scissors are cut out and the retouched into the main image. Adding shadows and toning complete the image. Main Image Location: Stann Creek, Belize. Camera: Nikon DSLR, crop frame. F number: f/8 Focal length 27mm APS lens Exposu...

...things to do while practising isolation. During our state of emergency we are not allowed to make journeys unless they are deemed essential. With no active cases of the virus for 26 days now, some of the restrictions have been eased slightly. One of the changes mean that we can now travel to the nearest town for paying bills and shopping for items we can't find in the village. I've not been able to ride for over a month. Trips to the village are too short a distance to be kind to the battery, but now that we can go into the nearest town to pay bills, it is a great excuse to give the bike a run :) If you are acquainted with the tales of King Arthur, the image will be immediately clear to you. It's made of two separate shots combined together. The main shot is the motorcycle standing next to a puddle. it's a very shallow puddle, but with the very low camera angle it starts to look like a much larger body of water. And then the rising arm also adds a sense of...

...things to do while practising isolation. This was fairly simple to put together and is really just one shot with lighting. The pictures were taken in a darkened room and used 2 speedlites and a small red LED light. One light is placed directly behind my head and set to half power pointing into the back of my head. The second speedlite is directly in front of me about one and a half meters away and set to half power. This second light also has a modifier attached so that it projects a spot light shaped beam which I angled slightly downward at the mango in my hand. Then just for a little interest and to focus attention, I held a small red LED light under my chin. The ring of the grenade is the ring from a keyring and then I simply digitally illustrated the rest of the grenade detonator. Here's the original photo below. Main Image Location: Sittee Point, Belize. Camera: Nikon DSLR, crop frame. F number: f/6.3 Focal length 17mm APS lens Exposure: 1/125 ISO: 10...

... things to do while practising isolation. Under the current State of Emergency here in Belize, we are mandated to wear a mask or other covering over our mouths and noses whenever we are out in public. So whenever we are getting ready to go out for an essential reason, we need to remember our masks. I began with a straight forward selfie using the light from a window and the on-camera flash. Afterwards I took another selfie which would replace the original reflection in the mirror. Since this would be seen as a reflection, I posed so that once the image was flipped everything would be facing in the right direction to complete the illusion. Once I had a shot i was happy with, it was a simple matter of making it into a cutout and then retouching it into the main image. The final thing to do was to get a shot of a surgical looking mask and retouch that into the composition in a position I was happy with. Main Image Location: Sittee Point, Belize. Camera: Nikon DSLR...

...things to do while practising isolation. Hoax or Real, Pandemic or Conspiracy, New Corona Virus or Flu, Vaccine or Herd Immunity, Mask or No Mask, Stay At Home or Business As Usual, Essential or Non Essential, Life or Death. The Red Pill or The Blue Pill... Some of my friends from time to time have described situations as being "clear as mud." With the plethora of advice, voices, theories, and increasing angst, our 2020 vision seems to have become as clear as mud - which in turn makes good choices just a tiny bit harder at times. The main image for this piece is an afternoon shot taken on our beach. To get the shadow contrast I wanted I spot metered the the areas of sand that were catching the sunlight.  Next I cut a pair of flaps in the sky by manipulating the image on my computer and then painting in shadow and light to enhance the effect. Back in the house I took a selfie and posed in a position that I thought would match the 'tear' I had c...

...things to do while practising isolation. The Covid-19 driven State of Emergency continues here in Belize. It has now been mandated that any essential movement outside of our properties can only be done while wearing a face mask. First I took a clear shot of the wall furniture I would use for the main background. My initial work was to place additional wooden panels onto the fascia of the unit to create a large enough area to hang all the 'masks'. This was done digitally by sampling wooden areas from other parts of the unit. The camera has been focussed and locked in place on a tripod and light readings, focus, and exposure have been locked in place with 2 speedlites included in the set up. There is one speedlight 40º right of camera and one speedlite 45º left of camera. The next shot I needed was a selfie which I exposed with a remote shutter release. After taking a hand-full of shots I chose one that would work for the final image I had in mind. Once the...

...things to do while practising isolation. There is a local online news outlet named Breaking Belize News that I styled this image after as a spoof posting. The State Of Emergency and it's limitations to free movement means that in spite of being in what looks like paradise, we are not at liberty to go and enjoy it. Instead we are mandated to stay at home, and sometimes I can't help wondering if this is what it's like for some zoo animals. We are allowed to be out for exercise on foot in the mornings and we use this time to walk and run our dogs. As we arrived back at our home, I asked my wife to quickly pose for the image that had finally come together in my mind. Working digitally, I turned my wife's shirt into a robe with a sort of belt and then re-illustrated her head to an alien shape with blue tones. I also recoloured her hand. Next I drew a metal sign attached to the gate with the words 'Endangered Species'. Finally I drew an interactive disp...

This image was created for a motorcycle adventure tour business in Belize. It was used as marketing and awareness imagery on Earth Day 2020.  This was also put together during a national quarantine period so working with models was not an option. Using my bike and myself as a model, I was able to work around the situation. Without a telescope, and unable to travel into space to shoot planetary photos for myself, I made some royalty free image purchases from Shutterstock's online image library. Halos were added and a Belize flag placed onto the image of planet Earth. For the two selfies I took, the camera was set up and locked down on a tripod. I also placed one speedlite at 45º left of the scene, and one speedlite at 25º to the right of the scene. I shot in the shade so that I could achieve good contrast with the lighting for punchy images. Exposures were fired with a remote trigger. I changed jackets between the two shots to help create the illusion of separate...

...things to do while practising isolation. Comments about possible explorations for cures for the Covid19 virus, made by the leader of a large country, got this image taking shape in my head as I went to bed. When I woke up in the morning I knew exactly what I was going to do to bring the image in my mind into fruition. I opened the refrigerator to get some soda cans together to set up the shot. However, as we are currently in a state of emergency, I found we had already finished off all our cans of soda drinks except for one can of San Pellegrino. Not to worry — just need to do a little extra work. Locking the camera down on a tripod allowed me to take eight exposures of the same can, while changing it's position in each exposure to simulate multiple cans positioned next to each other. Once I had all eight shots, I transferred the files to my computer and merged the shots together to get the final cluster of cans that I wanted. Next I made some text changes and slight...

...things to do while practising isolation. I haven't done any tabletop photography for a while. But while I was cleaning one of my model cars last night I thought, "why not do a quick set-up and shot with it?". So I took over the dining table and detached my model F40 Ferrari from it's display stand.  After deciding on the angle I wanted to use, I locked the camera in place on a tripod. Next I set up the lighting to get the mood I wanted for the final image. I knew I wanted the scene to be taking place at night in low lighting conditions, so I set the exposure on my camera to view the ambient light in the scene as almost completely black. Once the settings for this was achieved, I was now at liberty to completely control how the light would work for me using artificial lighting. I worked with 2 speedlites set to low power and also used a small red LED light which I placed inside the model car. To prevent overspill of the light from the speedlites, I used ...

...things to do while practising isolation. First I took a selfie outdoors. The sunlight was quite strong and harsh so since I had chosen to use just one light, I aimed it at the shadow area under the tree to the right. I did this to lighten up the shadow a little so that I wouldn't end up with a large solid black area that might detract from the focus of the composition. I didn't want the area too light either otherwise the leaves wouldn't show up against it. The cross size bears no relation to the subject :) You can see from the original selfie, I had also raked up most of the leaves from the grass so that I could use them to complete the final image. I had collected all the leaves I raked up into a garden basket. It was fairly windy and the direction of the wind would dictate the direction the leaves would be travelling in the final image. Using the self timer on the camera, I gathered up an armful of leaves and then tossed them across the area where I wante...