Fergus Kennedy

http://www.vimeo.com/55339611After a recent shooting trip to Oman, I’ve updated my Marine Demo Reel. A three minute video, with underwater and coastal footage, most of it shot in the Red Sea and Oman.

Another cold clear night, so I went up to the top of the South Downs with my bike to do some long expose shots with the new 5D Mark III. This one was a 10 second exposure at f4 with a 15mm fisheye. Flash was on second curtain sync-ie it flashes at the end of the exposure rather than the beginning. That way I could get the trail from the bike-light. The main difficulty was timing- I was on my own with the camera set up on a tripod, and had to have the camera on 10 self timer, followed by a 10 second exposure. So I had to press the shutter, jump on the bike, ride up the hill, turn round bike down and make sure I was right in front of the camera at the end of the countdown. Oh and it was pitch black so I couldn’t see my watch.

 This evening I tried out my new Canon 5D Mark III for the first time. I was pretty happy with the Mark II, but one of the most exciting abilities of the new version is the sensor’s increased sensitivity to low light. As I’ve been doing a fair bit of night photography recently, this is a pretty important change. The photo on the right was taken at ISO3200, and even on close inspection of the RAW file, it’s amazingly free of noise. A few more pics from this evening here (at the bottom of the gallery)

With a clear night forecast I headed down to the coast for some night photography. The chalk cliffs here are a great feature, but as there was no moon, I used a torch to illuminate the cliffs. 30 second exposure at f2.8, ISO 2500 with the Canon 5D Mark II and 14mm f2.8 lens. More shots here at the bottom. The funky sky colour was as it came out of the camera, but not really as it appeared to the eye. It’s a white balance issue- as the LED torch I used had a cooler colour temperature than the distant streetlights that were illuminating the thin layer of cloud in the sky. Would have been nice to have the milky way in shot too, but I believe July is the best time of year for that.

The new brochure for the Canon EOS 7D is out now, and can be downloaded here. I shot the images for the brochure over the space of a few days last November in Sicily. It was a fun shoot with a huge variety weather conditions, requiring a good deal of patience, but rewarding us with some great skies. For the image on the left we were taking shelter from one of the most violent thunderstorms I’ve witnessed just an hour before the shot was taken. We’d almost given up and gone back to the hotel when the sky started to clear and he had a beautiful sunset and dusk.

Check out some more images from the shoot here. I also shot a short video demonstrating the video capabilities of the camera- see here (on the left towards the top, among the other videos). A big thanks to my assistant on the trip, Matilde Toscani, a great photographer- see her website.

Taking advantage of the fantastic weather I headed down to the my nearest bit of coast for some landscape shots. Stayed until it was fully dark for some star shots. There was tons of thrift growing on the top of the cliffs and I even found a kittiwake nest with eggs in it (so well disguised I nearly trod on it). Pics are here- at the bottom.

Here’s a trailer for my short 3D film ‘Red Sea City’. It was shot in Egypt, both around Ras Mohammed and south in the St. John’s Reef area. For anyone who has a 3D display – either an nvidia 3D vision system or a net-connected 3D TV, there is a 3D version here

I will put the full film online later in the year.

Today sees the launch of a major wildlife photography exhibition in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. The exhibition aims to highlight wildlife from the Arabian region, but terrestrial and marine. Several of my images are featured in the marine section of the exhibition and one in the plants. If you live in or are visiting the area, it is well worth a visit, but it will also be touring various other cities around the world, so visit their website to find out more.

For anyone interested in fisheye lenses, I’ve written an article on the new Canon 8-15mm fisheye zoom for the Canon Professional Network website here. Photo on the left is a composite of 3 images taken with the 7D in an underwater housing, with the dome port half in and half out of the water, mounted on a tripod. In the article there are ideas for a number of creative uses of the lens and a gallery of images. It’s a fun lens!

I’ve been having a play with the new Canon 8-15mm f/4L USM fisheye lens.  Lots of fun and interesting perspectives to be had. It can be used on a full-frame body, like the 5D Mk II, where you can achieve anything from a circular fisheye to a 180 degree diagonal fisheye. Used on an APS-C (crop) body like the 7D, the lens will give you a 180 degree diagonal field of view at the wide end and a considerable zoom in on that at the 15mm end. I was shooting in and around Brighton- the shot on the left is Brighton Pavilion shot at dusk.There are a bunch more photos taken with the lens here including some BMX ramp action and skateboarding.

The current (nov/dec) Nat Geo Traveller has an Oman supplement with one of my pics on the cover. This is an image of the Wahiba Coast- a wild and remote area where the huge rolling dunes meet the Arabian Sea. Shot nearly 10 yrs ago on an EOS 3 and Fuji Velvia film.

I’ve recently returned from a family holiday in Mudeford, Dorset, U.K. We were pretty lucky with the weather, and as well as a few nice sunsets over the marshes I managed a few shots of the Egrets feeding in the muddy shallows whilst I was out walking the baby at sunrise. In the shot on the left, the Egret seems to be catching a large tadpole, although I’m not sure whether it really is that or a fish. I would have thought that the water there was too saline for tadpoles. See more of the new photos here.

I just got round to processing some images from a recent diving trip to the Northern Red Sea, with Alex Mustard and a bunch of other keen underwater snappers in the area round Sharm El-Sheikh. It was my first time diving in this area and it certainly didn’t disappoint. I didn’t do much still photography as I was mainly shooting video (3D this time, but more on that later!). But I managed a couple of dives with the Canon 7D in Nauticam housing. We spent 3 days diving the wreck of the Thistlegorm, a British armed freighter sunk by German bombers in 1941, which now lies in 30m of water, and is full of all sorts of interesting cargo, including trucks, motorbikes, rifles, ammunition, steam locomotives and armoured bren-gun carriers. The remainder of the week was spent exploring the reefs of Ras Mohammed and Tiran areas. You can see a web album from all photographers on the trip here, and a selection of my reef shots here

http://www.vimeo.com/21154275 Here is a short 3D timelapse video I shot in London and on the South coast of the UK. Best viewed in full screen mode & you’ll need the red and cyan anaglyph 3D glasses to view the 3D effect. Better still, if you have a 3D monitor or TV connected to your computer you can view the side by side version here.

The videos were created by shooting large numbers of still frames with two Canon 7D cameras, aligned on a tripod and synchronised with a split signal from a timer remote. The still frames were shot in raw and processed with lightroom and Gunter Wegner’s excellent lrtimelapse software, which allowed you to create ramped pans and zooms, and gradual changes in all settings eg. white-balance, exposure as the timelapse goes on. Finally, the 3D convergence and rendering was carried out with Tim Dashwood’s 3D Stereo Toolbox LE, a plugin for Final Cut Pro which is an excellent and relatively easy to use tool for creating 3D movies.

I’ll be adding more to the 3D timelapse library, so if you’re interested in this technique, check back soon.

I’ve just posted a new gallery of images from the Red Sea here. It was a great trip with Alex Tattersall of Nauticam UK, amongst other underwater photographers. More details to follow.

 A topical image for the day: I found this lucky formation of sea-urchins (Diadema setosum) whilst diving a dead coral patch off Sur, Oman last year.  The fish are cardinal fish.

http://www.vimeo.com/17859306 With a good weather forecast I got up early the other morning and headed down to the coast in the darkness to set up for a timelapse shot of the sunrise. At this particular spot the sunrise just peeps round the edge of the cliffs in the depths of winter. I was able to ascertain this from the comfort of home using the excellent TPE software (The Photographer’s Ephemeris). This tool for photographers lets you visualise the angles of sunrise, sunset, moonise and moonset in the context of the landscape on a google map/satellite image of your area of interest for any date of the year. I can see I’ll be using it a lot for planning landscape photography. The video shown is a series of 618 still images, taken with the Canon 5D Mark II with Canon 24-105mm f4 lens on a tripod and equipped with the TC 80N Timer Remote, set to take one image every two seconds. My settings were shutter speed 1 second, aperture f7.1 and I briefly stopped the series a couple of times to adjust the ISO as the light changed. Images were stacked into a movie with Quicktime 7 and graded and edited with Final Cut.

It’s all gone now, but at the end of last week we had a good foot of snow in Sussex, and a gloriously sunny day on Friday. Couldn’t resist getting out with the camera, so I headed for the chalk seacliffs at Seaford Head, where I could have a quick play on the snowboard and take a few landscape shots. Walking up and boarding down worked up a good sweat, which kept me warm while I snapped. For more of the photos look in UK gallery here

http://www.vimeo.com/14740173 Some video shots from a trip to Oman earlier in the year. I was shooting for a display at the new Visitors Centre at the Green Turtle nesting beach at Ras Al Jinz, on the eastern tip of the Arabian Peninsula. Surface video shot with a Canon EOS 5D Mark II, and underwater with a Canon EOS 7D in Nauticam housing with a Tokina 10-17mm lens. The Green Turtles (Chelonia mydas) nest year round on beaches in the Ras Al Jinz area, but peak times are June-September. This species is classified as endangered and the nesting beaches in Oman are of global importance. Also shown in the video are some of the inhabitants of coral areas closer to Oman’s Capital, Muscat.