Tag Archives: Competition

How I Took that Shot – Jim O’Neill

The fantastic action shot above got first place for Jim O’Neill in our recent competition, themed ‘Motion’. This is how he made the shot:

This was taken at the first “motocross” I was at and the last, for now at least, to be held in Kilva, Cloyne.

I had only touched on “panning” shots before now and with the speed these bikes were taking the jumps, it was the perfect and mostly only way to capture the action.

I used a Nikon 70-300 lens on Nikon d5000 body at focal length of 70mm (105mm on crop sensor) f/14, ISO 200 and 1/60th Sec shutter speed.

In post processing I cropped the image to suit and straightened the horizon, reduced highlights for the sky. I also sharpened the image and increased the vibrancy slightly to give the bike and rider a bit more punch.

Brilliant shot Jim. Well done.

How I Took that Shot – Zane Llewellyn

Taking his second, First Place of the year, Zane Llewellyn won Grade A in our latest competition, themed ‘Motion’ with the compelling image above. This is how he made the shot:

I’d missed the previous weeks ECCG shoot to Pilmore beach, near Youghal and after seeing some great shots I headed down with my dog, Holly, for a recce. It was a grey, damp, foggy day with the tide way out, a far cry from the dramatic scene that my fellow ECCG members had experienced only days before.

While I may have been underwhelmed, Holly was very excited so we headed off down the beach while taking random grey photos. It wasn’t looking good for getting any decent photo, but it’s all practice I told myself.

Holly – My ever faithful model

Remembering that there was a motion theme for the next competition, I tried to get some panning shots of Holly running along the beach, but she would only run towards me or away from me, never across. W.C. Fields saying, “Never work with Children or Animals”, was ringing in my ears!

As we rounded the corner, I noticed a large gathering of birds down at the waterline, so keeping my camera in the settings I’d had for the previous failed shots, we walked slowly towards them. About 50 metres away from them and without warning, off they flew. Luckily they flew past me rather than away and I managed to get a few shots panning left to right at the same speed as the birds. They didn’t look much on the camera, but it was impressive to witness all the same.

It was only when I opened them on the computer that I saw one photo looked like it might be a keeper. I cropped it to a panoramic format to try and emphasise the sense of motion, while keeping the horizon and birds on the horizontal thirds. The sea and sky were very grey and dull because of the fog, so I added a gradient to reduce the exposure and add some contrast to the sky. I did the same with the foreground to hide the messy seaweed and bring the focus to the birds.

The camera settings were 1/40 sec @ f16, ISO 100.

Well done Zane. Just goes to show that even in the worst of conditions, a great shot is never far away.

ECCG ‘Motion’ Competition – 07/03/2017

With 28 entries, our recent internal competition, themed ‘Motion’, drew the biggest entry in a while with a wide interpretation of the theme. The image above by Zane Llewellyn won Grade A and also took the overall highest score of the night across all Grades.

The breakdown of the final results was as follows:

Grade A was a tightly contested affair all through the voting process but Zane Llewellyn won out by 9 points in the end from Gráinne Davies in second and Finbarr O’Shea in third.

Grade B saw Jim O’Neill once more in first place winning with 23 points to spare from Noelle Lowney in second and Eileen Upton in third.

Sonja Eisenberg came first for the second time on the trot in Grade C followed by Jim Curtin in second and Karina Leeson.

In the overall scores across all grades, Zane Llewellyn and Jim O’Neill had equal scores but the tie was split by the number of higher scores received giving Zane the edge and first place while Gráinne Davies took the third spot.

Well done to all concerned.

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 – 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.