Category Archives: How I took that shot

How I Took that Shot – Zane Llewellyn

08 Zane Llewellyn - Weather

The shot above got Zane Llewellyn a first place in Grade A in our recent ‘Weather’ competition held at the Midleton Park Hotel on Tuesday 07/02/17. This is how he made it:

This was shot from the upper floor in Cahir castle with my old trusty Canon Powershot S5, 1/60s @ f/4 due to the poor light. The group of tourists were stopped as they listened to the tour guide. It was raining pretty heavily as they huddled under their umbrellas. The guide was standing directly below me, so the group was naturally facing my direction.

I liked the colour of the photo, but the large expanse of grass on the right was distracting from the colours of the umbrellas.

In Photoshop, I masked the individual umbrellas and the man, and put a black and white filter over it to remove the colour.

The poor light left the umbrellas looking a bit dull, so I boosted the colours with a colour blend layer.

I liked that one guy wasn’t bothered by the rain, I left him in colour as a focal point. This is helped by his position at the bottom of a leading line, the corner of the castle.

Well done Zane!

If you are interested in photography and would like to know more about East Cork Camera Group, click the ‘Contact Us’ link above.

How I Took that Shot – Sonja Eisenberg

Sonja Eisenberg certainly isn’t one to let the grass grow under her feet! Only a few weeks a member of East Cork Camera Group and competing in her first internal competition, themed ‘Weather’, Sonja only went and won Grade C with the image above. This is how she did it:

It was taken on a Ryanair flight from Cork to London in late January 2017, just after take off around 11am. Shot out of the right hand side of the plane looking down on water. Shot on NIKON D3000; AF-S DX VR Zoom-Nikkor 18-55mm lens; f/3.5-5 . Raw File; ISO 200, 30mm, -0.67 ev, f13, 1/640. Sunny setting, centre focus.

Post processing: brought up the overall light but reduced the highlights, increasing the contrast and colour. Also increased definition and reduced down noise as much as possible; there was also a slight vignette and some sharpen intensity. Post processed on the iPhoto in-built adjustment tool on MacBook Air.

Well done Sonja!

If you are interested in photography and would like to know more about East Cork Camera Group, click the ‘Contact Us’ link above.

How I Took that Shot – Joe Keniry

Not only did Joe Keniry take first place in Grade B in our ‘Weather’ competition held on 7/2/17, his image was the highest scoring image across all grades, a fantastic feat. This is how he made it:

This photo was taken on the 26th October 2015 at Youghal front strand.

It was a very stormy day and high tides were predicted. As I wasn’t that busy, I took the afternoon off and went to Youghal. There was a gathering of about 20 people viewing the large waves crashing over the wall. I was taking a few shots from a distance when I noticed a young boy dodging the sea spray. I felt there was a shot there so I stayed with him and then, luckily for me but not for him, he got caught under a huge wave breaking over the wall. So I thank him for that perfect shot on that not so perfect day!

I used my Nikon D7000, 50 mm lens, 1/250 sec, F/9, ISO 400.

Well done Joe!

If you are interested in photography and would like to know more about East Cork Camera Group, click the ‘Contact Us’ link above.

How I Took that Shot – Noelle Lowney

Noelle Lowney came first in Grade B in our recent ‘Beautiful Blur’ competition with the shot above. This is how she made the image:

The shot was taken at the Cahermore Pier in West Cork whilst visiting the Beara Peninsula. It is a little pier located 5 miles outside Castletownbere on the main road to Allihies. It was a windy, blustery day and the tide was fully in. The camera was mounted on a tripod and using a ND Filter I took a number of shots using different shutter speeds to try and capture the motion of the waves as they thrashed the pier hard. It was a challenge to get the image not to mention trying to keep the tripod still and holding onto the camera for dear life

The image was taken with a Canon EOS 7D Mark II. Camera settings – F/16, Exposure 24 secs ISO 100. Focal Length 24mm.

Well done Noelle!

Click here to see a gallery of images from the competition. Enjoy!

If you are interested in photography and would like to know more about East Cork Camera Group, click the ‘Contact Us’ link above.

How I Took that Shot – Trevor O’Connell

ECCG member, Trevor O’Connell came first in Grade A in our recent ‘Beautiful Blur’ competition with the beautiful image above. This is how he did it:

This was an opportunistic shot,

I took the boys out for a walk in Rostellan woods one day and I brought my camera with my 150-600 mm lens along in the hope I might get a shot of a red squirrel (there are quite a few jumping around the treetops there).

As we were navigating through a particularly narrow and muddy part of the woods we found ourselves enveloped by this long purple heather (I think), so I dropped back from the boys and set my focal length to 200mm and f/5.6 focused on Matthew and took the shot knowing that most of the flowers would be out of focus due to the long focal length and large aperture.

In post, (using Adobe Lightroom) I sucked some saturation out of the greens (I hate saturated greens) and brightened up and sharpened the centre.

It could probably do with being cropped in tighter to draw more attention to the boys as there is a lot of wasted space around the edge which is quite distracting.

Camera: Canon Eos 6d
Lens: Sigma 150-600c
Focal Length: 200
ISO: 100
Shutter Speed: 1/50sec

Well done Trevor!

Click here to see a gallery of images from the competition. Enjoy!

See also:
How I took that Shot – Noelle Lowney
How I took that Shot – Jim Curtin
Competition Gallery
Competition Results and 2016 League Table

If you are interested in photography and would like to know more about East Cork Camera Group, click the ‘Contact Us’ link above.