Usksider's Photo Blog

...shed any light on this? It's set into the wall of an old house.

If any of you have any clue what this is about I'd love to know...

Right. I'm off to bed now. G'night all!

I often wondered as a child why when someone died people said they were resting in peace. It always seemed odd to me... I was too literal perhaps because in my mind if they were dead, they weren't resting... they were just dead...

Now after all these years, I've found the answer!

I know I shouldn't laugh, but this is without doubt the oddest grave I've ever seen...

I posted a photograph of some dewy spider webs yesterday; I know not everyone likes them, but this is really the time of year to catch them if and I thought I'd post another.

I grabbed this image quickly this morning as I was on my way out of the house. I didn't have time to set the shot up at all, so the web here is 100% natural. I mention this because I offered some tips to Tylluan yesterday about photographing webs.

For anyone interested, here are those tips again:

Broadly speaking if you're taking pictures of spider webs in your garden, carry a spray gun and spray the webs with water; this 'thickens' the web strands and gives the web some density. If you're shooting in the wild, early morning dew will do the job for you.

Adjust your shooting angle if possible so available light is reflected back from the web. Alternatively use your camera in 'fill-in' flash mode and 'bounce' artificial light off the web.

Try to ensure you have a some density behind the web; photographing webs against the sky is a mistake unless you have a very clever camera (or quality hand-held light-meter).

Adjust your depth of field (the amount of the image that will be in focus - use a low f number like f2.8 or f4) so the web is in focus, but the background of the shot isn't.

Lastly, adjust the image contrast in your photo editor to 'highlight' the water droplets on the web.

So, this morning's quickly grabbed image...

I used a compact digital camera and photographed the web from the side to ensure a dense background, with a depth of field that ensured the fence would be out of focus. The flash was fired to 'highlight' the dew drops on the web. I hope this demonstrates that acceptable results can be obtained with very little effort if you follow simple rules.