Friday 18 September 2009

Last night I got destroyed by a car door whilst riding my bike which means I am now in quite a lot of pain, which is lame. But there is good news, I got tickets to go and see Modest Mouse with support by Frightened Rabbit, gonna be so rad.
More bad news: took my photos down to the studio on Wednesday to find the studio closed so I left a message on the answerphone and haven't had any replies yet. Not cool.
Oh but more good news! My sister is very likely to be moving out within the next month, which means I will no longer have to share a room with my brother. Good times

Wednesday 16 September 2009

Last week a nice man at a photography studio gave me some free studio time and said that if i get good pictures he will give me a job as a full time photographer. After an hour and a half of shooting photographs and a day of editing the final pictures are on http://www.flickr.com/photos/bennyellis/sets/72157622385507936">Flickr



Monday 10 August 2009

No posts?!

Haven't really been doing much digital photography lately, been focusing on taking photos on my old Praktica camera, and currently have no money to get photos developed. They will be here soon. In the meantime I will do some shameless promotion: http://imagineskateboards.blogspot.com
Enjoy x

Thursday 23 July 2009

Lame

I was afraid the text on my last post would do that, oh well.
I'm actually amazed at how good quality the photos come out, click on one and it goes massive, very impressed.


Here's some 'unseen' photography that I took a couple of weeks ago when the weather was actually nice. As always, let me know what you think, I hope you like it.

Long

Other computer without internet access is taking ages to transfer pictures to my memory stick. I'll get the photos up asap. Estimated time currently at 34 minutes. Long.

Tuesday 14 July 2009

First photo upload




I can't remember the shutter speed of this one. The apaerture was most likely to be at f2.
The photo was taken with my Helios 58mm.

At the time the photograph was taken the rain had just stopped and there was a beautiful sunset to the left of me and a dark rain filled sky to the right, which made some interesting shades for the photo. It looks quite heavily edited but there has been nothing done to it at all. The closest thing to editing which has been done it the process from a .CR2 RAW file to a .jpeg.

Hope you enjoyed the first post of many to come.

Equipment

What I forgot to write earlier is the equipment that I use.

I am currently using: -

-Canon 20D

-Praktica Super TL

-Helios-44m 58mm f2 (M42 fit)

-Soligor 135mm f2.8 (M42 fit)

-Prinz Galaxy 300mm f5.5 (M42 fit)

-Canon 38-76mm f4.5-5.6 (EF fit)

-M42-EF adapter


As you can see there are a lot of old M42 lenses. There are a few reasons why I use M42 fit lenses. The main reason is price. They are a lot cheaper for something that is just as good quality or even better. The second reason is having an aperture ring. Having an aperture ring makes everything a lot quicker and a lot more comfortable. Rather than having to pull the camera away from you and change the dial to your desired aperture all you do it turn the ring and you’re there. The final reason is the quality. M42 lenses were built to last. Whereas Canon EF lenses are made of plastic M42 lenses are made of metal.

I shoot in RAW and rarely edit my photos. When I do edit my photos I will clearly state what I have done to it and how I have done it.

I shoot in RAW because the quality of the photos is a lot better.

When I add photos to this blog I will add a small bit of text which will include the shutter speed, aperture and anything else I believe relevant. Maybe even sometimes explain where inspiration came from or what I had to go through to get the photo(s).

Photos will be uploaded either today or tomorrow and will all be ‘unseen’ photos that I have not uploaded to my flickr account. Hope you enjoy them and feedback is always nice.

In the meantime have a look at www.flickr.com/bennyellis

Change of plan

From now on I will be updating this blog with my photography. I get really annoyed with flickr because I can't always get all the photos I want uploaded.
Firstly Im going to let you all know what equipment I’m using etc. will update as and when I get new things, I will also give a brief description of how I took the photos aswell, talking about shutter speed and aperture and anything else I find relevant.

I don’t edit my photos very often, but if I do I will explain what I did and how I did it etc.

So keep checking back for new bits of photography.

Monday 22 June 2009

I have decided I will put the date and time in my posts because of the American time that I can't figure out how to change, so...
10.38am 22/6/2009
I am listening to The Band Of Horses.
In my last blog I said I would tell you about Thursday night, I didn’t end up going out in the end. I saw my friend Lester play live at The Hat Factory and then went home, it was a pretty good gig, it was his last gig before moving to Cambridge.
Talking of Lester and moving to Cambridge, it was his leaving party on Friday. Was such a good night. Because he has friends that aren’t 18 he decided to have it somewhere that everybody could go, so we went to ‘Killer Hill’. It was going fine for about an hour, then a load of uninvited people turned up, these guys were alright though, they were just standing around having a few drinks, then some more uninvited people turned up, these not so nice, it was the same people that broke Reg’s jaw and mugged everyone else. Bad times. We decided that we were horribly outnumbered and left. I was kind of glad we left though, it was already freezing and the sun hadn’t even set yet.
We ended up in the woods with a massive fire; it was such a good idea moving there. The atmosphere in the woods was so chilled out, there were people playing music on acoustic guitars and everyone was having a good time.
Just before I left it was starting to get pretty messy, people were passing out, bollocks getting put in people’s faces and others almost falling in the fire. Was quite hilarious to watch. I was pretty gutted about leaving so early but I had work at 8.30 the next morning.
As we were walking home we bumped into Kyle (a.k.a. Hellrocker) and he was getting a taxi to town so that made our journey home so much faster and easier.
Work on Saturday was a bit lame, I was so tired, I ended up getting about 3 hours sleep in total and I was still pretty drunk on my way to work, bad times.
After work I took Jade out for a meal, we went to Pizza Express, it was quite nice. After we went home and had a bit of an early night.

Yesterday I went skating for the first time in a while. It was really good; I went to Harpenden with Gorey and Watko.
There was the most hilarious, joke of a photoshoot happening at the skatepark. There was this one kid sitting around while these two middle aged men were taking photos with flashes, reflectors and all sorts when it was fucking sunny, it was ridiculous. They did have really nice cameras and lenses though, so I was a little bit jealous.

My parents have gone away to Spain until Friday and me and Jade have been asked to look after the house and the dog until they are home. It should be good, our plans for today involve, shopping for food, walking the dog and chilling out. But I have to wait until Jade gets home from work, which won’t be til about 1pm that feels like ages away.
Wow, quite a long one this time, maybe I wont leave so much time between posts haha, toodles xx

Thursday 18 June 2009

Boredom

I am so bored, everyone else is at college or in exams, but I'm stuck at home waiting til 6pm for work.
I would be at college but I got kicked out yesterday, so I have a lot of free time until I get a full time job.
I am currently listening to my iTunes playlist on shuffle and Belle & Sebastian just came on, good times.
I can't stop thinking about my options for the future, at the moment my plan is to get some full time work to get enough money for a new video camera so I can start making a portfolio for university, I am so scared that I don't have enough qualifications though.
But hopefully everything will work out as planned.

On a lighter note,
my weekend should be pretty good, it's pay day tomorrow and my friend is having a bit of a leaving party, which should be good.
On Saturday me and my girlfriend will have been going out for 11 months (which we thought was our year until some disappointing recalculations) so I will be taking her out for a meal and probably hitting the town after.
Oh man, complete change of tone CSS- Let's Make Love.
Any way, I think that's enough for today, probably post something hilarious tomorrow if I end up going out for Smylie's birthday
Bye x

First Blog ever

I have always wanted to create a blog, I feel they help to remember good times and I like the idea of having it really public so anybody can read it.
I have never had time to create one, but now is the best time.
I' going to let you know a bit about me.
My name is Ben Antony Ellis, but everybody calls me Benny.
My main passions are film, photography and skateboarding.
Over the coming weeks/months/years (or however long this keeps me interested) I will be writing about the key things that happen in my life and most probably the insignificant things like the weather or what I'm listening to, I hope you enjoy reading my future blogs xx