Thursday 24 January 2013

Drowned DSLR

Okay, so one minute your there taking in the beautiful and very captivating; view of a river in winter in Wales. You have shot a few off and decide to move to get a wider view of the river.

Now when shooting in rivers especially in the UK and especially after some heavy snowfall you can expect to be a little bit wet under foot, you wrap up warm you have your special rubber grip gloves, and a trusty sturdy tripod. This tripod of course is made by a very reputable company particulary in photographers circles, a Manfrotto 055XPROB tripod with ball head.

So you have been shooting and you move your camera, I always switch off my camera after a shot in the snow or the rain or in this case; a river. Your camera holds a charge, and it is best advice to switch off, after a shot. I did two minutes later, and an unexpected increase in the water level lifted the tripod out of its firm hold and elevated the poor thing and camera into the water; I was of course oblivious as I was reaching into my kit bag to change a lens.

The initial reaction was to just pick it up, I did at once up the small hill, straight to the car, tripod off battery out, lense off and memory card out. Turn engine on, heater on, whack it up full blast and air conditioning on too. Well that a few bags of long grain rice; and plenty of hair dryer sessions and good old tungsten lights which worked as TLC lamps for my Canon 60D DSLR 108 hours later and my drowned DSLR had come back to life!

Yes, yes I am a happy man, yes I am insured but when you have a claim already for another camera, you really do want to keep your preimums down! I was ecstatic, to see the 'sensor cleaning' appear on the screen. As it goes for the last few days I have been shooting using my Canon EOS 1D MK II

And in another wet environment and pretty close to a historic castle in Wales, where else? This is shot next to the Afon Conwy; the title on the fishing boat said it all for me; it may have been a night shoot, but the whole scene was very crystal to me, so evocative. I decided to go for another perspective; the ambient light came from a nearby street lamp on the road level and the light was pretty amazing too.

So now that the Canon 60D DSLR is back online, I will be taking some surreal self portraits shots, for now enjoy this other piece from my recent night shoots.

Tuesday 8 January 2013

Here is another surreal self portrait, this one with an obvious twist! I loved shooting this and the editing was just as enjoyable, Adobe CS6 is just a fantastic tool! Here is the shot and if your looking for a concept photographer get in touch! I have many more ideas coming so keep watching/reading this space, the inspiration for the shot comes from the film Twister such an exciting film; of course it shows how extreme the weather can be but for us Brits, we don't get to see many tornadoes on our little island!

However events have changed, the climate is changing and no doubt we will see more extreme weather coming our way for sure. The shot highlights climate change on a global scale, we should do more about it, people say.

Whoosh!©David Rothwell All Rights Reserved. Please do not use any of my images/digital data without my written permission. 2012
The thing is what if we physically cannot? We have an abundant energy source in our solar system, it is expanding all stars do this...I think we should stop looking for excuses of green house gases, and start looking at the bright bastard in the sky! It is the giver of life and it shall without prejudice take it away!

We are so insignificant...its about time we realised that fact.