Fine Art Photography & Digital Image Manipulation
Just testing out the newly updated Photoshelter for uploading and tagging – it’s all quite different and I’m not sure I like it at the moment, but I think that’s more from the irritation of unfamiliarity than anything else, and I will doubtless soon become used to the new set up.
So it wasn’t quite as straightforward as usual to upload this to my Photoshelter archive, but here’s an oldie of me and Mark at Cocking Limeworks from March 2010, which I have re-processed since I thought I could do it better now than I did at the time. We are doing our “well ‘ard” explorer faces, hence the title 
It has been such a beautiful day here in London, it really feels as if Spring is properly on the way, and whilst I passed some beautiful blossom and primulas when out today I didn’t have my camera with me. So to celebrate the coming of Spring, here’s a shot taken in Cornwall about a year ago, when everything was coming into bloom and the landscape looked wonderfully green. May there be many more days like this ahead!
This shot was originally taken in ‘pinhole’ mode on my LX3, and I have made some tweaks in Lightroom to brighten it up, to improve subtly improve the contrast and to add the rounded corners.
In December 2011 I was contacted by Steve Harnell, the Operations Editor at ‘Practical Photoshop’ magazine, after he saw one of my images ‘Communication’ on the Photoradar website, where I posted it ages ago and promptly forgot all about it. Steve wondered if I would like to feature on the Image Review page that they run every month, describing how I processed the image and receiving some feedback from one of the magazine’s resident Photoshop experts. Naturally I jumped at the chance, so sent off the image (in PSD format with all the layers intact) plus the information that he wanted, and then settled down for what at the time seemed like a very long wait until mid-March 2012 when the magazine was published.
So here it is. Looking back at my original response I can see that I said a bit more about the process, but they have edited it down for space reasons I guess. I was pleased that they liked my image though, and also interested in the ideas suggested by Ali Jennings as they were techniques that I had not tried before. If I ever get around to giving it a go, I will post the results here, but in the mean time, the original image can be seen on my website.
This month I am very pleased to be featured in one of the national photography magazines – Digital Photographer, after I was contacted by photographer/freelance writer Dylan Baker who saw my piece in The Transmitter when he was here in Crystal Palace a year ago in order to interview someone else. He loved and remembered my work and thought that it would greatly enhance the feature that he had been commissioned to write for DP on printing technology, so he emailed me one evening in January and asked if I would be prepared to answer some “super-brief questions” and submit some of my images for publication. Of course I wanted to feature in a photography magazine that I read avidly, but the only problem was that (a) the deadline was at lunchtime the following day and that (b) I was away for the night, sans computer, staying in Burford, Oxfordshire with my Mum and our friend Clare to celebrate Mum’s birthday. Dylan said in his email “I’m sorry the deadline is so tight – the rest of the article is written but I really wanted to include your work and I only thought of it at the last minute”, but I was so pleased to be remembered and asked in this way that I was more than happy to comply. He also wrote “If you could also send through a profile picture of yourself I will include some details from your ‘About’ page and provide links to your web site and blog. If you could also choose 4 or 5 images you would like to see in print I will make sure they get prominently featured – this will be a fairly large colour feature in the centre of the magazine so anything you’d like to use to represent your work. Also let me know if there are any exhibitions or the like coming up you would particularly like mentioned.” How nice was that? 
I picked up the email on my BlackBerry at half past midnight after a very good meal and plentiful wine, so decided it was better to get a good sleep (and sober up!) and then answer Dylan’s questions to following morning before we headed back[......]
When I visited Venice with Mum in May of 2011, Mark loaned me his Holga and some rolls of colour and B&W film, although neither of us thought to have a run-through of the camera and its’ workings before I went. Consequently, I had little understanding of how to correctly wind on the film, the result of which can be seen below in the prints that have all run together.
Despite this, I really liked them, as I have inadvertently captured a ‘Venice Collage’, or as the title of this post suggests, more an ‘impression’ than anything else. Some of the individual frames were over-exposed, but this was probably down to me forgetting to set the camera on ‘sunny’ and instead using the ’cloudy’ setting instead. For those that don’t know, the Holga is a very simple plastic camera, with plastic or glass lenses and extremely basic controls over aperture and shutter speed (it only has one – around 1/100th sec).
I managed to rescue the over-exposed frames using exposure adjustment layers in Photoshop, then masking this where it was not needed. These two strips were taken on Isola di San Michele, the cemetery island in the lagoon between Venice and Murano. There was much white marble everywhere, and it was a very hot, very sunny day so the lighting was really contrasty, but I reckon the camera managed really well.
I have also used Levels and Curves adjustment layers on most of these strips, as some came out rather flat and lacking in contrast, and once again these effects were masked out where they were less needed.
It’s all something a bit different for me, and it was fun to use a film camera and to not be able to see the results immediately as I have become accustomed with digital photography. In fact, I have only just had the films developed – they have been sitting on my desk since last May!
It has been such a beautiful day here in London, it really feels as if Spring is properly on the way…
The flying fish was shot during my recent visit to the Horniman Museum, the eye was painted on a wal…
Just testing out the newly updated Photoshelter for uploading and tagging - it's all quite different…
When I visited Venice with Mum in May of 2011, Mark loaned me his Holga and some rolls of colour and…
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