How do you like your coffee?

Watching IX
Sheringham, Norfolk

Taken with a Lensbaby Composer with single glass lens on a 5D2.

Having just spent a week away with the family allowing 7 days in a row of image making I have to say that I still enjoy my photography, despite having moved genres and moved through several styles.  I take pictures first and foremost for myself, and my pictures give me pleasure. In the past I wanted my pictures to be appreciated by others and generate income. I used to sell bird and nature photos all over the world, then I changed to insect photography and still achieved a reasonable amount of sales.

Since then I evolved into landscape photography and got up at ungodly hours to try to create Cornish pastiches. The sales continued and yet I was unhappy. Finally I moved through intentional camera movement and tilt and shift to the expressive artistic photography that I now enjoy.

I do not take pictures I think others might prefer to see.  

Your photographs are unlikely to please everybody, so why try when you have to please your hardest critic - yourself.

Beach XXVII
Cromer, Norfolk

Taken with a Lensbaby Composer with single glass lens on a 5D2.

Remember I like my coffee with black, doubtless others prefer theirs with milk and sugar. So if you find yourself not enjoying your photography ask yourself why you are doing it and make images that you enjoy!

In the next week or so I will be uploading a set of the latest shots taken with a digital SLR using various lenses, but mostly Lensbabies or Diana lenses. I know some will love them, but most will be indifferent or hate them, but most importantly they stir the correct emotions in me!

So how do you like yours?

Fascination with the edge

Now we are getting to the silly season. The tourists have flocked to the beach and we locals cannot get near, so early mornings and late nights rule and not due to the sunrise and sunset times. That is why I love inclement weather.

I love the effect the backlit rain has in this image.

The other alternative is to incorporate people into the coastal shots, but not being too keen on portraiture I like to find a way of minimalising the human element. This has been the mainstay of my beach project, depicting man's use of the beach. In many of these shot I try to silhouette the people so they are not identifiable.

The above image was taken with a 'normal' lens ie a 24-105LIS. This has recently been unusual for me as for the last 2 months I have almost uniformly used a Lensbaby - the Composer and the plastic or single glass lens. I shall post on the Lensbaby system on another occasion in the future.

New project uploaded - The beach

I spend a lot of time at the sea as I live near it and it fascinates me. If I have a bad day at work or I want some peace and quiet I go to the coast, however there is often someone else there. Luckily, as a landscape photographer, I am often there at times that are prohibitive to most.
However as I have two young children as a family we spend time on the beach and I have been observing the vast array of different ways that we as humans utilise it. I am trying to capture our use producing fine art black and white photos of the different ways man and his friends occupy ourselves there.

05 January - Art, bigotry and philistines

Yesterday I heard that one of my friends, who is a very talented landscape photographer, had been criticised for trying out new techniques of recording his vision of the world. Recently he has received the accolade of LRPS. He posted to his website some ICM (intentional camera movement) images that are beautiful. They remove the detail and concentrate the mind on the colours and light and their interplay together.

These critics commented on lack of focus (part of the idea of ICM) and I gather were negative about his exploration of new techniques. One of them was a professional photographer who runs photography courses, who should be encouraging promotion of vision and interpretation and not demoralising those that do not wish to continually produce what I call Cornish pastiches. If photography is an art we should aim for diversity and promote different interpretations of the world.

So what is the definition of art? According to Wikipedia:

Art is the product or process of deliberately arranging symbolic elements in a way that influences and affects one or more of the senses, emotions, and intellect.

So if you look at someone else's images and you do not like them ask yourself why and then be glad that they have stirred up an emotion in you, because that is art. When I look at many of the images that photographers create now I see Cornish pastiches and I hear people say "Isn't that nice." well nice is neither here nor there and it certainly is not art.
Those that drive for us all to constantly mimic or aspire to the art of the masters, should be encouraging development of personal vision and interpretation, after all if I wanted to see Joe Cornish like pictures all the time I would actually visit his website, or better still his gallery in Northallerton, where I could marvel at the genius and ask myself why are his images more aesthetically pleasing than all of those mimics that I see all over the web on a daily basis.

So those critics of my friend should perhaps look at their own websites and ask whether their images stir up emotions, or do they generally get the response "That's nice!".

Here are some images that I have taken in the last few months that have received comments saying that they are fantastic and yet other comments have said the same image is rubbish. All comments please me because that means someone need stimulated by them in a positive or negative way.




















These images can all be found on my website.

04 January - The Humber Bridge at New Year

Spent the New Year with family in Hull and managed a walk by the Humber Bridge in Hessle. What a magnificent achievement this bridge is.


I only took the Canon G12 and did several shots playing with ICM. At one stage the sun almost appeared and provided a few minutes of amazing light.




These two images were uploaded onto my iPad, with only the ICM above having been processed with the Photoshop Express app, brightening it a little and adding a frame.

Location:Home

Last photos of 2010

Having gone away for the New Year here are the photos of the last trip to the coast in 2010. Scarborough North Bay was lit by early morning light and there was at last variation in the cloud, with the mist having cleared here.

Resilient

Interface VIII

From road to sea

These are three different types of image depicting the variation in my photography over the last year. The first was taken with the intention of being a minimalist monochrome, but when I converted it to black and white in Lightroom, I realised that the cloud formation was far to good  to develop high key and therefore the above image emerged.
The second image is part of my interface series and is a long exposure of the sea and sky.
The third is an ICM (intentional camera movement), which I often use when humans or their impact on the environment are in the shot. This simplifies the landscape and allows the play of light and colours to come through. The first two were taken with a Canon 7D and the last was with a Canon G12 compact.

I hope you all have a Happy New Year and that yours is as prosperous as I hope mine will be.

Back to the blog

Having neglected the blog I am going to keep more upto date.

Recently I have added lots of galleries related to the awful but beautiful weather we have had in Yorkshire for the last 6 weeks.

Doncaster Minster II

I spent a couple of nights in Doncaster and several in Saltburn.

Wave and gull

If you visit the website by clicking on the links above you will see that I have been using a Lensbaby Composer and I shall write on my experiences later.

24 Sept - Tilt and shift

Walking The Spa

I have been minimalising my life recently and one of the key issues has been carrying too much camera gear. I therefore carry a maximum of 2 lenses at present, although these can change. One day in August I took just a 45mm tilt and shift lens into Scarborough and experimented with tight depth of field. It is interesting to do this and try and see the world in a different way. It is interesting how ou miss the lenses you have not got until you get into it, when the challenge takes over. I learned a lot by doing this, even though I have used T&S lenses for years.

Scarborough South Bay study 2

Wave along the wall

23 Sept - Hunmanby Gap

Hunmanby Gap study 5

I dashed here for the sunrise today when there was a hint of pink developing. This was one of the occasions that my weather forecasting sites on the net had let me down predicting complete cloud clover. Unfortunately the full moon last night was completely hidden by clouds once again - I checked throughout the night! That means I have not managed a single photo of the full moon or by it's light this year so far as there has been cloud cover every full moon. Well there is always next month.


Hunmanby Gap has a cafe and not much else, except vast beaches - the best place for locals in summer as the tourists do not flock here as much as Filey and Scarborough.
High tide was only a couple of hours before I arrived and so it was still up. The sea was calm and so I even photographed from within it. This is helped by the beach being rather flat. There are no rocks and so one has to create foreground interest, such as using patterns in the sand as shown here.

22 Sept - Filey

Filey pool study 1

There is a swimming pool along the seafront at the Glen Gardens end. I have wanted to photograph it for a long time, but never got round to it. In winter it is empty.

This is processed with a blue filter to highlight the contrast between the pool and its surrounds. I also wanted the sea in the background - blurred by long exposures of 30, 60 and 120 seconds, blended as an HDR in Photomatix Pro and then monochromed in Photochop and tinted in Lightroom.