STORM CLOUDS, SUNRISE and SILHOUETTES

Well it's a day later than I like to publish but sometimes other things just have to come first.

It never ceases to amaze me how people love to take pictures of the sun. Be that sunrise, sunsets or for me the sun shining through storm clouds and it amazes me even more the feedback photographers get from having taken them.

I certainly like taking the pictures, I think you can get some stunning effects with the sun in the right place even though you sometimes have to play with the exposures the point where your family has got bored and wandered off into the distance.

The joy of the modern camera phone is that it's possible to get very good shots without having to lug your dSLR around with you so I wanted to share a couple taken with my Pentax and a couple taken with my Samsung Galaxy S2.

These first two are taken in Cardiff Bay, Wales and are from the 'mobile' set on my Flickr site taken on my Samsung Galaxy S2.

For me the low sun on both of them gives the opportunity for some nice silhouettes. I liked the sun coming through the light fitment on the top of the lightship and on the other, I was keen to capture the silhouettes of the tree, church and cranes in the background. Neither of these shots used any special settings and were just taken 'point and shoot'.

This shot taken on Brighton Beach, Sussex one overcast and stormy afternoon was the last of a number of images I took in manual mode trying to get the balance between the contrast of the bright sun and dark clouds.

And finally ... this one has been around before and featured in my blog of 11th January based on around Clevedon.

I'd be really interested if anybody has any advice or guidance for me on taking this type of image I'd be really grateful for your feedback.

THE RETURN OF THE PHOTO BLOG!

It's baaaaack. Well the photo blog is anyway After a break of a few weeks I thought it was high time to get back to the basics and bring the photo blog up-to-date.

So much has happened in such a short while I thought I'd start this week with a brief resume of events. My photo blog may have been quiet but looking back I seem to have been quite busy.

There have been photo shoots and events to capture, air-shows and a news article with my pictures. The Flickr app for Android made an appearance on my smart-phone which has led to some new work on the Kevin Leighton Photography Flickr site and I've been busy with my dSLR trying to shoot ever more awkward subjects in a manual mode.

When so much has been going on it's difficult to know what to concentrate on so I thought I'd just bring you some of my favourite images and just go with the flow. I hope you enjoy them.

Taken in Cardiff Bay, Wales. This was taken with the new Flickr app on my smartphone using the Tokyo filter and is one of a recent set of mobile phone images on my Flickr site.

I've been trying to capture seagulls in flight and have found it and extremely difficult task to get the exposure correct especially with the autumn skys being so changable depending on where you point your camera.











And finally November 5th and the inevitable fireworks displays were another photographic challenge and is one I'll write about in another blog.








So what's up and coming? I'll be writing about some of the photographic challenges I've encountered over the last few weeks and asking for some advice.

 I've also been in touch with  Darcy from my3boybarians and Kent Weakley from kentweakley.com who run very successful Twitter #photochat Q&A sessions in North America and they have agreed to run one for the UK & Europe hopefully in December. I hope to be able to confirm dates & times for the UK & Europe Twitter #photochat session shortly.

See you all again soon.

INSPIRATION, MOTIVATION, LIFE, LIVING & LOVING

My more recent blogs have veered away from photography and towards a discussion of different sources of motivation and inspiration and how people use different sources to help them to plan their futures, motivate themselves, become inspired, or just make it through to the next day.

Readers of my blog have placed their own interpretations on why I was writing on these topics and offered me messages of support, sent me links to further information and passed on their general good wishes all for which I'm very grateful.

My reason for sharing these thoughts with you over the last few months is simply because I've become more aware of them and have been in a position to see and hear messages both via Twitter and in presentations that previously I hadn't noticed or had the opportunity to receive which gave me more than just a passing interest in what was being said.

I've read much and learned plenty including how controversial some of the motivational, inspirational and life planning methods actually are, certainly not everybody has agreed with what I've written or discussed with them face-to-face. It's also fair to say that much of what I have read is very subjective as much of my reading about motivation, inspiration and life planning has left me; well ... uninspired!

So I want to finish up this series of blogs with a few sentences on what did get through to me and hope that you might find it useful. One thing I have noticed is that it's virtually impossible to apply these good messages to your life holistically but they can certainly be applied to certain situations.

So .. firstly I'd like to mention the presentation by Neil Holloway from Microsoft at the University of Reading. He gave a beautifully understated insight into life planning that I wrote about in my blog No Regrets . Follow the link back to the blog and you read all about it.

Secondly, I was sent a link to this image which made me smile and with which I agree wholeheartedly.

And finally I'd like to link you to the Energised Performance blog from Kim Ingleby. A lady who I've never met but would love to be able to share some time with at some point in the future. On the blog Kim links to a 'video' featuring insights from Steve Jobs the last few seconds of which I wrote down and pinned to my PC. I have applied the words it in a number of situations in my day job and I've found it to be truly helpful.


It reads ..

Your Time Is Limited

Dont Waste It By Living Someone Elses Life

Dont Be Trapped By Dogma Which is Living With The Results Of Other
Peoples Thinking

Don't Let The Noise Of Other Peoples Opinions Drown Out Your Own 

Inner Voice

And Most Important Have The Courage To Follow Your Heart And Intuition

They Somehow Already Know What You Truly Want To Become

Steve Jobs