Lee Greatorex Photo/3D blog

These were taken this weekend after I spent the weekend in Skibbereen and Enniskean. Although pretty cold it was a great weekend away. It's always good down there meeting the mrs' family. Loads of nice stuff to take photos of as well!

D7000 35mm

Click for larger view:

The shot below was stitched together from multiple shots just to get the full tree in! Some really nice trees around where we stayed.






Don't forget to check my new website here!

Ok couldn't resist! Here are a few more shots from brief stops on the roads in the valleys.

D7000 35mm 1.8

These were taken on some of the famous Levadas walks on the Island.

Taken with D7000, 35mm 1.8 lens

The Levadas are the aqueducts created to send water from the mountains down to the drier areas. There are loads of different walk trips available, most walks are about 6-8km but there are ones shorter and longer depending on your own tastes.

If you don't have a car to get around most tours cost about 20-30 euros which will take you to the location for your days activities. A lot of these are so different it is worth doing a few (we did a couple of different ones along with a jeep tour).


The below photos were taken along the way to the walks, just out of the jeep for a little break. These were higher up towards the highest peaks on the Island. There is something very Jurassic Park about the Island which is awesome! (I think a lot of people think it's just a place for old people but there's plenty to do there! Lots of mountains and cliffs! There are even activity holidays there for climbing, abseiling and such )




 More Madeira photos to come! Around Funchal (the main city)

Nikkor 35mm 1.8 D7000, Madeira

The shots below are from one of the original and still running rum distilleries on the island. It is a white rum made from the sugar cane also grown on Madeira. The rum is typically mixed with honey and lemon juice to make the local drink Poncha (which is very tasty!)

Here are some panoramas from my recent trip to Madeira, a really nice island off the Moroccan coast.

These were stitched in PS and taken with a 35mm 1.8 on a D7000 (lens distortion removed before stitching in Lightroom).

Click the images for a larger view!

These are quite narrow due to taking them Landscape at the time (they needed to be taken pretty quickly as it was windy up the peaks so not too much time to think. Hope you like them anyway!

I bought Lightroom 4 on the way back from the trip, just waiting for the postal delivery (got it retail, cheap on amazon at the moment). I'll give it a full test and review as soon as I get it. I've been using lightroom since 1.4 and have enjoyed using it since, I'll be testing the other shots taken in Madeira with it.

Shots from around Fota house. If you are going to Fota Wildlife park you may as well take a walk around the House and gardens. The gardens themselves are free as well so worth a visit!

Lens used: 35mm 1.8

Click the title for the full post!

Some shots from our trip to Enniskeane, Co. Cork, Ireland.
50mm lens

Finally got some of my shots taken last year printed (got a few from the year before printed as well). Mainly did this to check how they looked enlarged and I'm generally pleased with the outcome. I did have some ratio issues with my shots which caused some cropping issues (for the smaller prints I didn't mind as they were at a test size, unfortunately enlarged the one of Potsdamer Platz in 24x18 instead of 24x16 so there were some big cropping issues there (not shown on the photos taken of the prints).

By the way if anyone is interested in buying one of my prints feel free to contact me, drop me a message on here or similar.

The biggest challenge I encountered with the printing was looking for suitable frames. Most frames in retailers had only up to 10x8 or standard ratios, frames that required 12x10 or 24x16 were a little harder to find here although a local hardware store can provide them (as well as an Irish frame company online).

Also this week I bought a new filter for my Cokin Filter system, A ND8 (neutral gray). Using this along side the other ND8 Gradient as I'm wanting to get some long exposures near the coast over the next few months. Here is a test shot taken earlier with them (and a circular polariser attached).


Finally this week I looked back on an old digital painting I was working on (studying digital painting and faces) and worked a little on colours and balance with the image. Here's what I ended up with.

Just a quick post of some sketches I did this week as well as a few photos I finally got round to sorting out which have been on my camera (memory card) for about a year or so. Enjoy!




The sketchbook I use is an Earthbound Cachet sketchbook (think that's what it's called) so if the paper looks dirty that's why! (I just enjoy the extra textures on it really).

Hope everyone had a great Holiday Season and New Year!

I am starting the new year with more specialisation in mind. I have recently purchased a years subscription to The Gnomon Workshop and carrying on with the Boujou tutorials on there first, as well as referring to Tim Dobbert's great book Matchmoving: The Invisible Art of Camera Tracking

I'm aiming to really specialise in matchmoving this year as not only did I enjoy it at university but like Lighting and Rendering it incorporates a lot of previous photographic techniques learned.

I'm currently working through some little tests with the footage from the book as well as the footage from the Gnomon DVD - Boujou 1: Tracking a Crane Shot

I have the footage still that my workmate shot for me as well which will be excellent for more tests. The advanced lighting and rendering techniques learned in the previous course will help a great deal with final renders and I'll also get some breakdown shots. I'll be uploading progress throughout anyway.

For now here is some a photo I took a while ago but finally got round to editing it. I took it around the time I only really did black and white photography so I thought I'd load it back up from my old memory card and see how it went. Anyway Enjoy!

Landscape/Seascape tests while there's still some sun over here :)
I'm finding clouds a challenge. Need to work more on compensating for them, possibly even invest in another ND filter.

Finally here is a picture of a dog that followed us around (pestering us for food). Coming up this week I'm learning some digital blending techniques (on the Wacom) and getting some more sketching/painting done.