a shortened view

I went out a few days ago with my camera but forgot to take of my fixed 50mm lens off from the last time I used the camera. Instead of not taking any photographs I decided to have a play - see what you think

PS let me know which of the views of the field you prefer, the first or second one. Just tried a couple of things and wondered if they were appealing to people

the crop is my saviour

No I am not talking about farming, I will leave that to the people of Country File and other such agricultural programs. I have found whilst working through all this photographic nonsense that sometimes a photo can be made better by cutting out a lot of it. It to give you a better view of what you are trying to portray in the photograh originally

Whilst I have every great intention that every piece of work I produce will be a master piece, straight out of the camera, it doesnt always work. A lot of the time I take a photo of a moment so lining up, assesing the view doesn't always occur. So for me a bit of cropping the photo creatively, with a cup of coffee and chocolate hob nob (if my girlfirend is reading this by chocolate hob nob I mean an apple and a green tea) does give you an opportunity to isolate a particular and probably better part of the photograph, sometimes giving you a view you never intended.It can liven up the most boring of photos. take this photo of a rusty bolt, orignally it was just a bolt BUT cropping it tightly so you only see parts of it gives it a different view.
Now i am not saying that it saves every photo but take a look back through your old photos and see what happens.

One trick i think seems to work in this is if when you take the photo just make sure that

1 - Get a focus on a particular point in the shot, make sure that is sharp e.g always make sure in a photograph someones eyes are always in focus

2 - When you start cropping make sure that focused point is in the shot (especially if you are doing macro work) other wise you will look like you cant take a photograph and its time to throw away all the kit.
sounds silly i know but there are lots of times i cropped out the bit i was focusing on and it gave me a photo that boots normally stick a big yellow sticker on.

You may start for example by getting one of your old photos and drawing a rectangle around a bit of it, allowing you to see what it would look like if you isolated that area. eg portraits, not all the face shows, landscapes, focus on the bit thats good, remove the confusion. the best photographs are simple to the eye from what I have seen. Landscapes are great but I have noticed on mine that they can be complicated by lots of colours or stuff going on. I had every intention of producing this lovely senic photograph but my eye goes 'Arrrrrrrgh - what am I supposed to be looking at. I have looked at some landscapes I have taken and they appear to be at times just lots of colours (beautiful colours obviously) but there isnt something in them to focus on and make my eye go 'ooh whats that and then wander over to another part of the photo.

Let me give you two big tips

BIG TIP ONE crop the photo before you start doing anything else, it saves time and frustrations when editing. maybe this could be a tip for life, cut out all the crap you dont need allowing you to focus on what really important

BIG TIP TWO learn to lie quite well  as cropping the photo may give you an image you weren't really intending and when people say 'Congratualtions on picking out that single purple in all that greenery' , you should say 'yes i spotted it' not i was actually aiming over the other side' You will look like the star photographer you are.

give it a go and let me know how you go on.

garden photos

open gardens

Wow what a day that was of taking photographs. In my mind I practiced what I would take, how I would take them, what sort of light I would hope for. I got my self into a bit of a flap. Once I did calm down though, things seemed to flow ok. I think the biggest pressure is hoping that the person who has spent years getting their garden to such a condition would be happy with what I have taken.

I decided through long debate with myself (if you can imagine someone actually discussing things with themself and a bemused looking labrador that was me-hmm) to photograph sections of the garden. As much as i would have loved to produce a photograph of the whole garden, time and the fact people would always be in shot it wouldn't have been good. Besides they get to see that view three hundred and sixty five days a year (including bank holidays) so the chance to show them something they may not always spot was quite interesting.

300 photographs later a tiring shoot was completed. Interestingly, well to me anyways i decided to nor start to edit/process them straight away. Why I here you ask. Well because I was tired and frustrated at the things that went wrong I felt that this would corrupt my view of the photos, I would be overly harsh with myself.

I came back to them a week later, took my time at first but soon developed a rhythm, that being I know what looked good on the previous photographs, lets try that first here. (I may in a soon to be revealed entry talk some more about this) I was also still quite brutal with the photos, if there wasn't anything that sparked me then it went.

The end results of all this work are what you see here. I haven't included all of them but these are the best of the best ones if you understand me. As always I am interested in your comments.

portraits

Whilst photographing everything is exciting, I am starting to wanna go down the portrait road of photography. I just think that portraying a persons physical features and their character in a photograph quite exciting.

I will let you know how I go on. In the meantime though, try these websites for some top quality portraits
http://stevegerrardphotography.com/
http://rankin.co.uk/

so simple even a child can do it

Just to show that photography isn't all that difficult, here is an absolute gem of a photo. It was taken by an 8 year old and shows that point in time when everyone has the chance to take their photo of the happy couple.

Stand up and take a bow Connor and just for taking this photo and showing all photographers up - its straight to bed without any tea.

dovedale wedding

People ask why didn't I take my camera with me to a wedding in the Peak District, well because there is already a photographer there who has a horrible job. Up at the crack of dawn packing up kit to cover every eventuality. Taking photographs of the brides dress, the groom, the bridesmaids the ceremony, endless group and lineup photographs and hope, just hope that 95% of them actually mean something to the happy couple otherwise they aren't getting paid. It's not for me.

Besides it gave me the chance to wander off pre ceremony and take some typical wedding shots.

positively getting older

Though the earlier post maybe negative there are positives to getting older.

1. Being comfortable wearing a jacket when on a night out is one. Off I used to go dressed in the latest fashion shirt, hair all done with the rain pissing down and a force ten gale blowing. But you know what now I am gonna wear a jacket and sod it whether I look right or not at least I am warm
2. The ability not to worry too much about stuff.  You have learned what ever happens very rarely does life stay bad that and you cant do anything about it so don't bother trying to change the inevitable. I am not talking about revolution with placards and sh*t just normal life. 
3. You also realise that so far you have probably embarrassed yourself so many times already that the thing you are doing now is no worse than that so meh!!
4. You also develop a taste for learning and generally about stuff you hated when you were younger. Mine is geography, more generally people of the world. Think I realised about 5 or 6 years ago that as I didn't realise that Sri Lanka was an island and there is actually a country called Turkmenistan (No honestly there is, its there with a lot of other menistans around Russia sort of) 
5. I also love words and pictures and this was part of the reason of getting into photography. As I have said on other postings, I want to be artistic but part of me needs to be good at everything I do, not the best but good. I love listening to song lyrics because a large percentage of them are personal too the performer and tell how that person felt at that moment in time. Obviously Im a Barbie Girl in a Barbie world doesn't fall into this category but even some of what people who are more deeply interested in music than I call 'complete and utter cod shit' have great words just poorer music. Change the music and you would start to perhaps understand what the writer meant.

That's what I want to try to put over in my photography. I am not looking to break new ground or be the next big thing. I am not looking to be anything other than myself. Hopefully I will learn how to and have the ability just tell you why at that moment in time I took that photograph. Keep you fingers crossed.

getting older

I realise reading through my blog that I haven't really kept up with all of my mission statement. Yeah OK I read that at work and it is a bit like saying ASAP or touch base but I couldn't really think of another phrase to describe it.

I have talked about photography but nothing about heading towards 40. So let me tell you about that :-

1. I have noticed that main thing is that you actually get more grumpy and chunter a hell of a lot. To be honest I have always chuntered but some may say have been grumpy. So actually that should be you become MORE grumpy and chunter MORE. Its about the weirdest of things, people on the TV or in the news, other car drivers, people in shops, prices of things, students (seriously, students - how you are isn't funny, its never been funny and its all been done before)
2. Inevitably the next part is reminiscing and not always in a nice way. Instead of 'I remember when I used to go the picture and watch a film with my friends and eat popcorn', it turns into 'Have you seen how bloody expensive it is to go the pictures now?  You then use the phrase 'I remember when...'
3. The ability to fall to sleep during the day
4. On a night out in the middle of the pub, you actually prefer sitting down and at times you do think to yourself  'Yeah I could drink another pint but I do actually fancy a cup of tea'. 
5. Making noises when doing any sort of physical lifting has developed. 
6. Needing to get up in the middle of the night to go for a pee. Now bearing in mind that I have very vivid dreams (and vivid nightmares) I do actually dream of having a pee or really needing a pee. This wakes me up and makes me go to the loo but I always have that slight panic which is yes you are peeing but are you still dreaming?
7. The shock of seeing your first grey hair is another milestone not to look forward to. At first you start to pluck the odd one out but as they increase and doing this would actually increase the size of you bald spot, you find yourself just hoping that your shade of grey will be the more sexy silvery one as opposed to the John Major miserable grey.
8. Instead of talking about wild nights and misadventures with the opposite sex you find yourself talking about mortgages. I even had to start thinking about what I want to do when I retire so I make the right pension choice!!! 
9. Conversations with long time friends are about children and families and people who you used to be at school with die.
10. As a football fan, you see famous footballers hang up their boots and realise they are younger than you and how expensive are tickets now a days, I remember when... The latest fashions come around again for the second time and still they don't suit you and bands you have followed release their greatest hits album for the second time (Duran Duran released decade ten after ten years in the charts, they then re released it ten years later. Way to make me feel old Le Bon)

Well let me promise one thing here, right here in this blog to my large number of readers (and by large I mean at least four!!!) Though my body may be getting old, my mind will still be young, young-ish and I will NEVER watch the antiques roadshow!

Ooh glad I have finished that now, be glad of a sit down and nice cup of tea)

more shots of elvaston castle

elvaston castle - the mental block tour 2011

I took up photography about 2 years ago and during that time I have been happily firing off shots like a monkey with a machine gun of everything and nothing. at the moment though I seem to have some sort of mental block in my head going on. I see things that I think will be a good photo and in reality it isn't, the photos I like others don't.

For example this one taken at Elvaston Castle has everything that I thought you would expect in a landscape type of shot, it has foreground interest, lead in lines, depth and interesting sky but some have said that is too touristy. Yeah well ok I admit that it has elements of that but a tourist would possibly fluke that shot. I took the time to find an angle, set the camera up on the right aperture, shutter speed, selected one out of the 8 that I took of that view that had the right amount of tree in it, good cloud imagery etc. AND I HAND HELD IT AND NO REAL EVIDENCE OF MOVEMENT!!!!!

This one of the boat house is judged to be better because it is of a reflection of the boat house and not of the boat house. Now strangely I had taken a photo of this boat house and this was just one that I fired off without thinking about aperture, shutter speed etc.

I think that my frustration occurs because I have read and learnt so much about how photography works and how the camera works and how each type of genre of photography is supposed to contain certain things but at the moment none of that is working. What is working is pointing and shooting, could have bloody saved 300 quid on a decent camera and just kept me point and shoot. Its like spending hours cooking a meal, getting the right ingredients, perfecting it all and then someone says to you 'Yeah but its not as nice as that beans on toast you did the other day!!

Maybe the only thing, the most important thing I have to learn in photography though is to take criticism in a positive way and that opinions will always differ. Alright that's two things I have to learn, three is you include how to count (see now I have thought of another one  - Damn you !!!)

artwork

I got the chance through work to get involved in seeing an artist design a sculpture and then form it. Added to this I was asked to report on it using my photography. It was difficult because I found myself showing the piece being constructed and the people involved. The danger was that it would be the photographic equivalent of those school trips you used to go on and the essays you had to write about them. Those essays where you would say 'then I saw the giraffe and then we went to see the monkeys...'

Also I had also promised the people involved, the actual artists that I would take plenty of pictures of them for their artistic CV.  I really would have liked to take all artistic abstract photos, I couldn't. Plus the light coming through the four storey front window meant it difficult to get a good photo.

The first photo shows the artists prep work in both physical and sketch form. The remainder shows photos taken throughout the day as the work took shape. The work itself was commissioned by the organ donation charity and is entitled life lines. The spiraling silver wire is the interpretation of the the way all our lives cross each other at some point in time. It is the hope that it brings of organ donation in to peoples minds.