Buddha | Martin Bailey Photography

Single Exposures #3 (Podcast 104)

by Martin Bailey | Sep 16, 2007 | Fundamentals, Musings, Podcast

Having done a few pretty long and intense episodes recently, today we’re going to take it a little easy, and I’m going to talk about a number of images that I’ve uploaded since our last Single Exposures episode. Before we go on, I wanted to say a quick thanks to all of you that have mailed or posted comments in the forum about our first roundtable style Podcast, episode 102. It seems that many of you really enjoyed this episode, and have let us know, which is great. I also wanted to quickly mention that I recorded the first roundtable with my own voice on one channel, and Forrest and Even’s lines on the other channel, so we came out of different speakers. Having recorded like that, I pretty much had to release it like that, but while editing the audio I realised that this was a bit annoying. I have also received a few mail from people telling me so, so I just wanted to mention that I’ll be going to a mono recording for the next roundtable. That way all participants will be heard from both speakers. Thanks for the feedback on this too, it all really helps.

In episode 97 we looked at a number of photos from the Nature Research Institute near my apartment here in Tokyo. I go here quite often, especially when I think there’ll be plenty of bugs around to shoot. That was the main theme through episode 97. I went back to the Institute two weeks later and uploaded another handful of shots from that day, but not enough to do a full Podcast, so today I first want to look at a couple of my favourites from that day. Let’s look at image number 1505 to begin with. I called this image “Imagination” as I left quite a lot to your imagination in this image. Also, as you’ll see I used a very shallow depth-of-field to through the majority of the image out of focus, again giving us a departure from reality. I actually set up my camera on a tripod with the 100mm F2.8 macro lens and a 25mm extension tube, because there was a spider on the underside of the leaf. He was walking around quite a lot, and I got a few with the spider in full view as well, but I really ended up liking this one more because of the overall softness of the bokeh and the way the spider has just a couple of legs sneaking into the frame at the bottom, under the leaf. Also, because I was shooting a slightly larger than life-size, all of the hairs on the leaf are also visible as well as some detail along the line of focus, enabling us to see just how close we’re looking at this macro scene. I was using ambient light by the way, and a shutter speed of 1/20^th of a second at F4. This is a pretty slow shutter speed, and had there been any wind, I wouldn’t have been able to shoot this without seeing some subject blur. To get a shutter speed as fast as this even, I had to raise the ISO to 250. I probably couldn’t have gone any lower than 1/20^th of a second, even with a tripod.

Imagination

I want to look at one more shot from this day, which is image number 1508. Here I shot the fruit, after the flowers have died back on an Agrimony plant. Agrimonies grow to be quite tall, and very convenient for photographing. I was standing up almost straight to shoot this, which makes a change for macro work. This time I shot with ISO 400, again at F4, and this gave me a shutter speed of 1/100^th of a second. I was still using the 25mm extension tube with the 100mm macro, so I am pretty close here, having positions the seeds here with the lens pre-focused at the shortest focusing distance. I set the exposure manually, and pushed it as far as I could go before going over-exposed, so that the greens came out as bright as possible. It’s the brightness of these greens with the warm yellow-brown that makes it for this shot though. I think just the greens alone would not have been anywhere near as appealing. Seeking out this kind of complimentary colour can really help to liven up your shots. If you take a look at the colour wheel in the Quick Links menu at martinbaileyphotography.com you’ll see that these two colours are pretty much next to each other on the top left and top right. Being opposite will give the most dramatic effect, but being close to the purest form of any colour even next to each other will work too if you keep the colours vibrant.

Agrimony Fruit

Sitting Shoebill [C]

The next shot I wanted to look at is image number 1514, which was actually shot almost two years ago on November the 3^rd, 2005, at the Ueno Zoo here in Tokyo. This beautifully ugly bird is a Shoebill Stork, and I just love them. There are I think two pairs of these birds in the zoo, and when I shot this, he or she was sitting on a nest, though I don’t think there was an egg in it. I shot this through a largely spaced mesh wire fence with my 100-400mm lens at 250mm so you can tell that I was really quite close to the enclosure and the bird was right next to the edge of the inside of the enclosure too. I was shooting in Aperture Priority, and used minus one third Exposure Compensation giving me a shutter speed of 1/400^th of a second at F5.6. I was actually shooting at ISO 800 to get this shutter speed, as I was zooming anything up to 400mm and needed a fast shutter speed to stop from getting camera shake. There isn’t a lot of worry about subject movement with these storks as they move very slowly and deliberately. I’ve seen them in a documentary before and they spend hours and hours just standing over the water in marshlands and watching, and waiting. Then after like six or eight hours or so, when a really big fish comes by, the strike at lightning speed, and get one very large meal. Because they move so slowly though, their metabolism is also pretty low, so this seems to be enough for them.

For those of you that have listened to Episode 1 of this Podcast about the Pink Flamingo, you’ll perhaps recognise the colours in the background of the next shot, which is number 1516. The main subject of course is another Shoebill Stork, this time a view from the side, slightly behind the bird for a nice profile, but I have used the bright pink of the flamingos and their reflections in the water in their compound to as an effective background for the magnificent Shoebill. There are also two patches of dark on either side of the frame, which if I recall correctly is two trees, which also help to frame the shot and bring it all together. Also the back of the Shoebill’s head is aligned nicely with the dark of the tree to the left, which helps to emphasise the line of his head and those wacky feathers on the back of his head, yet the pink of the flamingos just cutting into the edge behind the nape of his neck adds a little splash of colour to break up the monotony. This was shot with the same settings as the last image, but as I was in Aperture Priority mode, this time the shutter speed had increased to 1/250^th of a second. Still enough to capture this bird nice and sharply, and I was lucky enough to get a nice catch-light in the eye there too.

Contemplative [C]

A few weeks ago I did a Podcast about testing my new 85mm F1.2 lens, and have been carrying it around with me quite a lot since. This has been the only way I’ve managed to do any photography in recent weeks being so busy with other things. The oppressive heat here in Tokyo is starting to subside though, and hopefully within the next few weeks I’ll start to get out a little more, but for now, I’ve been keeping my stress levels down by shooting the odd image here and there with my new 85mm lens. With that, I thought I’d share a few of those with you as well today. The first one is image number 1520, which is shot at the temple next to where I work in my day job, which is called Daienji. In this image we can see a whole load of Mizuko statues with orange bonnets. I’ve mentioned this before some time ago, when we looked at some Mizuko from another temple, but there is a sad story behind these “Mizuko” statues. They are created by the temple and placed by parents to help them to get over the loss of a baby that may have miscarried, or died at birth, or even one that they had to abort for some reason or another. I don’t think it really matters what happened, but these statues are to help family left behind by any child that didn’t make it into this world, died in the process, or exited shortly after entering this world. This is why they have those kiddie’s bonnets. Mizuko by the way directly translates as “Water Child”.

Orange Hat Mizuko

I shot this at F1.4 at ISO 100 on a somewhat overcast day, and I still got a shutter speed of 1/1000^th of a second. A sad image, but I’ve got to say that I’m loving this 85mm F1.2 lens. It’s just so fast. Needless to say I was handholding, and I used F1.4 to give me just a tad more depth of field so that I could get the statues either side of the one just off center that I focussed on also in focus to some degree. I shot in Manual mode and shot a couple of test shots while inspecting the histogram, making sure that the red didn’t hit the right shoulder indicating that those orange bonnets were blowing out. I was pushing the exposure though, as I wanted these oranges to really jump out at me.

Daienji’s Yakushinyorai

Also in the grounds of the Daienji Temple is the Yakushi Nyorai that we see in image number 1522. A type of Buddha statue, people by sheets of gold leaf from the temple for $5 a pop and then apply it to the statue at a point that they have some pain or ailment. There’s a plaque with some text on to the right of the statue, and they are supposed to chant that while applying the gold leaf. I decided to stay with a wide aperture here, to really get rid of the background, and also just because I’m still trying to get a handle on just how much depth-of-field I get when this lens is used wide open. I actually opened right up to F1.2 for this one, and it was still as sharp as tacks. I kept the exposure toned down a little by selecting 1/800^th of a second at F1.2 and still using ISO 100. This was to make sure the gold came out nice and yellow and so that I didn’t blow out the highlights on this highly reflective subject, but also because I wanted the background to be not only blurred, but dark, so help the statue to stand out again it. I shot a few with the hand paralleled to the face so that both were in focus, but didn’t think it worked as well as this one, in which really only the face and part of the statues chest is in focus. A tight crop also helped to build a little tension here too.

Self Portrait

OK, so I was in too minds whether or not to include this next shot, as it feels a little vain, but as a photo I quite like it, so I’ve uploaded it to talk about here. Let’s look at one last image before we finish, which is image number 1523. There has been talk on the MBP Forum recently about what I look like, and I realize that many of you probably haven’t looked at my bio page on the Web site, and even those that have, have only seen a relatively old photo or two of me, neither of which were a close up of my mug. That, and the fact that I wanted a better profile photo for the Workshops page I put together last week, drove me to shoot this self-portrait. Of course, I used the 85mm for this to, and set it up on a tripod in my kitchen with a gradual grey screen behind me, and basically just shot about 30 images with the cable release. It was almost dark when I shot the images but I wanted to use the ambient light coming in through the kitchen window. I had to get up a few times and check the exposure, but also check that I was in the frame at the right place, as I was cropping quite tightly. I tried a few different angles for my head, but having shot a whole bunch of images, I found that this one was the closest to how I think I look. The other 29 or so had some fat middle-aged bloke in them. I can almost hear some of you saying that there’s a fat middle-aged bloke in this one too. Anyway, I had one tip with regards to this image – I found on checking the first few that because I was relying totally on autofocus for this, the camera was focusing on my glasses, so for each shot I was half-pressing the shutter release cable and then moving my head forward by a centimetre or two, so that I got my eye in sharpest focus, and not my glasses. I imagine this would be a problem when shooting people with glasses, whether it’s a self portrait or not, especially when purposefully using a shallow depth-of-field.

I was actually in two minds as to whether or not I should upload this for another reason, and that is because at this size, you can clearly see some age lines to the side of my left eye, or the eye to the right of this shot. I figured though that this is me, at age forty, and so I should just stick it up there anyway. Worrying about stuff like that really would be vain. I shot this at F2 for 1/25^th of a second at ISO 200, so you can tell that the light levels were dropping quite low. Anyway, that’s me, if you haven’t seen me before, you can check it out. Just don’t look too closely OK.

So, a bit of a quick one this week. We haven’t just taken time to look at some images for a while, so hopefully this will be a nice breather for you as well as giving me a chance to catch up on some other stuff. Don’t forget the Hokkaido Workshop that I spoke about last year. If you are interested in joining us, please do take a look at at the tour page, which is the site that I have put together to publish all the details and pricing, and a way to book your slot. If you still have any questions after reading the page and listening to episode 103 about the Workshop, please do drop me a line.

And that’s about it for today. We were played in and out by Ichiro Nakagawa with a track called “In Kamakura – The Traditional Samurai Metropolitan in Japan”. So with that, all that remains to be said is thanks for listening, and you have a great week, whatever you’re doing — Bye-bye.

Show Notes

I was in two minds as to whether or not to include a recent self-portrait, but I figured because you’ve been discussing what I look like in the forum recently, it would be a good chance to put the record straight! 🙂

The music in this episode is from the PodShow Podsafe Music Network at http://music.podshow.com/

Audio

Subscribe in iTunes for Enhanced Podcasts delivered automatically to your computer.

Download this Podcast in MP3 format (Audio Only).

Download this Podcast in Enhanced Podcast M4A format. This requires Apple iTunes or Quicktime to view/listen.

Posted on behalf of Martin by Michael Rammell, a Wedding Photographer based in Berkshire, England. Michael also has a long-standing passion for Nature & Landscape photography. To catch up with Michael, visit his Web site, and follow him on the following social networking services.

One Day in Bangkok – Dec 2006 (Podcast 89)

by Martin Bailey | Jun 4, 2007 | Art Talk, Podcast, Travelogue

In Dec 2006, I visited India, which I discussed in Episodes 66 to 68. On my way back, as I couldn’t get a flight on to Tokyo I ended up with a day to kill in Bangkok, and so I decided to apply for a visa, and left the airport to explore the city for a while. If you listened to episodes 66 to 68 you’ll possibly remember that I had gotten almost no sleep on the night before I visited the Taj Mahal, and that night, I flew from Delhi to Thailand, which only takes around 4 or 5 hours, so needless to say, I hadn’t had a whole lot of sleep again. It had all followed a very heavy business week, so to be honest I was very tempted to just throw in the towel, and just hang around the airport for the day. I was flying business class, so being able to use the business lounges as well, this was a very comfortable option. However, I am a strong believer in the philosophy that I would rather go ahead and do things, and regret doing them, than living with the regret of not doing them, and what might have been. Anyway, I mentioned in episode 68 that I would probably talk about this day at some point, and as I finally got around to sorting through the shots from that day, I figured now is probably a good time to talk about that part of the journey.

Once I got through the immigration process, I decided that the easiest way for me to see some sight of Bangkok in one day was to hire a guide. I approached a counter in the lobby of the airport, and asked if they have a simple tour of the sights. At this point, it was before 8AM, and the flight on to Tokyo didn’t leave until after 10PM, so I literally had a full day if I could stay awake. With that in mind I negotiated for a full day, with a guide called Nancy. Now, the strange thing here is that as the guide explained to me about how a driver would take me across town and hook me up with another driver and Nancy, he kept calling Nancy a “him”. I asked why, and the guy at the tour guides desk just laughed and said that Nancy was a “lady boy”. I recalled that I’d seen a Japanese comedy show with a guy called Okamura, who went to Thailand doing adventurous stuff like trying to catch a huge fish etc. And most of the time he was there, he was accompanied by three, what they called, “lady boys”. These are I believe basically cross-dressing guys, and the ones on this show were really bubbly and funny, and although I was a little apprehensive, I figured it might be fun, so I went along with it.

After about 30 minutes driving across town, we pulled into a hotel, and a new driver and a tiny little lady came walking out and introduced themselves to us. This little lady called herself Nancy, and I realised that this was the lady-boy. I’m not going to get hung up on this, because I’ve never been one for discriminating against people for any part of their appearance, race or actions, but basically apart from noticing a prominent Adam’s apple jumping up and down a few times during the day, I could not tell that this guide was a guy. For all intent and purposes this was a young woman, so I decided to just put the rest to the back of my mind.

Having really no understanding of Thailand or Bangkok at all, I basically asked to be taken to some famous or notable temples. I remember when I first got to Japan, and still now in Japan to some extent, temples and shrines seem to be a good place to start in a new area, especially in Asia, to get a feel for the culture of the place.

We travelled around a few places for the first few hours, including Wat Poh, with the huge reclining Buddha, and I got some decent shots, but on looking back through them over the weekend, none of this first batch really struck a chord to the point that I wanted to upload them to my Web site and share them with you today. After the first few temples, we decided to go for a boat ride before getting something for lunch. After shaking off the pushy hat salesmen at the pier, I boarded a long narrow boat, and spent around 90 minutes shooting from the vessel while moving up and down what I think is the Chao Phraya River and the smaller rivers that flow into it.

Thonburi Locomotive Water Tower

The first shot from this part of the day is image number 1455, in which we can see the nicely labelled Thonburi Locomotive Water Tower. Apart from the Thai characters, this is not a particularly typical Thailand shot, but having tried this in black and white, converting it in Lightroom, I quite liked the look I got. I pushed a few of the sliders, especially the blue one, to the point where it introduced a lot of grain in the sky. This did not affect the water tower at all though, so it remains quite crisp in contrast with the sky. The tree and building in the foreground I think help to ground the shot, with another building in the back to the right of the frame helping to keep the bottom balanced. Shot with my trusty 70-200mm f2.8 lens, the technical things I was paying attention to were keeping a high enough shutter speed to freeze the scene as I was shooting from an often speeding boat. I had raised the ISO to 200 to get a shutter speed of 1/800^th of a second at f5.6. Although I shot this at just 98mm, I actually had the 1.4x extender attached, so I was zoomed out as far as possible for this combination. I needed the extra zoom of the extender for some shots, and found myself pretty much leaving it on for large parts of the boat ride. Partly because of the time necessary to change and also because there was spray from the water and I wanted to keep the risk of that getting in my camera or on the back element of my lens to a minimum. Of course, the other thing to note when shooting from a boat that is rocking, it is sometimes difficult to get a nice straight shot. I actually had to rotate this very slightly to get it straight, but apart from that there’s no cropping to get this composition.

After spending some time on the main river, we headed down a smaller river flowing into it. This gave more opportunity to shoot some of the real culture of Bangkok, including some of the people that paddle up and down the river selling groceries to people that live along it. Unfortunately, the sun was almost directly above at the time and as all of these people were wearing hats, they had quite harsh shadows cast across their faces, really making the shots uninteresting, so again, I didn’t bother to upload them. One shot that benefitted from the bright midday sun, was image number 1456. Here we can see someone’s brightly coloured washing hanging drying on a clothesline outside one of the many houses that line the river. I’ve actually cropped this slightly, removing some of the roof and right hand side of the building, which was a little cluttered. I’ve left enough of the house to enable us to see what it is, without showing too much, and allowing us to focus on the brightly coloured washing and its reflection in the water. I was still using the 70-200 with the 1.4x extender, so I could have cropped closer in camera, but this decision was really made in hind-sight, on looking at the image over the weekend. Of course it’s always best to get things right in camera, especially when pixels are at stake, but sometimes it just doesn’t work out that way, and I think I’d rather crop, as I’ve mentioned before in this Podcast, to make an effective image, than keep the unwanted area just for the sake of it. Again at ISO 200, this was shot at f8 for 1/500^th of a second.

Washing

Wat Benchamabophit Stained Glass Window

After the boat ride, we went to lunch at a restaurant at the side of the river, and enjoyed some nice seafood with a kind of soup and some rice, and a bottle of coke, if I remember correctly. Then, a little refreshed, but still pretty beaten up from lack of enough sleep for too many nights, we headed to Wat Benchamabophit, another temple. We actually spend quite a lot of time in a carpeted room with a beautiful golden Buddha statue, just sitting and reflecting, and occasionally getting up and taking some shots in the room. I shot the Buddha a few times, and then got shot number 1457, in which we can see the stained-glass window to the right of the Buddha. There was actually some furniture or something directly opposite the window, so I’m not looking at it straight on, but I quite like the way the dark interior wall in the room as been rendered totally black, surrounding the brightly coloured window. Shot again at ISO 200 for 1/125^th or a second at f5.6. I’d now removed the 1.4x extender by the way. There’s nothing really difficult about a shot like this, but I thought I’d include it and mention that when shooting stained glass windows like this on a bright sunny day, remember that the exposure is going to be much more than a normal shot of the interior of a room, obviously because you’re shooting pretty much out of the window, although you’re focusing on it. Also, if the window was much smaller than this, and you had a lot of the interior wall in the frame too, if you leave exposure to the camera’s meter, you’ll almost certainly blow out all the details in the window itself, so it’s best to get control of the exposure by either going manual or using exposure compensation and checking your histogram if you’re using digital will help to get things right. If you check the EXIF data along with this image in my online gallery at martinbaileyphotography.com, you’ll see that I was using aperture priority mode, and exposure compensating to the tone of plus one stop for this particular shot.

Wat Benchamabophit Buddha

Having shot the window, I went back and sat down on the nice comfortable carpet in front of the Buddha that we can see in image number 1458. This I find is a particularly beautiful gold statue, and I love the blue backlit background that the guardians of this statue have put in place. The lights hitting the wall almost make a halo for the statue, which I’m sure is the desired effect, but it really helps to make the image come to life in my opinion. As I’m back in the room and away from the window now, I was shooting at ISO 200 at f5.6 still, but with a shutter speed of just 1/6^th of a second now. Pretty slow but I was helped by the image stabilization of the lens, and also resting my elbows on my knees as a sat cross-legged in front of the statue. I was still in aperture priority mode and compensating by minus two thirds of a stop now, to keep the exposure a little dimmer than what the camera wanted, to make sure it reflected the actually conditions of being indoors in somewhat subdued light. Again, I did just a little rotation on this shot, as it wasn’t quite straight. To do this, I used the ruler tool in the Develop module in Lightroom. I used the tool to basically draw a line through the center of the Buddha’s nose and up the center of that decorative halo above his head, and then when you let go, Lightroom will rotate the image to make that a true vertical.

In the grounds of the Wat Benchamabophit there is a collection of literally hundreds of Buddha statues that apparently have been “rescued” quote/unquote, from around Thailand. As I wandered through a door and was confronted by the scene we can see in image number 1459, I realised I was going to shoot my favourite image from the trip. Of course, I didn’t know if anything else was coming up, but I could tell that this was going to be special to me. Shot at 1/100^th of a second with the aperture wide open at f2.8, with ISO 200, I captured this scene exactly how I wanted it. The light was beautiful and soft, and to keep it that way, I actually reduced the exposure with exposure compensation by one and one third of a stop. I wanted those dark bronze colours to stay dark, and the shadow area at the back of the corridor would have also fooled my camera to try to brighten things up, and that would have totally ruined the mood of this image. Note that this image was captured just five minutes after the last one of the golden Buddha, so I was mentally quite relaxed, after just sitting looking at and shooting the first Buddha for a while, and probably very ready to just be open to this scene, which may, or may not, have helped me. I purposefully placed the statue in focus towards the bottom of the frame, as its gaze was definitely heading downwards in a kind of contemplative stare, that I really wanted to emphasise by allowing the line of sight to run out of the shot along the bottom edge or the bottom right corner. I’m not sure if this is how you’ll perceive it, but this was my intension.

Contemplation

From shortly after this though, I was really starting to flag, so I was not all that happy when the guide started doing the same thing that the guide in Agra, where the Taj Mahal had done the previous day. She… he started to take me to jewellery shops. I didn’t ask to go, and I didn’t intend to buy anything, but out of politeness I had a look around the first one, made my exit, and refused to be taken to another. Nancy asked if I wanted to buy some souvenirs which I was more open to than jewellery, so I decided to take a look. I bought a nice carved wooden elephant, which now takes pride and place in front of my TV at home, and that was it. We then got back in the car and it was around now that I started to feel a little off. Nancy asked if I wanted to visit the zoo or some other places. At this point, I really just thought the fatigue of the last few days was setting in, and sapping me of my remaining energy, so I decided to call it a day, and head for the airport. Having said that I was just getting tired, Nancy offered to take me for a massage, but however open minded I might be, I decided that was not such a good idea also, and so off to the airport I went.

It was around 4PM when I got there and by now, I was starting to feel well and truly poorly. I checked in, and made my way to a business lounge and sat and had a glass of juice and a bite to eat, but this too backfired on me. An hour or so later, I was shouting down the big telephone in the toilet. Thinking that maybe I’d now be OK, I plucked up the strength to go and get a shower, as I’d not had one since leaving the hotel in Agra, India, the previous morning. I was thinking too that this might have been at the root of my feeling groggy too, so there was an additional incentive to get cleaned up. After the shower, I felt a little better for just a short while, and then I was throwing up again. This confirmed the fact that I’d probably eaten something that didn’t agree with me.

There are two possibilities here. The first is the lunch. I’d only eaten one meal in Thailand, and it was that lunch by the river. I kept bringing back the taste of the coriander, which I’m really not all that keen on anyway, so I think this might have been it. The other possibility is that I got a face full of river water while feeding some catfish at a temple we visited while on the boat. Some of the water had gotten in my mouth, so I can’t rule this out as a possibility. Either way, I was well and truly sick now. I staggered onto the plane just after 10PM or 11PM, and asked for just a few glasses of water. I needed to keep myself from dehydrating, but apart from that, I couldn’t stomach any food. I was in for yet another night sleeping on the plane, and refused all food that came my way, including breakfast the following morning. When I got back to Tokyo, I’d stopped throwing up, but I was really quite a wreck by now and just couldn’t wait to get home.

After I got back, I copied all my photos to my PC and then just crashed for about 12 hours solid. Fortunately, apart from feeling a little bit off for the next few days, I seemed to be fine, so I didn’t go to the doctors or anything. Maybe I should have, but I really think it was just a mild food poisoning. Apart from that though, I’d really enjoyed seeing a bit of Bangkok. I’ve always wanted to visit Thailand, and now I have. To be honest, I’m no longer sure that I want to go back, at least not with the priority I used to have. I love the sound of the Thai language, and as a country with an amazing culture, it had been on my list of top five places I want to visit for some time, but now I’d say it’s fallen off, for now at least

So, thanks for listening today. Remember too that the Low Perspective Assignment is still in progress. You have just under one week now, until the end of June 10^th, 2007, to get your submissions in. The assignment gallery at mbpgalleries.com is now looking pretty good, with some great shots already, but if you have your entry ready, or are still shooting, please do try to get it uploaded by the end of the week. On Monday the 11^th, I’ll be turning on the voting system, and you’ll be able to vote for your favourite for a further two weeks until the end of Sunday, June the 24^th. The prize for the winner is an original print of the photo of your choice on the paper and size of your choice from my main web site at martinbaileyphotography.com. Also remember that the votes will accumulated for a new yearly grand prize that will be awarded in the middle of 2008. Going back to the members’ gallery by the way; note that although we use this for the assignment uploads and voting, this is also a very active members’ gallery, where many listeners are uploading shots daily and comparing notes and critiques. If you are interested in taking part, please do drop by mbpgalleries.com and take a look. There’s a very high standard of photography being discussed daily by some incredibly talented photographer’s and also from very ambitious beginners, who are learning a lot from the experience. If you decide to sign-up, please do use the same username and email address that you use for the main MBP web site, to make it easier for me to link them at some point.

And with that, I just want to say once again, thanks for listening, and have a great week, whatever you’re doing. Bye-bye.