Naquada

I saw Jim yesterday, and we were talking about various things, and the Boing Boing blog came up in conversation, which I started to read late last night, and I found what I think is some of the cleverest / fun sets of long exposure photos I’ve seen for a while.

Alexia Abegg’s Flickr stream has a great collection of photos taken on long exposure with sparklers. There’s quite a few really nice photos in there, I particularly like this one, although I’m wondering if Alexia used a tripod or held the camera.

I’m thinking it was hand held as quite a few of the images have blurred backgrounds and main subjects, on some they work really well with the blurring, on others the picture would have been absolutely fantastic with a clear subject, although it would depend on shutter times for the person to keep absolutely stationary I guess! Even so these are really nice and different photos.

A long time ago, when I was thin, young and living at home, my sister took some long exposure photos of my fire swinging which created some really nice photos. If you’re wondering.. Fire swinging is pretty much what it sounds like; swinging a pole, or two clubs that have flaming ends around your body at high speed, which produces not only a great visual display, but something called ‘firenoise’, the sound the the flames whooshing round your body. I will have to find the photos and get them up onto my flickr account at some point, or better still take some new ones!

I’ve yet to work out if the Canon 350D has an ‘open shutter’ mode or not, it definitely has a 30 second exposure, but I guess I really should read the manual on that one!!

Love the photos Alexia!!!

Well its been a while since I posted, mainly because I’ve been playing with my new toy, a Canon EOS 350D Digital SLR camera, its just amazing. I thought the photos would be better with a digital SLR, I just didn’t quite realise just how much better they would be.

I’m becoming very snap happy with it, and its starting to go most places with me as well. Meaning pretty much anything gets photographed, moving or not.. I ended up actually getting the silver 350D from Jessops, which comes with the USM ultra sonic lens rather than the standard non USM one, its slightly more expensive but since it comes with the USM lens I thought it worked out better.

Having never really had a digital SLR, there’s a lot to get used to on it, and I’m fast thinking that there is just more and more to buy for it. I’ve already got a 90-300mm lens, although I’m now tempted to trade it up to a 90-300 USM IS (with image stabiliser). Then there is the nagging want to have a macro lens for all those really nice ultra close shots.

I can tell already, although I’m going to have great fun with it, I’m going to be spending lots of money on toys for it!! The bottom line is though its a great gadget, and something I’m enjoying, so the cost really doesn’t enter into it..

I have mentioned before why I like and started to use Flickr for my photos, and Flickr seems to have supported us beta buyers with a little reward or two..

The one that will make most difference to you is the fact I have some free Flickr Pro accounts to give away..

Worth US$24.95. Here’s what you’ll get with a Pro Account:

2 GB monthly upload limit
Unlimited storage
Unlimited bandwidth
Unlimited photosets
Permanent archiving of high-resolution original images
Ad-free browsing and sharing

Just post your comment below saying WHY you think you should get a years free Flickr Pro Account, and if I see one comment that convinces me I’ll send you an email and we’ll get you signed up..

If I know you.. you’ll have an advantage, and I also am not going for pure begging requests either..

Update: sorry I also forgot to say I’ll pick a ‘Winner’ next week.. so far I have my favortie!!

Well I’m just loving flickr at the moment, its got a great interface, tagging, and unlimited storage..

I’ve already uploaded a bunch of photos and marked them as public, so you can start to see those in my public album. I’ve also used some script to display some random photos from our public ones in the naviation bar on main blog screen.

Something I didnt realise was that I can look at other peoples tags, for instance I found a huge batch of photos of Mayan ruins in mexico when I was tagging up the photos we took of the ancient pyramids we visited.

With Flickr having an API as well, the options for expanding past just showing photos is pretty huge..

I just now need to get a decent photo camera and get mobblogging..