Taken yesterday around the local area.

I tried taking a range of photos allowing me to work on different techniques with aperture.





Finally I bought a new top loading case for the camera so I can take it around with me and take some quick photos.



Up until now I've been using this, the Lowepro Fastpack 350 . It is great for generally transporting my camera and laptop. As a generalist it is the perfect bag to carry everything at once in a neat, organised backpack (It's great to take to weddings with the laptop in the back to show clients during their reception some of the photos as a little bonus for them :) ). It's downside is that it is far too bulky and hard to get too if taking out on a normal day of shooting/snapping. I've been noticing this more now I've been going out with just one lens (price for the bag €50-80). So I've bought this now;



This is the Lowepro Topload Zoom Mini . It's relatively cheap (<€30) and is sturdy/ good enough quality. Easy access to it and waterproof it's ideal for me while I'm doing some 50mm tests, the only downside is there isn't enough room for my flashgun but currently I'm not needing one outdoors. It doesn't fit my telephoto lens in either so it's a good thing I don't use it much. It fits in my 18-70 and my 50mm fine though (when they are attached)

I managed to find an old memory card I used for shooting a few years ago which still has all the photos I took in RAW format. I thought I'd go back to them today and use some techniques I now use within adobe Lightroom and Photomatix Pro. Initially although they were shot in colour when I originally uploaded them (they are still in an older gallery) they were all monochromatic simply because I've always been more comfortable shooting for/in B+W. Now I'm a bit more experimental with colour so here are the results;




Today I also found a couple of books in a second hand book store.

Berence Abbott - Masters of Photography

The Book of Portrait Photography - Jorge Lewinski and Mayotte Magnus


They should be good for some reference work when painting / designing and I've always been fond of Abbott's work, especially as he started as a darkroom assistant to Man Ray (ended up doing similar experimental work at college when I did A level photography).

Some tests done earlier with my 50mm lens (Nikkor AF 1.8) for lighting. Slowly getting back in to photography and forgot how much I enjoyed the 50mm.



The Wooden dummy is something I'm going to model in Maya for some matchmoving tests for my showreel. It is a relatively simple model which will allow me to put a lot of effort in to texturing while not killing my laptop. My PC should also be arriving in the next month so I can really get started on the showreel. Until then I'm planning out my scenes for the new demoreel now on paper and in 3d. Here's my new revised (ideal) showreel idea;

1. Intro - Name, contact information, website - Generalist
2. 3D street scene - Static camera - Arabian marketplace - sunny daytime to stormy dusk - simple dynamics and lighting rig - breakdown of passes and dynamics.
3. Matchmoving - Live action footage of desk with 3D animated wooden dummy - breakdown of composite layers.
4. Dynamic experiments / tests - Re-rendered university final year project tests as well as re-rendered elemental effects.

Ideally I'm aiming for my first real showreel ready to send to companies to be no more than 1:30-2 minutes which should be ample time to show breakdowns in full and allow a long enough look at each animation.

I've been doing a lot of sketching recently to plan out this work as well as do more simple sketching of characters/ objects etc. I'll photograph some more and maybe paint a few tomorrow if I have time. Expect some of the very simple/basic test shots for the showreel within the next few weeks (just boxing out scenes and getting lighting ready).

As mentioned yesterday I bought a new sketchbook! Here are some doodles from the first page.



I'm using a Conté white pencil/crayon just to add some highlights to things (I wanted an organic sketchbook as opposed to a plain white one to test some lighting / highlighting later on as I'm going to be designing my 3D projects in here).

Just before I go off to get food and similar here's a quick painting of the batman sketch. Photographed, uploaded and painted on with the mouse not the Wacom (really quick 5 minute job just to see what it looked like coloured in).

Here are more sketches I did in the past few days. This week I've also bought myself a sketch pad for the upcoming Drink and Draw in Cork (hopefully a regular thing) with a Daler-Rowney graphic pencil set.

Today I also bought This: