New Home for Morven Photo

After blogging here since mid May, I have taken the plunge and got my own hunk of web real estate. This blog is now closed, I will leave it here for a while, but the facility to comment here has been disabled.

The new home for Morven Photo is at morvenphoto.co.uk. Please update your links and bookmarks accordingly.

Thank you for your support over the past two and a half months, I look forward to welcoming you to the new site soon. Please call by and look around.

Flickr Favs: Storm Tree

I like trees and this one stood out for me on a stormy day - It is on the route where I normally walk my dog. I guess I will post pictures of the dog eventually.

The scheme here is blue green!

Not sure where I will go tomorrow, I will decide in the morning. I am planing to move this blog to its own space in the near future, there will be information and a link from here when I do.

Flickr Favs: Dragon Squadron

Out a couple of weeks ago on the day of the British Grand Prix at a country fair at Castle Ashby to get away from the race (we can hear the circuit from our house) I saw this.

I took several images and this one appealed to me the most - I cropped it square (top and bottom - edge to edge remains as shot) since it seemed to fit better and raised the intensity of the blue to give this backdrop.

This and Rebecca were the only ones this week taken with my DSLR all the other images (including tomorrow's) were taken using my trusty digicam.

Flickr Favs: Rainbow Tree

I thought I would gratuitously post a picture of a rainbow taken from my back garden a while back.

Tried to capture it together with the neighbour's tree when it was in bloom to add interest. Sadly I have a new neighbour now who has chopped the tree down :-(

We still get rainbows from time to time :-)

Flickr Favs: Burning Bush

Took this sunset a year ago - it has a few technical problems, but I like it anyway.

Flickr Favs: Rebecca

This is a picture of my daughter Rebecca bouncing on a trampoline in our garden - taken August 04. This is he second picture of a person I have posted on this blog, the first was Solstice Jazz - as I have discussed elsewhere, I am somewhat wary of people pictures.

I have chosen this one because she is not easily identifiable and it has a surreal feel to it.

Flickr Favs: Midstream Challenger

This was put onto Flickr shortly after my Scrapyard pictures which were not too well received, so I thought I would post one of my pretty pictures. :-)

This swan just landed when I took this and I was pleased to be able to capture it especially because I had to anticipate with the chronic shutter lag on my compact Olympus C50Z. Though I managed to blow some of the highlights (a sin in digital since they are irrecoverable) I particularly like the reflection - what do you think?

Flickr Favs: Reflected Tree

Well, I'm back! What a wonderful sight greeted me as I opened up my blog for the first time to see all those lovely photographs together at once. I am really impressed with all the different styles and types of photography - of course I am not surprised by the quality since I knew what you guys can do (that is why I chose you!)

A big thank you to you all!
I am delighted with all the images. If you have not already, please check out these blogs:

• David Kapp - Life Kapptured


• Sidney - My Sarisari Store


• Rock - RSK Photoblog


• Jen - Seeing the World Through my Eyes


• Jane - Ephemera


• Lara - Lara Barrett: Photography

I am still on vacation this week, though I now have access to the internet. In order to keep it simple and, hopefully give a little variety with some quality, I am posting some of my most favourited images from Flickr which have not yet been posted here.

You can see a few others with 10 or more favs which have already been posted here:

• Flowers: Rememberance


• Southern France: Roof Rack Pattern


• Barcelona: Reflected Bar


• Around Buckingham: Columns & Shadows

Here is the first one - I took this on a business trip to Dayton Ohio about two years ago. This is of course Rock's neck of the woods!

The question is, where am I?

Walls Of Parchment

Hello, all! My name is Lara Barrett, and I'm filling in today while Ian's off enjoying his vacation (the lucky duck!). This is a brand new photo of mine, and for some reason, the colors remind me of Ian, so I figured it would be an appropriate image for me to post here. I drive by this church all the time on my way home from work, and am always struck with how very interesting it is...so I've been taking lots of pictures of it lately.

Hope you all have a wonderful Friday and are as excited about the weekend as I am!

And thanks, Ian, for inviting me to guest post--I can't wait to see what you have in store for us when you return!

Homeless...

A man sleeping on a stone bench outside the Central Reference Library in Manchester.

Hi everyone, I'm Jane, guest blogger for today. Many thanks to Ian for asking me to contribute to this week of guest posts and I hope that the vacation is going well!

You can find me over at ephemera.

Guestblogger Jen

Thanks to Ian for asking me to guestblog today. This is the photo I began my own photoblog with, so I thought it would be appropriate to add it here. My photoblog can be found at Seeing The World Through My Eyes: A Photoblog. Have a great day, everyone!

Museum Neon

Hello all.

I'm Rock and I'm Ian's sub for 19 July 2005.

I live in Columbus, Ohio, USA.

I make a large portion of my income from commercial photography.
But my real passion is just going out a seeing what I can find.

If you are interested in viewing more of my work please click below:

RSK Photography

Hey Ian - Bren says Hello! I hope your time away is going well.
I look forward to seeing you back and posting.

Rock

A smiling face.

First of all I want to thank Ian for inviting me as a guest into his photo blog.

It took me some time to decide which picture I would post. Then I settled for a smiling face which for me is the symbol of the Philippines.

My name is Sidney and I live in Manilla. You can find my street photography at http://my_sarisari_store.typepad.com

I wish Ian a very nice vacation and everybody visiting his blog a nice day.

Sidney

The Galleria Ghost Town

Today Ian has asked me to be a guest poster for the blog, and to kick off the weeks theme of "guest photographers."

Some of you may know me, but chances are a lot of you don't. My name is David Kapp from Life Kapptured. I shoot a mix of film and digital, and have a separate blog for each. Today's image is film, taken with my trusty Nikon F3 HP & Ilford FP4+ Black and White film.

The image is from the Galleria in San Francisco, just off of Union Square. I couldn't believe how empty this place was. It was Friday about 3:00 when I was there. I could almost count everyone in the mall on one hand. I guess its hard to pull traffic away from the famous shopping district.

I know this image is a bit small at 500pix wide, so I've uploaded a larger version if you want to take a closer look.

I had a bit of trouble trying to match my post format with Ian's. The center align I used throws off the site a bit, but hopefully its not too big of a deal.

Let me know if you have any questions, I'll be here all day :)

Dave

Patterns: Jumpers

I took this in a shop in Oxford last year - the assistant gave me that young persons look of contempt for the idiosyncrasies of the older generation!

I am signing off now - have a great week and look out for some great photography apperaing here from guest photographers for the next seven days.

Ian

Patterns: Wine Rack

I was in a restaurant in Dresden a couple of years ago when I saw this.

It said "Take me! Take me!"

I had my pocket camera with me so I did!

This is my penultimate post before my holiday in Scotland - we drive off in the small hours of tomorrow. I will make one farewell post in the morning and then that will be all from me for a week. Today will be my last visit to your blogs for a week as well. Next week I have organised seven high quality guest bloggers to post here in their own style - the theme is guest photographers! I look forward to seeing what delights they have served up (technology permitting) upon my retun.

Of course I will be taking my camera with me, so I am hoping to bring back tons of images.

Patterns: Orange & Green

Whilst in France two weeks ago I took lots of wierd pictures since it was difficult to get out to see much other than the hotel since I was there on business.

This is the framework from an ornate lamp in my room. It was black really, but I played with the white balance in my RAW converter to give these hues. These are two separate individual frames I took. Both were made using a tripod, but one uses flash and the other no flash to give very different surface texture feel to the final images.

Patterns: Roof Rack

I saw these roof capping tiles oraganised into this pattern all over the place during my visit to the south of France a couple of weeks ago.

I posted what I consider to be a better photogrpah for a variety of reasons in Roof Rack Pattern during my Southern France week. This one better shows the pattern though which is the theme for this week :-)

Have a great day!

Patterns: Underground Station

I was wandering around London last year and took this photograph in Westminster underground railway station - I loved the pattern and depth that the image gave.

Patterns: Black Holes

This is an image taken from shore of a fishing boat in Dublin during a visit in 2003.

The recurring pattern of these lobster pots(?) really attracted me.

Just to make it clear, I will be posting as normal this week (though I am a bit later today) and there will be guests posting for your enjoyment next week.

Patterns: Blue Slats

This week I am going to share with you photographs whose principle attraction is some kind of repeating pattern. This could be simple or complex and might be abstract or show actual recognisable objects. I have very many photogrpahs depicting patterns since it is something I look fr all the time. I am not sure how the week will look yet myself.

This is another of my shots from my trip to the South of France a couple of weeks ago. I created this from an image of the slatts on my window shutters which were white. I have created this by adjusting white balance only in my RAW converter.

I will be on holiday next week (after these seven images from me) and will be unable to post. I have, however, asked seven people to guest on my blog and you can look forward to a week of diversity and some fabulous images.

Flowers: Rememberance

Poppies have been associated with rememberance since Flanders in the first world war.

This image is manipulated using layers and multiplication of blurred images to provide this soft impressionist aura.

Not sure what I will begin with tomorrow yet - have a great weekend!

Flowers: Bluebells

This is a picture of bluebells I took some time ago (April 04). It was taken with my C50Z.

This gives an expanse of colour as opposed to the fine detail of one single bloom in a close up shot.

Some of you have contact me privatly and through this blog and Flickr regarding the London bombing. It was personally worrying for me because my 16 year old son Ben was due to go to London yesterday with his school. The train was tuned around before it reached London - there was quite a period when nobody knew anything though.

Naturally like many of you my thoughts and prayers are with the families of the dead and injured. Words cannot express my feelings about the incident.

Flowers: Pink

Wandering around Blenheim Palace on Sunday in the rose gardens I saw this rose - it just had to be captured.

This is as seen - a little contrst & sharpening added.

Somebody asked what RAW is yesterday - it is a format for saving a picture which closely resembles what the camera sensor captured and is not processed into a JPEG image. It is good because it contains much more ionformation and allows it to be converted to a JPEG in the computer choosing either camera settings or any other values chosen for a number of parameters as many times as you like. It is commonly called a digital negative.

Flowers: Butterfly

OK, I know this is not a flower, but a constant string of flowers canbe overwhelimng - I have seen several blogs and Flickr sites which post nothing but flowers and it becomes difficult to differentiate between them eventually.

I spent some time in the butterfly house at Blenheim Palace last weekend. Here is my favourite shot from the many I took.

bcw among others has asked what camera I used for these pictures.

I own two digital cameras (I now shoot exclusively digital) an Olympus C50Z which I have owned for two and a half years and a Nikon D70 which I purchased end of July last year. The pictures on the site are about 50:50 with these cameras. This week so far I have posted pictures which i took on Sunday using my new toy which is a 90mm Tamron Macro lens. They were all taken using apertrue priority to control dof and have only had adjustments to contrast, sharpness etc. The exception is Frilly Orange where I tweaked the shadow contrast in my RAW converter to give the black background (I suspect this is curves in PS). As discussed extensively, I generally try to produce an image of what I saw albeit more vivid and larger than life, though I am beginning to experiment with my own creations - mainly colour tweaks.

For the past couple of months I have started shooting exclusively RAW. To process I use RAW Shooter Essentials (which is free), GIMP (which is free) and Paint Shop Pro 9 (which is a snip conmpared to Photo Shop - I do not use pirate software)

Flowers: Life Goes On

This is a picture of a flower in our garden at home taken over the weekend.

I loved the spent flower echoing the one in all its glory - I also pinched it out and took several frames without it, but in the end I liked this one the best.

Flowers: Fuchsia Budding

Judi - my wife - has worked hard on our garden this year to turn it from a square of grass into something beautiful (well I did all the rotavating/digging/wheelbarrowing and she did all the planting).

Here is a shot I took yesterday of one of the many fuschias she has grown, taken from a low angle. I love the various pinks and the way it is just full of latency about to burst. Just playing around really with my new macro lens and tripod.

Perhaps this week's series should be dedicated to wives - Judi likes these kind of photos better than some of my stuff - I think I will also dedicate it to Bren who I guess will like them better than the abstracts too!

Flowers: Frilly Orange

I thought given the time of year it was time for me to post some flowers this week.

Wandering around Blenheim Palace today in the rose gardens I saw this rose and thought its form and colour were exceptional.

A little late posting today, I have actually been out taking photos for upload! I will catch up with all your lovely blogs in the next 24 hours.

Kams asked for a sepia version of this rose - here it is. What do you think? Which is better? Personally I prefer the colour version because it is so unusual.

Southern France: Refectory Roof

Looking down on a covered area provided this abstract - I liked it so I captured it!

This is the end of the Southern France week though I have a shed load of photos left - I will gradually put some of them up on Flickr. Some of them will no doubt fit into future weeks.

Thank you for all the discussion on manipulation and the nature of photography, I have enjoyed it.

Not sure what I will start with tomorrow.

Southern France: Psychedelic Golf

There was a big golf course at the hotel and lots of electric poered golf buggies. This picture shows some of them lined up in one of the battery charging bays. Typically these carts are white which is pretty boring, so I turned this into pop art in my RAW converter.

This constitutes the most extreme form of manipulation for me to date since it is the first photo I have presented which obviously could not have existed due to post processing manipulation unlike the purple umberellas. The image Solstice Jazz is also obviously not as seen, created by manipulating camera controls - is there any philosophical difference between these pictures?

In some respects this one and the Jazz shot are more honest than the umberellas because it is immediately obvious to the viewer.

I have really enjoyed the interesting discussion on this topic in the past couple of days and look forward to youre responses today. Thank you all for your continued support.

Happy Friday! 8-)