Hampton Court Palace

It was just a regular Sunday morning for me when I woke up, undecided on what I was going to do in the day, looking out the window seeing a sunny nice day... I just wanted to get out of the house and be out in the nice weather... Received a phone call from a good friend, saying she was in Hampton Court Palace preparing for a school trip... so I decided to join her as I had always intended on going to Hampton Court Palace to shoot...

Most the stuff I shoot for my own personal use has generally always been night shots. Long-Exposures needing a tripod, and with the dim lighting and use of a tripod, I feel like it's become second nature to me... I can look at a night shot and see what I'm going to attain from an image...

Day time shooting for me was a big change as it's something I haven't done in a while.

Obtaining the correct exposure on the subjects is easy... but what I forgot about is the immense dynamic range issues I would have to deal with.

Properly exposed landmarks, tree's etc... and then I'd have a completely blown out sky!

(Nikon D7000 + 14-24mm f2.8 @ 14mm, ISO 100, f/4.0, 1/400sec)

(Right side has been blown out beyond recovery)

With the lack of a tripod, I couldn't bracket the shots to then later do some post-processing to remedy that issue I was having... But nonetheless, I still managed to get some good shots... (if you ignore the people standing around lol)

Might start looking into using Filters to help balance out the Sky's... or maybe start doing more Bracketed shots for HDR Post-Processing. Ideally I'd need a tripod, but I suppose these shots can be hand held...

The shots I mainly wanted to do were of the flowers... I purchased a Macro lens, mainly for the purpose of shooting details at a Wedding, such as the Rings, Jewellery etc... not so much for myself as a hobby... but I thought I should give this lens a bit more use so I set out to do Macro shots of flowers... and I'm actually really pleased with the results...

I'm so pleased with this shot that I decided to have it as my Wallpaper on my iPhone... Nothing more manly than a pretty flower on my phone!

(Nikon D7000 + 105mm f/2.8 Micro @ ISO100, 105mm, f/5.0, 1/160sec)

The colours, to me, look amazing. The Bokeh (Blurry background) looks amazing with these colours, and I like how the gradual change occurs. The Central flower is the main point of focus and then the flowers gradually fall back step by step with the Depth of Field.

I do intend on doing more, as I love how the colours of the flowers compliment the Bokeh in these images.

Next stop! Kew Gardens!

So glad my week off work has really nice weather...