A day in Hyde Park - 1

Had to go into London yesterday, so I thought I'd take the opportunity to pay a visit to Hyde Park, camera in tow. I've been planning to ever since I saw a beautiful shot in the newspaper, of a cyclist pedalling along a frosty path in the park, framed by red and yellow - leaved trees. So yesterday, I thought I'd have a look for myself. Again,I think it works, in spite of the the line of the "horizon" cutting through the middle - which is a strict no-no if you religiously follow the rule of thirds. Just goes to show, rules are meant to be broken. Sometimes, at least - most of the time, following rules is a good idea, and not just in photography.

A word about Photoshop - I'm a newcomer to it, but not exactly new to image manipulation as such. I'll write about how I feel about the morals and ethics of it some other time, but today, I wanted to touch on a comparison between Photoshop and Picasa.

Picasa, in case you didn't know, have a nice little image manipulation capability. You can do pretty much everything you do (or at least, I do) in Photoshop, using an intuitive, easy-to-use interface. Things like cropping, changing light levels and sharpening. Also special effects like tints, watercolour and film grain. I've been using it for three or four years now, and think it's brilliant. And it's free!

Photoshop, on the other hand - it came free with my laptop, which I got more than a year ago. After a first couple of attempts, I got put off it completely due to its many complications. Too many commands, options, and just not easily understood. No wonder photo mags invariably come with free tutorial DVDs for Photoshop! It's only now that I've started forcing myself to use it - because I'm trying to make a career in animation, and knowledge of Photoshop might be useful. It's what the "professionals" use, after all...

To sum up, I honestly can't see why more people don't use Picasa. You can't do the more advanced stuff, like layering, for example, but how many people use stuff like that? Most of us would just like our pictures to look like what we had in mind when we pressed that shutter. But maybe I'll change my mind once I've done more work in Photoshop. Right now, I'm using both - for instance, the pictures posted here both had crooked horizons - and after struggling with Photoshop's straightening tools (it has more than one), I gave up and used Picasa's simple one. Then, having saved the images, I opened and edited them in Photoshop to balance the light and increase the saturation. Anyway, that's it for today - there's more to tell (and show) about my day at Hyde Park, but I'll save that for later. Meanwhile, hope you like the pic!

Click!

Notice the title of this post? The very first one on this blog! The "Click" of a camera shutter is one of the most satisfying sounds I know - especially when I know that I've bagged a good shot. It's also one I haven't heard in a while, ever since I switched to digital, more than three years ago. My mobile phone camera attempts an electronic approximation, but it's not quite the same.

About this blog - it's meant to be a sort of photographic journal, documenting what I've been up to with my camera, a commentary of photographic techniques and experiments, the places I visit in search of a nice-looking image and maybe even a look at what's out there - cameras, techniques, people and websites.

Over here in Kent, England it's autumn. The trees are beginning to blaze. And from the train, you can once again see those scarlet creepers draped across walls beside the tracks (where do they go in summer?). And cliched though they are, like almost all photography, autumn shots are a delight. For the next month or so, that's what I'm going to be doing. Till the leaves are all gone. And then it'll be time for those frosty, snowy winter shots.

Here's one to start with - this was taken in the parking lot of a local shopping centre - not the most inspiring place for nature shots, but I thought this worked, somehow, the bright red of the leaves contrasting with the drab dirty-white concrete, and a hint of more autumnal beauty in the background. I'll leave you with this one today.