Astbury's Adventures in Photography

A selection of photographs taken at Edinburgh Zoo, Scotland. These were all taken with a telephoto zoom and natural light. A couple of them by necessity have been shot through glass. Not my usual subject matter but a bit of fun anyway and hopefully some good images. Meerkat Meerkat Meerkat Meerkat Meerkats Panda Red panda Red panda Sun Bear Gelada baboon Banteng Pelican Pelican pair Penguins Penguin Penguin

Here are a selection of recent photographs of subjects around the Oban area. Taken as digital raws, they have been processed through Capture One only as I continue to explore a monochrome workflow without Silver Efex Pro. Nose down in the dirt, Airds Bay Abandoned boat, Loch Etive Converted fishing boat, Oban Bay Kilchurn Castle Tree roots triangle Gate post Cabin in the woods Beyond a short caption I've opted not to say a lot about these photographs, please feel free to imagine your own narrative.

Light pads are thin surfaces fitted with arrays of small LEDs and may typically be used for tracing and drawing applications. Strangely they are sometimes advertised as being suitable for viewing X-Ray images (is this a common need outside a hospital?) and this may suggest that they would also work for viewing photographic negatives. Light Pad However there is a problem, the surface is shiny and prone to specular reflections, you can see the reflection of my LED OttLite desk lamp in the image above. Even worse is that the array of LEDs shows through when trying to back light an image, so for example here is how a colour slide (positive) looks: Slide viewed directly with LED array showing Not very good but the solution is actually very simple, a layer of diffusion material is needed and this can be done with a sheet of paper. The paper should not be coloured and should be thin, I found a sheet of 41gsm tracing paper works well. To see the difference this makes here's...