Photo-montage Ken Burns effect Sony Vegas Pro 12

I've been playing around with Sony Vegas Pro 12 and the /Crop/Pan settings. I used to used a program by Canopus called Imaginate to do this kind of work but Canopus killed it when they became Grass Valley and introduced the functions into Edius. I was an Edius user for many years and found it very stable and fast but with version 6.0 GV dropped support for the NX hardware cards which I used, with no word on when or even if drivers would arrive for the NX hardware I moved over to Sony Vegas Pro. Why Sony Vegas Pro? Well I'd used Sony Soundforge for a good while and Vegas integrated with it and the learning curve was relatively shallow.

Vegas runs nicely on my Intel i7 editing PC but also very well on my AMD Phenom II laptop, on which I edited the montage below and increasingly find myself doing more and more work. Vegas copes with canon 5D2 video natively as it does most formats.

Photos taken on Canon 5D2 and Leica M8, music An Ending by Brian Eno.

Nudes revisited 2

Some more nudes from 2004 revisited in Lightroom.
Taken on Olympus 3040.

Nudes revisited

Whilst browsing through my Lightroom catalog recently I cam across some nudes that I had not looked at for quite a while.
So I decided to spend a bit of time playing around with some Lightroom settings.
Originally taken on Olympus 3040

Canon 50mm f1.4 Frosty Brambles

It has been below freezing here in York for the last five days.
I took the opportunity to play with the very small DoF available with the Canon 50mm f1.4 when used wide open.
Taken on Canon 5D2. Processed in Lightroom.

Minimilisim

As far as I am aware there has never been an officially acknowledged Minimalist School of photography, it can really be filed under the use of a Low or High Graphic style or more generally Abstract.
What I've tried to do with these photos is to use an already fairly minimalist piece of architecture from the 1970's and make minimalist abstract graphic (there got them all in!) images but ones that still look like photographs and hopefully photographs of a building.
I took advantage of the bright, low, contrasty winter light just after midday.
All taken on Leica M8 with Elmarit 28mm f2.8. Processed in Lightroom.

I've had a play in Lightroom at some B+w versions of some of photos.

Winter light in York

I was in York city centre today wandering around while my wife had her hair cut at Toni & Guy's.
It was a clear crisp morning and the light on York Minister was striking as was the clear blue sky.
I had the Leica M8 with me and for once had fitted the IR filter to the 28mm Elmarit, probably a good thing given the strength of the sun.
Processed in Lightroom as usual.

Leica M8 Elmarit 28mm IR filter

Leica M8 Elmarit 28mm IR filter

Leica M8 Elmarit 28mm IR filter

Decaying Pepper

I kept this pepper in the fridge slowly decaying for the sole purpose of using my Canon 50mm f1.4.

I've played about with the image in Lightroom as usual, replicating T-max 3200 + 1 stop and Tri-X 400 pushed a couple of stops.

Processed in Lightroom

Processed in Lightroom - desaturated

Lightroom replication of T-Max 3200 + 1 stop

Lightroom replication of Tri-X+ 2 stops

London with a Leica M8

I was recently in London for a couple of days shooting a video interview for a client.
My colleague Simon and I travelled down the day before we were due to shoot and took a look at the William Klein/Daido Moriyama exhibition at the Tate Modern. We were very disapointed. While Klein deserves his reputation as one of the pioneers of street photography I found much of his other output not to my taste and his films unwatcheable due to a combination of poor acting, poor cinematography, poor lighting and dreadful script. The contact paintings were good though. I had not heard of Moriyama before and had, quite frankly, not missed anything. If you like your photos poorly focussed, exposed and in need of a written explaination they Moriyama is the man for you.

The following day after the video shoot we had time to kill before our train back to Leeds. As we are both Leica users we decided to take a look at R. G. Lewis in Holborn as well as York Cameras in Pied Bull Court. On our way there Simon took the opportunity to photograph some advertising cards in a phonebox for a personal project illustrating a poem about London, as he was doing this he was, in turn, photographed by a street photographer, we struckup a conversation and ended up going for a coffee with Zo Flamma-Hill.
Zo's website can be viewed here

Simon and Zo

When we got to R. G. Lewis I was pleased to see that the price of used Leica M8's has not fallen due to the introduction of the Leica M in October!

Tate Modern Leica M8 Summicron 35mm f/2 ASPH

Outside Tate Modern: Leica M8 ISO 640 Elmarit 28mm

Outside Tate Modern: Leica M8 ISO 640 Elmarit 28mm

St Pauls Leica M8 Voigtlander 15mm

Leica M8 ISO 640 Elmarit 28mm