Binka's Page!
Binka's October 2006 submissions

This morning I took some photos from a bridge over a road, near my house. They are some photos that I have been meaning to take for quite a while, since seeing a similar one, somewhere, years ago. I was hoping that it may have been dark enough to get the effect that I wanted, of the vehicles lights standiing out in the dark, but when I got my camera home and loaded them into my computer they were not how I wanted them. It must have been too light and there was far too much landscape in them, they looked very ordinary. However, I used an adjustment layer in Paint Shop Pro, to turn the Brightness right down and the Contrast way up, so that I got the effect that I wanted, after all.

Here are 2 of my photos.

The first one shows up the lines on the road quite well, too, I think, and the cloudy dawn sky helps a bit, also.

The second one is cropped from a bigger photo. When I looked at the larger photo, I thought that I liked the way that the overhead lighting and the central reservation, on the ground, snake off into the distance together, which they have to, of course, because the lighting pillars are built on the central reservation.




Binka's November 2006 submissions.

My first photo is of the cat next door, who is a friend of my human's, but not a friend of any cat in this house. He has a number of names. The man next door told us that the cat was originally called "Coldplay", after the music group of that name, but their child could not say that, and called him "Coco", so that is what they called him.

Before my humans knew this, one of them used to call him "Hairy Furry", because he has long hair, my other human used to call him "Purry Furry" because he purrs a lot when he is stroked. It is no wonder that he likes attention as he is never let inside next door. The female says that she is allergic to cats and she has split from her partner, who does not live there now. The cat is out all day long, when she is at work, and she never seems to let him in at night, either. Presently he is being fed here and by someone up the street.


For my second photo, I could not decide which of the photos that I took in the morning I could send, so, I will let you decide which one to use.


The first one is of the sun coming through some clouds, which I thought I liked the sight of. The second one is of Walshaw church, with the sun coming through the clouds. On both of the photos the foreground is quite dark, but I lightened it, in PhotoImpact, for the one with the church, which you might be able to see telltale signs of, if you look carefully, about halfway up the photo.



I took them with my new camera, which is a Panasonic DMC-FZ50. At the moment I am a bit disappointed with it, but maybe I will have to use it a bit more before I feel comfotable with it.
December 2006 submissions.

I have not forgotten to send my photos, but the reason that I am so late with them is because I am not really completely happy with what I have this month and have been trying to get something better. Recently I have been experimenting with my new camera and trying to get some interesting interior shots of Tiddler, using a shaving mirror placed horizontally in front of her. These photos did not work out at all well, though, so I can't send them. Earlier in the month I went out with my Kodak, camera, which I am much more confortable with, as I think you know, and was hoping to capture the difference between interior and exterior lighting by taking some photos of some interiors of restaurants, or cafes, from the outside. What I had in mind was getting something similar to Edward Hopper's "Nighthawks", but, with the blueness of the outside framing the window of the establishment. These did not really work out very well, either. I found a restaurant that was ideal, and took some photos, but was disappointed to find, when I got home, that the reflections from the outside had spoiled the photo, plus the interior did not look very interesting, either. However, when I looked at some of the other photos that I had, I found one in which I like the way that the interior lights have shown up in it, so, that is one of the photos that I am sending for my submission to the club, this month. The second photo that I am sending for the club is one that I took at the international market that I wandered into, on the same afternoon, when the sun was going down, and I was hoping that I could capture the electric lights without loosing, completely, the daylight. The market is in the square in front of the Town Hall, in the city centre. The photo for the club is of a stall selling Christmas decorations. I got another photo, that I quite liked, which is not for the club, as it has too many people in it, perhaps. I am only sending it to you to show you. It is of a French garlic stall and I liked the lighting and the figure, in silhouette, in the foreground.





(Henri here: I decided to use all of Binka's exceptional photographs! We will just ignore the human beings in the third and last photo!)

January 2007 submissions.

This month I have had a go at using some Triptych Templates, that I got on a CD with a photo magazine. Since I did them, I took a look on the web and it looks like there are lots of free tutorials on the web which show how to do pretty much the same thing. If anyone is interested in doing the same thing, just types "triptych tutorial" into a Google search you should get lots of results. For one of the photos, I used a photo that I had of the woods just up the road from me, and for the other one, I used a photo of the Imperial War Museum (North) that I took some time ago.
Purrs, Binka