DIGITAL SLR USER

Just thought I'd mention that I'm the subject of this magazine's "Big Interview" in April's edition.

Or is it May...

Well it's the next one to come out anyway

London of course

When I was looking for a suitable IT course to go on through work, London sprang
to mind for 2 reasons.

Firstly I've not seen my mate Jamie for 3 years, and a few others for a good
while, so it's about time I went down.

Second, I really wanted to take the camera out for a shoot - it's got the
best architecture in the country and loads of it, so what better for an
architecture tog than a night there?

Well maybe a sunny evening with a long sunset - but being January, this'll
do.

I met up with a guy called Luis I met through www.ephotozine.co.uk
in Piccadilly Circus, then worked our way down to the national gallery, Trafalgar
square, Whitehall, Westminster abbey and parliament, the Thames and London eye
and finally to the centenary bridge looking back to Westminster bridge.

Four and a half hours, lots of HDR and some classy-ish results.

My main issue was that I'd lost my cable release, so had to hand-trigger the
shots! It's taken the edge off a few, but when large, it's not that bad. I can
spot it, but I'm sure most would not.

So the shots..

This one's a classic front on shot of the national gallery, love this building,
huge facade, sprawling wings, makes you proud to be English

This one's the gallery again, a HDR of 3 shots covering 6 stops. the bright
light is a pain, but what can you do? Also, the church of st. martin in the
fields would be better without the scaffold!

Here's the last shot of the night, a RAW from the centenary bridge which runs
parallel to the Charing Cross rail line.

A shot of the third most iconic thing in London, after Tower Bridge and
Westminster (or is the Eye now third?)

A beefy phone box down by Westminster. The top of this thing was huge, on
seriods, compared to what we used to get in provincial england. I tried to get
both towers in the shot and deliberatley dodged the road sign to show you where
we are.... if you needed any promptring!

If you want to re-create this, stand just below the statue of Boudica and
you're in the money. A HDR of 3 shots

Top left of trafalgar square as you look up from whitehall, the shadows are
people walking through my HDR shot - inconsiderate b'stards!

This is facing directly away from the centre of the national gallery, the
people sat still ehough for 20 seconds for an HDR to be made, cheers folks

And finally, I couldn't quite get a landscape oriented shot from where I was
stood, to improvised - the diagonal line in compositional terms can state
"unease" or "instability", so I thought it amusing to make
it look like the huge Eye was unstable!

Well that's a few of the shots I managed when down there with Luis.

That's one thing people seem to forget about photography, with the web and
photo upload sites booming, photography has become a social thing to do - I'm
pretty sure that with a few days notice, you could get a meet going anywhere in
the UK - so next time you're away on business, tell people where you are on a
forum, you may get a fun character like Luis to tog with for a night... or even
me!

A new bridge in Leeds

I was out with a fellow photographer called Richard the other night, getting some HDR and RAW shots in Leeds when he mentioned this new bridge down by all the new flats on Wellington Street.

So we headed down there, you can get to it from the riverside next to the new entrance to the station by wetherspoons.

It's a curvey number, reminiscent of the Gateshead Milennium bridge, only very small and doesn't appear to tilt when ships come in!


These first 2 shots are with my 80-200 F2.8, taken from a little way back with a wideish aperture so that I got the foreground to blur a little, espcecially the decking.

The blue tones come from lowering the colour temperature - you can do this by setting the whilte balance to Tungsten on your camera.



And finally the shot of the deck - this is really low with a 17mm lens, the blues are done in the same way as above

2008 - a dull start....

Well a new year and a new grey sky to look at. It seems to be sod's law that we get nice days midweek when I'm stuck behind a desk at work, then at the weekend it's just dark and horrible. Well at least it is today anyway.

And yesterday!

The last 2 weekends have been so-so around Leeds, pretty sunny last weekend, but I've always wanted a classy shoot around Swaledale. It's one of the more northern of the Yorkshire dales, Teesdale is the next up and I think most of that's in Durham, so swale may we ll be the most northern. All that means is that it takes longer to get to and costs more in juice!

Last week I got to Richmmond, all very nice. then I drove up towards Muker and Reeth and saw the light fail, the warmth abandon me and the rain start to fall. Now as a photographer, I really should have turned back and went with the light, but I had a mental picture of what I was after - I'd been on multimap looking at roads and things for decent viewing points, so went on.

Annoyingly it rained harder and harder, the roads I found had fantastice views as planned, only of cluds rather than the barns that adorn this magnificent valley.

Ah well, there was light in the next valley - wensleydale.


A more famous valley, what with the cheese, Hawes, Hardraw Force and Aysgarth Falls. But my light wasn't to be seen, when I got to the top of a cold lonely pass, I could see sheets of rain filling the rivers and streams. There was a little light over in the next valley, Wharfdale, but to get to that would have taken too long and sunset would have come and gone. So I just drove slowly and took photos out of my car window - getting out would mean wet lenses and a drenched me!

After a while and rejoining the main leyburn-hawes road at Bainbridge, I was resigned to going ho9me having blown another £25 on diesel for nothing when I saw a sign saying "semerwater 2 1/2 miles".

I'll have driven past that sign 10 times in the last 3 years and never thought anything of it, but at a loss, I thought there was nothing to loose.


Over a steep hill and there it was, Yorkshire's biggest natural lake sat glimmering in the dusk light. it's nothing like a lake district lake, it's more the size of Blea Tarn than Coniston, and the surrounding hills are gentle rather than the screes of Wastwater.

At the top of the hill was a good shot looking over the whole of the valley, but when you get to the bottom there's a little more to play with. First there's the bridge, a humped backed little stone affair, it reflects well in the slow outlet water.

Then there's lot of bushes and trees reflecting in the still waters.

A little further there's 2 stones in the water, boulders 1/2 submerged.

Near those is a landing platform for boats, this was hauled ashore for the winter, so made quite an interesting diversion. And a little further still, there was a fence wandering into the water and a part sumberged gate.

Quite a bit really, and a lot of it is within my style of landscaping, using perspective and reflections along with colour so set a scene.

That kept me occupied for a good hour till it was almost pitch black, then I headed home.

So a lost day was recovered in the end, I think most days can be rescued if you're willing to stay out, try something new, discover places and just be persistant. For me, the only thing that stops me doing that is a hangover, you've got to have perfect conditions to operate effectively and enthusiastically with one of those!!

Lets hope for some better conditions soon eh?

Bowland Fresh - A calendar Project

It's late november 2007 and I've just been asked by one of my best friends if I can pull together a set of around 40 shots for a calendar to promote his milk marketing business.


It's an honour of course, he's bought shots off me before to decorate the office, but we had time to choose those and I went out on several shoots to get the right shots. This one's requires shots appropriate to each month, killer shots that you'd want to adorne the walls of farm houses throughout Lancashire.


The thing is, I go to lancashire to see family and get drunk, not to take lovely shots - so most of them are of my brother looking bog eyed, dad pouring wine, John Conners doing Keepy-uppies with a foot ball or some calves licking my hand.


So I've been looking through the archives and there's a few of the shots in contention from the last 2 years. It's not easy - I've kinda got to a look and style that I want to promote with my lakes and yorkshire shots, but I've never really had time or the inclination (or the weather to be fair) to follow my usual techniques.



It's a tricky one really, the shots around Malham are right up there with my best, there's a fantastic wintery shot of the Tarn that would do for a winter month, but they're in Craven, not Bowland. Sounds a bit like Middle Earth really :-)



So these shots, are they giving that rural dairy feel?

Would you go for more cows?

Or maybe more recogniseable land marks?


It's a tricky set to get right - and with a day job that you get to in the dark and leave in the dark, there's no chance to go and get more shots.


Ah well - hopefully I'll get the 12 killers that I need, and the rest can fill in the gaps!

Thing is, this is far far more interesting than the day job... if I could only pay that mortgage doing it :-)

A photo book on Leeds....

Just stumbled up on a site called http://www.blurb.com/ which seems to do very nice books. I've seen similar ones on Photobox, but they don't look as professional - the paper in them is quite thin and you really don't get that lovely glosy finish to them.

Anyway, the thought of actually authoring a book... it's a little daunting, but I think for this one I'll probably let the pictures do the talking.

I've had a search around for Leeds and there doesn't seem to be that many of them out there. there's the usual stack of books with "Leeds from the air", or Leeds in 1890, but nothing really spelling out what's there today. I've been on a mission to get as many shots of the place as possible, using HDR as well as traditional, so I think I may have a reasonable original pile of photos to go at.

I've just got 95 useable shots, and have hundreds more to revisit - and a few days off work to go compile some more - just watch, it'll be dark and horrible tomorrow!

I'm pitching at the luxury end for starters - they aint cheap, £40 to get 1 printed etc. But I want something nice for my self and to show off to mates, so it's a present, if anything else comes from it, then I'll be happy. If it really takes off, there are bulk discounts.

Then again, I may get pissed off with the software that the site provide and just give up... or maybe I should really write it in Adobe Acrobat format so I can print it anywhere...

who knows, just quite exciting thinking of having a book with my name on it!

Making the most of the mundane

I'm sure many photographers don't bother getting their kit out unless they are in a particularly beautiful area, many are guided by the instinct to copy beautiful images they see in magazines or from photo-sharing sites.

In fact, on such sites I've grown tired of seeing the same images done over and over again, one "pioneer" has seen a shot and taken a beauty of a shot, then droves drive to that spot, find the holes where the pioneer's tripod legs were and wait for the same light.

There's nothing wrong with this, it just means that you're being unoriginal and not really carving yourself a niche.

Leeds Olympic Pool

I've started to revist areas that I've walked past previously, taking a second look at what merits these locations have. This has been in Leeds, I've done the town hall and some of the more famous builsings to death now, so I've wandered off the beaten track in search of unseen gems.


All buildings, not matter how hideous, were designed by someone and will have particular merit - it's just a case of finding the right angle, the right light and right post-processing to get a unique image.

Office Block on Wellington Street

I'll repeat that...

Unique Image

Not something you find much of these days, and that's the challenge.

Or maybe it's the easiest thing you could do with a camera, take a shot of something mundane, something people walk past every day without a blink of an eye, and create something from nothing.

The easiest thing in photography is to copy a well trodden landscape, one of the hardest is to capture the essence of a personality in a shot, that takes a lot of practice and people skills.

Unknown Building in Leeds that I used to walk past each day



All I'm suggesting is to open your eyes to your surroundings, take shots of things unusual things, try HDR and distorting the image, or maybe a zoom burst, a long exposure to blur cars - there's a huge pile of new techniques to learn about - all of which can transform the mundane into the magnificent.