Street Photography - London

I recently went into London  to take some photos for a street photography project at college and came out with some good results i think.

Review: Danny Santos

Danny Santos is a street photographer from Singapore who has been shooting incredible photos of strangers (as well as other projects) for just over 2 years. I managed to be lucky enough to stumble across his website and project; "Portraits of Strangers". This was particularly exciting as i had already embarked on a project looking at facial expression on a journey where i am looking at portraits of people, strangers. So instantly i had a connection to the photography. However i kept on looking through the site and gallery and found that Danny is clearly a distinct photographer with an amazing ability as well as talent for street photography and clearly, with interacting with the subject. I asked him through his facebook page if i could make this review on him and within an hour there was a reply; "Sure thing, man :) and thanks for the kind words!". I'm glad as i really want to get his photography out to even more people, though Danny St Photography is clearly doing very well with features on websites and magazines alike as well as new clients etc. In the future i hope i can come to similar achievements and have been very inspired by his work and can't wait to grab my camera and go out for a shoot! 
            
                      With his work he uses depth of field so well, creating an amazing amount of bokeh that works with the picture rather than completely seperating the subject from the back/foreground. This allows the photos to have context as well as a main focus. To compliment this, in the streets of Singapore, Danny is able to use strong lighting techniques through the buildings creating amazing shots which really make a picture stand out. Clearly, this has been achieved with intense practise (even if its been a short amount of time), an eye for composition and an overall talent for precise shooting.
                    
                      I'd like to congratulate Danny on his photography and his achievements over this time and wish him all the best! Thanks

This has been a very short review and there is so much more to say but i hope you can all check out his work and appreciate it for yourself. Here are all the links to his photography:
Website: www.dannyst.com
Facebook: www.facebook.com/dannyst.photography 
or Follow Danny on Twitter: http://twitter.com/#!/dannysantos

MurrayPhotography site design change again!

I do it a lot, but i've changed the site once again but for a few, i think, important points; Firstly, before every  page was a new master page, meaning that is was very slow. I have now installed a series of pages within one master page allowing the site to smoothly navigate. I also have removed a couple of the pages as i felt they were unnecessary (Blog, comment). I felt that both of these would look and appeal better if they were to be at the front of the site. A third reason is that the dimensions to the site were annoying and having to scroll down all the time is pointless! So i hope you enjoy the new design as much as i did making it and leave a comment if you have any ideas for future design ideas here

A new look for editing/promotion

I have now got photoshop CS5 and am looking into some editing techniques to create new coloured masks as well as using it for text and art based ideas. I don't believe too much into creating something that isn't there unless justified but its good to mess around with new ideas. Here is a simple technique used created with text layers and colour masking which i think produces a nice effect and promotes MurrayPhotography quite well. Enjoy on a full size scale by clicking image.

Conceptual Ideas .2.

Here i was again looking at colour as being a big part of my work and using many techniques to make this photo interesting and appealing.  I like to work with paint and seeing how it affects objects and the conflict between the colours themselves and what is around. The first wheel contrasts to the 2 that are behind using a shallow depth of field under intense light to blur them out into the back drop. I really like how the colours have merged but none have affected the inner circle which remainds whole.

Conceptual Ideas

With these i wanted to try some new ideas and they once again linked in with my college work well. I was looking at colour and conflict of objects so take a look and tell me what you think if you could!

Music live room Shoot

I have just got back in the early morning from a pretty normal shoot with a couple people i know, we had a good jam and then i thought i'd get my camera out and got some alright shots. Though with my less than what is needed nikon d3000, i was almost unable to shoot as the lighting was pretty poor. Plus with my recently deceased flash point 2, my mounted flash was pretty poor. This is all because my camera can only stretch to a ISO of 1600 and it really struggles at this level and produces a fair amount of noise. There is a "hi" setting (equivelant of 3200) but this is un-usable and was pointless. After working out a good exposure i managed to get some alright shots i think and here is a couple: