Clive Larrett Photography Ayrshire

06/06/2024

Just a couple of photos made at the lighting of a Beacon on Saltcoats Harbour to commemorate the 80th Anniversary of D-Day this evening (06 June 2024). We will Remember Them.

18/01/2024

18/01/2024

On her mother's side my granddaughter is a 5th or 6th generation descendent of General Christiaan De Wet, the Boer leader during the Anglo-Boer War. Leyla and I thought it would be fun to take a few portrait photos of her in Voortrekker dress.

16/02/2023

I was delighted to be commissioned by Dylan Budge (the Scottish International Cricketer) to do some outdoor and street portraits for his portfolio on Wednesday this week. We met at my home in Saltcoats on a cold, overcast but relatively dry day.

I used my Nikon D810 for the photoshoot with either an 85mm or 50mm lens. Whenever I needed to add light for creative purposes I used a PiXPRO Pika 200 Pro portable flash through one of their smaller soft boxes .

Here are a few of the images from the day. See more photos on my website at www.clivelarrettphotography.com

16/01/2023

The Isle of Arran photographed at dawn this morning - a long exposure using my Nikon D810 with a 70-200mm f/2.8 lens.

ISO80 f/20 30 secs

30/06/2022

Click on this photograph to read my blog and see more images made with CineStill 50D using my Nikon FM2 35mm SLR.

My experience of using CineStill 50D 35mm Film Stock with my Nikon FM2

16/06/2022

Click on the photo to read my latest blog post outlining my coverage of the Queen's Platinum Jubilee Beacon lighting ceremony on Saltcoats Pier, North Ayrshire on 2nd June 2022

Lighting of the Queens Platinum Jubilee beacon on Saltcoats Pier, North Ayrshire, Scotland

02/05/2022

It's always good to get out with a camera on a lovely day, especially when you haven't been out for a while due to Covid. This is a photo I made yesterday (May Day) with my Fujifilm X-T30 at Ardrossan Harbour - the Caledonian Isles ferry arriving from Brodick (Isle of Arran).

ISO 100 1/400sec f/8

29/03/2022

The weather and light conditions for the last week or so on the North Ayrshire coast in Scotland, has made it ideal to indulge in what I call 'high-key silhouette photography'. I'm not sure that there is such a genre, but I am quite fond of the effect.

Both the sky and the still sea have been almost white, and the hazy conditions has meant that it's been difficult to get any detail in the background when you shoot into the sun. However, when the sun sits low in the sky, you can position yourself with the bright light behind your subject in such a way that it (or they) are rendered black, even to the naked eye.

It can be quite tricky to get right, and I found that moving even ten paces to the left or right of the subject can lose the effect, and you get some colour on your subject. I just change my position until the subject blackens in the way I want it to. Then using spot metering (matrix works fine too), I lift my camera and expose on the bright, white-out sky, focus on the subject and get the shot!

A few test shots to get the settings just right may be necessary, but normally this technique works fine on any DSLR. It's a little easier using a mirrorless camera since looking through an electronic viewfinder means you immediately see the result as you make your adjustments.

Shooting in RAW, I did my black and white conversions in post-production, but it may be worth shooting in monochrome from the start, especially if you're shooting in JPEG.

Give it a go - it's definitely worth trying. Here are a few examples that I took on Sunday!

05/03/2022

I received a DM on instagram from my friend Dan Ward, who is a great wildlife photographer - especially birds. He said that he was going to be at the RSPB Nature Reserve at Lochkinnoch (only 15 miles from where I live).

I immediately knew that he was actually saying, 'Let's go photograph some birds!!'

We had a great few hours together, the sun was really bright. Some may argue that it's not the greatest light for taking photographs of birds in the woods - too much contrast between the light and shadows, they would say. 'Soft diffused light on a cloudy would be best'.

My view? Let's make the light work for us. So, wait for the subject to get into a pool of light, expose for that light (maybe using spot metering) to get the fastest shutter speed possible at the lowest ISO setting, and simply let the shadows darken the background, and make the subject stand out.

The image here is an example of the type of photograph you can make on a day that many would think was a bad day for photography.

Shot with my Nikon D810 fitted with my Nikon Nikkor 200-500mm lens - at 500mm with ISO 500 f/5.6 1/250s

Hope you like it! And hope you get your camera out on a contrasty day and get some great photos!