Magno Cafe

I've been a bit busy with work lately so didn't get chance to arrange/discover new meetings with Staff owners. However I did free up some time before work this weekend to visit another location for my Thurrock flies the flag project. Weather pending I should be able to get at least another flag image before this coming weekend. For any feedback or more info please email me at the address listed in the About Me section.

Sunrise Staffs

After photographing the house last week I continued to look around Corringham for more flags; my luck was in when I came across two owners of Staffordshire Bull Terriers and they kindly allowed me to photograph their dogs - the second owner preferred that her daughter be photographed and joked that it was too early to be standing in front of a camera. Thanks to both of the owners for stopping and adding to my Staff folder. Hopefully by next week I can have more flag images and maybe another Staff if I'm lucky.

Sunrise with St George

Before work this morning I quickly set up outside a house after arranging that it was ok to photograph with the owner a couple of days back. I can't decide which of the bottom two images I prefer so I'll probably end up going back there again but this time about 15-20 minutes earlier to see if the light is better - hopefully with a bit more wind too..... Apologies if the colours seem off, I know that my colourblind problems have produced some interesting results before when I then run it by the wife (who is currently asleep) for a second opinion.

Thurrock flies the flag

Starting with some good news, I have now moved on from part-time pizza delivery to part-time camera shop work. Not great when I'm trying to save harder now than at any other point in my working life - but still it's all adding up and talking about cameras to people isn't that bad of a job (just the pushy sales part that I'm not so keen on). So a new job and a new project. Thurrock flies the flag came about from when I worked as a delivery driver and noticed a few St George's Cross flags around. Although I own a Welsh flag and do hang it over a balcony when out on a skiing holiday, I've never gone to the effort of flying/hanging it when I lived in Wales. This summer was quite a patriotic one with the royal wedding and at one point bunting was everywhere but that's gone now. People that still go to the effort of flying a St George's Cross are that extra step above the bunting crap that was so easily available. It's that extra step that interests me and hopefully the shops/sheds/houses/garages flying the flag will make for some interesting images and interesting people. First up.......

Here comes the bride

Almost 10 weeks have gone by since my last post and I'm gutted to say that I have very little new material. I have been busy paying back my student overdraft and also quite unorganised at setting aside some time to go out and shoot. Saying that, there are no real excuses that can get me out of the lack of activity on this blog - sadly I've let photography fall below some less important tasks. I'm now back in the flow of things, starting with paying for a Viewbook account (which is still under construction) and also getting back in the loop with following blogs and twitter to get my photography fix. Big shout out to JonathanJK asking Viewbook for a favour and equally for the Viewbook gang dishing out a favour - I'm really excited about finally getting an online portfolio of work using their clean look templates. So now onto some of the images that I have taken over my quietest 10 week period, they were taken a few weeks back at my oldest (period not age) friend's wedding. She asked me to obviously shoot the ceremony and after party but I asked if it was ok to come for the wedding prep - thinking it would help bulk out the wedding book. Before the wedding we had only agreed on the staged shots for the ceremony itself so I was looking forward to the morning to wander around and be snap happy. It's because of this freedom that I'm willing to put up some wedding shots on a blog that I was trying to keep as purely personal. Sadly for my 1D MKII N, the wedding prep was the last thing to go onto its sensor. Literally minutes after arriving at the registry office, after using the camera for the previous 3 hours, the camera died and displayed 'Error 99' - so until I can afford to send it off for repair, which isn't going to be anytime soon working as a part-time pizza delivery boy on minimum wage (poor me, no really, poor me - I'm skint), I'll be using my back-up GF1 (that was luckily at hand when the 1D gave up). One other thing, congratulations to the newly married Meredith couple and thanks for an awesome day!

Sunset Staff

As promised I am trying to post more work around the few projects I'm working on this summer. The below image was taken today around sunset when I cycled passed this Staff and its owner. Hopefully within the next 7-10 days I will have images from the other two projects that I will be focusing on this summer.

As I have mentioned to most of the owners that I have met for this project; if you would like an image of you and your Staff I'm more than happy to send a copy - please use the email address listed (alexdmiller.info@gmail.com) to reach me.

Weekend walls

I haven't set out to go and photograph anything this week (or the last two weeks either) and I know that this approach of just walking around with a camera on my hip is not producing anything decent. My recent posts are stuff that I 'like' and nothing more; the work that really made me happy whilst being at uni was work that I could go out and capture for a specific project or theme.
Although street photography has become more of an interest to me (especially since graduating) I really need to be working on something more than street.
Hopefully over the coming weeks I can show more work that surrounds the themes/projects that I want to publish on my (soon-to-arrive) website.
In the meantime I've just started a Snapixel account (never been a fan of Flickr) to load more images that I 'like' - Snapixel will have more of the out-and-about shots, rather than the project/theme related work that I'm aiming to promote more on this blog.
Going through my images from being out and about this weekend I realised that I had several wall shots so I've quickly made an edit down to my favourite three.

Late at Lakeside

Really quick post tonight because it was my little sister's birthday today and I feel guilty for being on here away from her party. Earlier on this evening I quickly popped out to Lakeside Shopping Centre to pick up some last minute things for her birthday and thought the light was too good to miss - not to keep the missus waiting too long I quickly ran out of the car park for a few minutes to just shoot what looked nice in the light; I'm hoping I can more time and similar weather conditions for tomorrow evening.

Tattoo and tongue

Not the most productive 2 weeks for the GF1 due to moving, graduating, celebrating and the weather; in fact since the LSPF day out I haven't gone somewhere purely to photograph - so here are some images that I've taken whilst being out and about with family in Essex.

LSPF day out

Today I headed out to the London Street Photography Festival (LSPF) and carried the GF1 with me to give it the first going over in London. Within the first minute of starting out my day, coming out of the tube at St Pancras International, I spotted a man raising an X100 in the corner of my eye; I commented 'nice camera' and then bumped into him again 2 minutes later. We got talking and found that we were both in St Pancras for the same reason (to see Entente Cordiale and start a trip looking around the LSPF).
It was nice to talk photography and walk around the LSPF, sharing views and thoughts on street photography. We exchanged details and here is his website www.iwasneverthere.com
It was real nice going around with another photographer but as a result of our chit chat I wasn't fully focused on shooting (I like to keep some form of eye contact when in conversation).
I did get some shots fired and below is an edit from today.
One last thing, Boris, I'm really sorry if I walked into the frame for any of your images - hope you had fun with the X100 in London, I'm glad we met.

GF(round)1 test shots

Very quick post tonight. Brief summary of the past few days;
- The GRD3 has been returned faulty for ghosting problems on Wednesday (no questions asked by the good guys at Clifton Cameras, full refund after testing in-store).
- New GF1 and 14mm F2.5 lens bought from Cameraland in Cardiff for a decent price on Thursday.
- First real chance to get out with the GF1 today (too much travelling and rain yesterday) and have a play around; however this was interrupted by a bad case of dodgy guts that kept me housebound this afternoon, which also meant I was unable to get my SPN book signed at Exmouth Market tonight, gutted (literally).
- Managed to venture out for 5 minutes at sunset to the local chippy to try out the GF1 in low light.
- I'm very happy with the GF1 image quality and low light capability. Even with this 14mm F2.5 lens that I initially feared might be too slow - seeing the results I'm glad I opted for the wider angle 14mm F2.5 over the larger aperture 20mm F1.7.
- GF1 now covered by insurance so I have no excuses about getting in the thick of it out there in the street.

More test shots tomorrow - guts are now settled.

This town, is coming like a ghost town

So as mentioned yesterday I've noticed a ghosting around some of the images produced by the Ricoh GRiii. I've looked at plenty of sample images over the last day and it appears that my GRiii has a more severe problem with this ghosting effect. This was surprising after reading that all of the lens elements in the GRiii have a multi-coating to prevent/reduce ghosting problems.
All the images below were shot in aperture priority or program shift mode (therefore incapable of using the DR function and doubling up the images). The images are cropped from 100% views and taken from close the the edge of the frame - but not at the outer limits; the bottom cropped photo was (although out of focus) even taken from the middle of the image.
I'm not sure what to do now; I can't see where I could be going wrong with settings/shooting style that would produce this level of ghosting to occur so often. I've been saving and waiting for a digital compact for a while now and thought for a long time about what camera to purchase. I was really looking forward to spending the next few weeks with the Ricoh not leaving my side and getting out to do some street work. I started to shoot street with my last Ricoh, the GR1, about 2 years back and when that died, I kind of stopped with street photography. Without my unobtrusive GR to wander around with and take everywhere in my pocket I left my street work fall to the side whilst I focused on my major project. I tried to fill the Ricoh gap with a Minox 35GT but it didn't feel the same and it was a bit too small for me to handle (plus it was purely manual focus).
So after finally finishing uni, getting back to shooting for the fun of it and not the grades, I'm really bummed out that my camera of choice to restart my street work is a disappointment.
There are many cameras in the higher price range that I would choose over the GRiii but none that I can think of in the £350-£450 bracket that offer a fixed wide angle lens with great user interface.
Because of this ghosting problem I haven't risked heading to London for the LSPF in case something happened to the camera and I couldn't get a refund (also I've not insured the GRiii as I'm probably taking it back - another reason not to take it around London).
If you have experienced the same problem or know of anything to cut down on this level of ghosting please contact me on the email address for this blog,
Many thanks,

Alex

ISO 64 F5.6 @ 1/160

ISO 64 F3.2 @ 1/710

ISO 64 F3.2 @ 1/850

ISO 64 F2.5 1/270

Stanford Staff

Another day with the GRiii and the first real opportunity to get some street photography under my belt at the Stanford fete. About 10 minutes into the day and it started to become clear to me that there's an issue with the GRiii. Whenever the image had an area of highlights I was seeing a lot of ghosting. This post will not focus on the ghosting issue (I'll write something up later about the GRiii).
For now I'm focusing on the plus side because I managed to meet another Staff owner that was willing to have their portrait taken.

Also a big thanks to my sister in-law for allowing me to use her DSLR while I was trying to work out what was wrong with the GRiii - follow her at www.lyndsey-ann.blogspot.com

3-in-1

Tonight I have more test shots from the Ricoh GRiii, another image from my Staff project and the first image from a new project I have finally started - staff and mobile were not taken on the GRiii.

The new project will (as illustrated) be close up shots of people with their mobile phones; it might turn out to be nothing but until I can get 10-12 different subjects then I won't know if it's worth continuing, feedback appreciated (as I'm already thinking it may end up looking like results from a Getty keyword search).

As usual my hope to head out somewhere (this case LSPF) turned into something else so I've not yet been to London. I'm certain that I can get there on Monday though so it'll probably be Monday night before another post with GRiii test shots.

Stanford test shots

After a lot of waiting (and selling) I finally managed to bag me a Ricoh GRiii digital this week. I loved my old Ricoh GR1 film camera for its size, construction and mode dial (sadly it died last year). It's too early to write a full review or pros/cons at this stage so I've just quickly added some images from tonight at the Stanford-le-Hope music festival.
The fast 28mm (equivalent) lens is pretty good from what I can see, obviously it lacks sharpness around the edges but for a sub £350 CCD sensor compact, I'm not looking for amazing to-the-edge sharpness.
Hopefully I'll be able to make it to the London Street Photography Festival tomorrow and visit the Stanford-le-Hope festival in the night so by Saturday I should have a better range of subjects, ISO's and lighting in my images.