Most Interesting - Images by Mark Blundell

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Notre Dame de Lourdes – Casablanca

Back to Morocco and a rather nice 360.

I specifically went to the cathedral to capture this image. I’d seen interiors shots of the cathedral before but not a full 360 and certainly not an HDR 360. As you can hopefully see its a pretty impressive structure from the inside, outside is rather more mundane.

This was actually rather challenging to complete. PTGui struggled to line everything up correctly and I think it took around 5 attempts to get everything how I wanted it. I’d get everything just right, then realise that there was a particular part of the image that was skewed. I think that this possibly the hardest type of 360 to shoot due to there being so many straight likes, in fact there are no curves whatsoever, so getting the overlaps correct is essential. As it’s unlikely that I’ll return I refused to be beaten though and returned  until it was just right.

I hope that the fullscreen view really does show off the magnificence of the church.

Click the fullscreen icon (bottom right) for full effect

Jan 25, 2012 | Categories:Blog, Featured, Morocco, Overseas, Panoramas, Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments »

Wool Grading – Dodgy Room #2

Here’s another shot of the room with the dodgy floor. After venturing across the bridge and not being sure what to find the other side of the door I was faces with a rather large hole in the floor. Luckily the door was placed over the hole so I was able to get into the room. The drop was considerable and I doubt had I fallen that I would have walked out with both legs intact. All of the floor timber in the shot that is a darker colour is slightly ‘spongy’ with damp, the brick crumbling with the same moisture laden atmosphere.

This image is dedicated to calculated risk and treading carefully.

(Mark Blundell)

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Jan 24, 2012 | Categories:Blog, Devon, Featured, Industrial, UK, Urban Exploration | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments »

Self Portrait

A quite Saturday led to a quick self portrait with my flash.

I bought a couple of flashes, stands, a softbox and umbrella some time ago but haven’t used them in a while, mostly because my remote trigger has been a bit temperamental. I have a long cable to trigger with though so thought it would be fun to see what I could produce in a short space of time.

The image below was shot with my 8-16, hence my slightly distorted look, the wide angle has made me look a but skinny! The process behind the shot was actually very easy and its something that can be achieved with a minimum of fuss.

My 550D was set up as normal on the tripod, but slightly below me to get the sky.  Exposure and aperture were slightly limited by the synch speed of 1/200th, but a little bit of manual adjustment resolved this. I’ve  dialled the exposure down two stops to darken the background and produce a more moody look. The flash was mounted on a stand directly above the camera, softbox attached to soften the harsh light. I decided against using manual mode for my flash, mainly because although I could reach the buttons, I couldn’t see the screen correctly! The flash is set to TTL and no manual adjustments were made in the camera controls – flash fired at full power.

(Mark Blundell)

I’ve included the original shot to show that there wasn’t very much post processing involved. I’ve used a high pass layer to ‘grunge it up’ and desaturated to lighten my face and reduce the red of my shirt, but that’s about it – a very quick and easy image which produces a quite dramatic result.

 

Jan 22, 2012 | Categories:Blog, Featured, Portraiture | Tags: , , , , | 1 Comment »

Wool Grading – Two Ways

I’ve tried to take advantage of the wide angle lens here and split the image in two. This was an idea I saw at some of the local asylums where the corridors are acutely angled. This is testament to having my eyes open and thinking about framing images and what the camera and lens can do for me.
Often I’ll be focussing on a particular type of image and be a little blinkered in my approach, the wide angle makes it very easy to be a little lazy and not particularly inventive. After realising what I wanted to do I had to look around for a suitable place to get the shot. Luckily the location was fairly small, so returning here was easy. The hard bit was squeezing up against the wall behind the lens!

(Mark Blundell)

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Jan 19, 2012 | Categories:Blog, Devon, Featured, Industrial, UK, Urban Exploration | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave A Comment »