The Secret Shutter Blog

Feb 17

by karyn in Awards 0 comments tags: food, jewellery, nature, portraiture, wildlife

My First Viewbug Awards

In May 2016, I was really excited to win my first Viewbug contest finalist award in jewellery. Viewbug is an international photography competition website that is home to some of the World’s best photographers. It is certainly worth checking out if you are a keen photographer. The photography there is simply stunning! The competition on the Viewbug website is fierce, so to be a contest finalist is an achievement in itself. You can see my entry below along side all the other finalists in the jewellery contest on the Viewbug website. A little way down on the list is my entry. One day I would love to win one of the categories, but for now it was great to be offered a BTL (Behind the lens slot on their website). BTL is where a contest finalist is invited to explain in more depth about their winning shot. Please scroll down the page to access more information about my entry. My First Winning Entry (Moonstone) Below is my very first winning finalist entry. My Second Winning Entry (Crows) Over the next few months I didn’t have a lot of time to enter many more contests, but in 2017, I […]

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Feb 16

by karyn in News 0 comments tags: 2016, commercial, documentary, update, updates

Moving Into 2017 – A Quick Update

Some of you may have noticed that I’ve been a little absent since the Torbay Airshow 2016. I’ve not been lazy honest! In the Autumn of 2016, I began work as a part-time photography lecturer at my local college. In May 2017, I was asked to cover the local Brixham Pirates’ Festival. Two the highlights were winning a Viewbug award and one of my jewellery images appearing in Devon life. Dabbling with Documetary Looking back, 2016 was a great year for moving my photography forward. I have even begun to dabble with film. I also really enjoyed working on some images for a friend of mine. The Brixham Fish Quay was a great opportunity to shoot both documentary and commercial shots which was great! A round up of of the day can be seen on my Adobe Spark page. This half term holiday has afforded some time to update my work. In fact, I can safely say I’m really pleased to be back! Please come and follow me at my Instagram and don’t forget to keep checking back, as I’ll keep posting hints and tips for any keen photographers out there.

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Jun 20

by karyn in Boring to Beautiful 0 comments tags: beautiful, boring, creative, excellent, new, photography

How to Make the Most of an Airshow with only a 200mm Kit Lens

Airshow photography at best can be quite a challenging pursuit. Sadly, in the UK since the Shoreham airshow disaster, it seems that the aeroplanes are flying much further away from the crowds. This makes a lot of sense for safety reasons. However as a budding airshow photographer, this also makes it harder to capture those all impressive shots. So how is it possible to walk away with some great looking images with only minimal kit? Below are some ideas to help out. 1). The first thing to do is accept the advantages and the limitations of the equipment that you are using. A 200mm lens is possibly the least requirement for an airshow. This is not to say it is impossible to get reasonably creative shots from an iPhone or similar camera phone. The following photograph shows a 200mm Nikon kit lens (bottom of image) flanked by the type of lens (a Sigma 150mm-500mm) that would have been useful to take on an airshow shoot. The Sigma 150mm-500mm is a great lens for airshow photography, but one thing that makes the 200mm lens ideal is its size and weight. Having a camera lens that is light allows for […]

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Jun 17

by karyn in Commissions 0 comments tags: art, beautiful, creativity, stained glass, wood

Beautiful Obelisks by Maya King

One of the great things about being a commercial photographer is that you get to work with some really creative artists. Over the last few weeks I have been really privileged to work with the highly talented Maya King. Maya not only makes beautiful stained glass obelisks, she is also a highly skilled silversmith responsible for the beautiful jewellery featured in our jewellery gallery. One of the greatest challenges in photographing work of this nature is ensuring the correct exposure. For example if you want to photograph wood and make it look beautiful there is a good chance that the beautiful radiance of the glass may be lost. Below is an excellent example of how the beauty of the wood is brought out in the image, but the radiance of the stained glass has been sacrificed. Here this was deliberate in this particular shot, because the item was lit from the front in order to make the coloured shadow at the back. When stained glass is lit from behind its beauty becomes apparent, but as can be seen from the image below, some of the detail of the wood has been lost. Again in this shot the lighting was deliberate […]

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Jun 02

by karyn in Boring to Beautiful 0 comments tags: Aperture priority, photography, Timelapse

A Voyage into Timelapse

Undoubtedly one of the most powerful techniques in Photography is timelapse. It allows the viewer to watch little snapshots in time condensed down from much longer footage. With extreme timelapse it is possible to capture tiny buds opening in the blink of an eye, instead of having to observe them for days on end. It has often been said that a timelapse of the sun moving from night to day is the ‘holy grail’ of photography because of the technical amount of knowledge and skill required to capture it. For an inexperienced photographer it is a great way of getting to know your camera settings and understanding how light changing can dramatically effect the exposure of a photograph. Below is one of my first timelapses. It was shot using Aperture priority and I kept my ISO very low at 100. My white balance was set to cloudy so that the tones were rendered warmer in the picture and I made sure that I used a tripod. I set my timings so that the camera fired a shot every 20 seconds. Then I sat down and relaxed. The resulting images were then imported into iMovie in order to string the individual […]

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Dec 27

by karyn in Boring to Beautiful 0 comments tags: beautiful, boring, creativity, how to

From Boring to Beautiful

Here are some photographs to show that with the right lenses and subtle lighting even the most mundane household objects can be made into interesting works of art.

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