Kittens!

So last week I went to Istanbul, a city where cats and dogs just roam free. At first this idea seemed quite nice but then I'm a cat person. When I got there and saw the state some of the animals my mind was quickly changed.

This litter of kittens photographed was found in the Book Bazaar..

You'll see as you look closely that this kitten was perhaps the healthiest of the three featured.

And this one perhaps the least healthy..

Meanwhile this one really pulled at my heart strings, as shortly after taking this shot it followed me to the above two.

...And then curled up fell asleep on my foot.

I would have loved to have been able to pick up these little cuties and just bring them home with me. 

Movement

I thought I'd try something new today and use slow-ish shutter speeds in daylight. I've not done it before. I set my ISO to 100 and my shutter speeds varied between 10/1 and 6/1 with an average aperture of 9.

A very busy shot, this was one of the first I took. I don't like the angle, looking across however I do like how many people there are and the variety as some people move and others don't.

This image is much quieter than the previous, and most of the activity takes place on the right hand frame. I should have cropped this image a bit further to remove the exits of the shops in the background, even though you can only see the floor of them.

This image I think is much less obvious that the blurs are people as they just look like splodges of colour. I'm fond of the the change of texture throughout the floor - I think it keeps the shot interesting.

A busier shot with people flying in at a few directions, even if you can only see a small part of the foot on the right hand side of the shot. 

Out of the four images I prefer the latter two, because of the angle, looking down.

To all of the images I have reduced the saturation before uploading them and increasing the lightness a tiny bit, I do like the effect it has given them, it makes the frames look much colder, silvery almost. 

Tomorrow I'm off photographing a protest in Birmingham - so excited!

Train Stations

I've been on my travels this weekend, off to that city they call Birmingham. It'd been a while since I last went and funnily enough I felt about as rough as the last time I went too! 

I took this at one of the small train stations around the city, Selly Oak, it's full of students there! 

Next weekend I'm heading back to Birmingham, but not to photograph the train stations there. No, this time I'm off to a protest - education based! So look out for those photos next week.