fountains Archives - Page 13 of 14 - Ed O'Keeffe Photography

18 May 200828 May 2017

Trafalgar Square Fountains at Night

The fountains at Trafalgar Square look good in the day time, but at night they’re fantastic. I’ve just got back to the hotel after a night photographing various locations around London. This is my favourite image I captured and I’m sure it’ll make for a great print. Yesterday the light was overcast and dull. Today wasn’t much different apart from it raining. However, at night none of this matters.

I took half a dozen photographs of the fountains, between each frame cleaning the lens with a lens cloth as the wind was blowing the spray on to my glass. The camera was on a tripod and the camera settings were a 10 second exposure time at an aperture of f/16. The focal length was 14mm because I was using my new lens. A Sigma 10-20mm which allows very extreme (almost fish-eye like) wide angle images.

15 February 200828 May 2017

Water Statue in Trafford Park

Unfortunately I couldn’t find out what this statue was officially called, because it was one of the few occasions when I have photographed a statue and not looked for a plaque with information on the artist and title. However, it probably didn’t have one as this statue is in front of a large office building and had large iron gates at the main entrance. This meant, I had to look over the gates to take the picture and even then this statue was a good 20 yards away from me, so it was one of the situations where I am thankful for a zoom lens.

I have seen much better pictures of this statue. I believe that the time of day was wrong and due to such high amounts of sunlight reflecting off the glass behind and the darkness of the statue itself, the camera found it more difficult to capture all the detail in the shadows. Now I know why my dad often says that “Cloudy days are statue photography days”.

27 November 200728 May 2017

Office buildings by Bridgewater Canal, Manchester

I had already planned a photo shoot this evening to have another try at photographing some of the sights and sounds of the big city. Just as it was going dark Kov and I walked towards the city centre via the Bridgewater Canal, so I retook a previous image with a wide angle. Kov was taking a lot of HDR images with his new Nikon D40x (great camera by the way) but I was sticking with my usual type of photograph. The above image looks much more like a HDR photograph than my normal night time images because it is highly processed to bring out more detail and saturation. HDR photography is basically when the photographer takes 3 – 5 frames of the same thing on a tripod, identical apart from the exposure setting, making some photos under and some over exposed. When these files are processed together it gives a wider exposure range bringing out more details in the extreme light and dark areas of an image – hence HDR or high dynamic range photography.

18 November 200728 May 2017

Pitcher & Piano Bar at Night, Manchester

I was looking at the Bridgewater Hall, wondering which would be the best way to photograph it and then saw the lights in the trees down by the canal. So I walked down the stairs and found this fountain. It was extremely dark when this image was captured. Because of this, the camera was supported by a tripod and set to take a 20 second exposure. This is why the water from the fountain looks so blurred, but I feel that this fountain is the focal point of the image. Looking at doing a lot more night photography around the city in the upcoming weeks and months.