Dave Benham

Last weekend the family trooped off to the coast – the cove to be more accurate, at Lulworth in Dorset. It’s an absolutely beautiful location and the weather was fantastic. We met up with a bunch of my wife Sam’s colleagues, many of which are keen photographers.

Gathering in the car park I looked at all the cameras around me and decided to rebel. There wasn’t a longer focal length than 24mm on display, so I swapped the 24-70 f/2.8 on my D700 for another good landscape lens – the AF-S 70-200 f/2.8.

What do you mean, I hear you ask? My logic was firstly that I didn’t want to come away with the same shots as everyone else. This meant a resolution that I wouldn’t take a shot of Durdle Door as well. Does that make me a bad man? Secondly I knew that there would lots of interesting areas of detail around the cove and buildings which would be fun to look for. The zoom lens should suit this down to a tee, as well as a few of my favourite people shots!

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It was the big smoke for me this week – up to London for the Budget announcement. There’s always an early start on Budget day so it meant a late train and overnight stay. My favourite place to stay for business is at the County Hall Premier Inn. Okay, a Premier Inn isn’t that remarkable but it’s five minutes walk from Waterloo and right next to the London Eye on the south bank.

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In my youth I loved scale models; now I’ve gone and bought some scales. I’m chuffed to bits with them though – £5 on Ebay! I suspect they have graced a market stall or sweet shop in the past, my requirements are altogether more photographic.

I’d set out looking for some baby scales, but they all look either too clinical or featureless. They’re a bit more than a fiver too. Classic kitchen scales are plentiful, but not suitable for my idea – see below.

Nikon D700, 24-70 f/2.8 at 35mm, 1/25 at f/8

I ended up dismantling most of our fireplace to create the background for the shot. In my head this would be on an old oak floor with a pastel background, but the low key effect worked to highlight the little chap well. I’ve cropped a the shot a little in Lightroom, and used the adjustment brush to drop the exposure on the front of the scales by half a stop.

This was my favourite shot as he looks so comfortable – it was a bit of an usual setting for a five week old baby. Next challenge is to use this prop with an older child – suggestions on a postcard!

Nikon D700, 50mm f/1.4, 1/30 at f/1.4

I just thought I’d post the aftermath of my challenge at the weekend. As I managed to get my month old son covered in soot (no, not up the chimneys yet, it was a steam engine – honest) it meant a bath was running almost as we walked in the door. A little later Tom was lying gazing out into the twilight and I had a f/1.4 lens on the camera. Available light – fantastic.

Nikon D700, 50mm f/1.4, 1/30 at f/1.4

The narrow depth of field shooting at f/1.4 is something else – check out the shot above. I was aiming to get the eye closest to the lens in focus, and even with him being so small Tom’s left eye is blurred. I was lucky on the first shot in being able to move myself into position so I was roughly parallel.

Next lens challenge – 70-200 I think!

Several years ago I worked in the web hosting industry, and witnessed first hand the scramble to get hold of premium domain names. These days you can buy a domain for next to nothing – in the beginning they were over £100 a year. Last year it was reported that all four and five letter words in the English language were now registered as domain names. The resale market bucks the recession as well, with domains like toys.com and sex.com selling for millions.

Social media has hit the big time in the last couple of years. First Facebook, and now Twitter are being used by hundreds of thousands of users. With real-time search hitting Twitter you can see what people are commenting about instantly – I’m always checking for useful photography hints and equipment reviews.

You can see how important this will be as a marketing and business tool in the future. So my question is how prepared are you? Have you reserved your personal and business name on Twitter? If not now is the time to do it.  I’ve even reserved Twitter names for my sons now just in case..