Finally Doing Some Prep

After some months of not really doing much about preparing for my exhibition I’ve now made a start on sorting our some suitable images.

With advice from my trusty and ever-helpful digital darkroom expert OBP, I’ve been using the Solarisation technique on some architectural shots from London. Having seen the odd results some people have shown off, I was not keen to try it but have learned how very impressive the approach can be if used with restraint and sensitivity.

One, of an apartment building in Chelsea Harbour, looks more like an Art Deco line drawing than a photograph, helped in part by the lines of the building that mimic the kinds of great ships of the period.

The technique was ‘discovered’ by Man Ray’s photographic assistant working in the dark room http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabatier_Effect

I’m also hoping to photograph some classic French landscapes when I’m in Aix-en-Provence at Easter, weather permitting. With what I’ve already got and taken more recently, plus what I get from a fortnight in France I should have enough material to go at.

So far I have about 7-9 possibles from shoots in London and Paris. Given the exhibition is about selling, I need to gear my pieces at the more commercial end I guess, though I’m not sure I know well enough what will sell. I’m looking to a friend to help me with that though. First though, I need a list of possibles, probably initially 20 or so that we can then weed.

May’s really not that far away now, so need to be getting on with it!

Wintery walk

After an initial plan to go to Wintersett to photograph on Saturday fell through, we planned for a Sunday closer to home instead.

Up early (well, for a Sunday), and the morning was dry, crisp and with the promise of bright light and blue skies. We loaded up (tripods, cameras, lenses, film, spare batteries, etc) and set off to catch a reasonably early 110 to Busy Corner. Walking up towards Sandal Castle, there was still a lot of snow (now brittle and more ice than snow) as well as treacherous patches of compacted snow and ice, glassy and bright in the sunlight.

There was still a reasonable amount of snow around the castle remains, with pools of ice highlighting the moat around the ruins. The views from the upper deck showed snowy fields in all directions.

We took lots of pictures, of the castle and grounds as well as the views over Pugneys towards Emley Moor. Then, the walk back to the main road, this time down Castle Road. We then walked to Newmillerdam, which was a pleasant walk in the fresh, chilly sunshine.

Our reward was lunch before a quick look at the dam itself. Large parts of the surface were frozen, in places seemingly to some depth. Lone branches stuck out of the ice at awkward angles in places and all across the surface were tracks as if the birds had used it for skating.

Time for a few more photos before hoping on a 59 bus back into town.

A great way to spend such a lovely day, and great to finally get chance to get out after what feels like a very long time indeed.

To my disappointment, I don’t feel any of the photos I took were particulalry good and I gave up on processing them. OBP is trying to persuade me to look at them again though.

Inspiration

It’s been some time since my last proper entry on here and longer still since I got out to photograph.

I’m finding I feel quite down about my photography at the moment. No time or energy to either get out there and photograph or even to process the still-waiting images from London and Paris. This latter part is odd – I was able to photograph one of my “must-do” places in London (the Thames Barrier) and yet I’ve done nothing with the RAW files except one casual look through later that week.

Partly, I think, it is simply that work has been so very stressful recently. Faced with a sustained period of high pressured work combined with the very real threat of imminent unemployment aren’t conducive to creativity.

However, my worry is more that it is a permanent problem. I look at my recent images (say, last 4 months or so) and I am greatly disappointed. There’s nothing there that grabs me, that stands out to me.

OBP tells me I need to get out for some enforced photographing. Perhaps so but will I be interested enough to do anything with what we shoot or will they just add to the pile waiting on me?

Standing room only

Stood, again.

If it weren’t for it being the start of the weekend I’d hate Fridays!

Processed

Not getting much time at the moment but have processed a handful of digital shots from the week in Paris.

I’ve still to use the last two frames of the 3rd roll of the film I took in Paris. In the end I took far less than I’d expected, partly due to the weather and partly the overall poor light even for b&w.

Hope to get them off to Peak later this week so I can see what I’ve got. Too early to say if I will get much for the exhibition from it, certainly not what I’d expected/hoped for.

Unfortunately, I am seeing two hard deadlines vey close together at the moment and the work one has to win out. Can’t be helped but it is frustrating.

Back to reality (again)

And so back to the normal routine (up before dawn, commute in the dark, etc.) the holiday rapidly becomming a distant memory.

I bought a Canon G10 whilst away (I’d looked at the G9 but was put off by mixed reviews) as a replacement carry-anywhere camera. I’m very impressed with the output. I got sharper, more noise-free images under poor light with it than I managed with my DSLR.

Not exactly working the camera to the edge of it’s ability but was very impressed with both the auto ISO an auto WB (using aperture priority). The White Balance gave life-like colours under a variety of lighting conditions including mixed situations. The auto ISO gave me the lowest ISO (rather than the ‘best’ and probably higher range. It also allowed the use of intermediate values not possible to set manually (such as 320) Which again traded ease for quality – the right trade-off in my opinion.

With that and being small, light, almost 15mp and RAW – what more could I ask from a high-end compact? Shame it’s not supported yet by Adobe or Apple in their editing apps.

I was also impressed with the very high ISO setting OBP set up as a custom feature (without asking 1st!) on my Canon 40D. I got pretty decent night pictures (properly dark, not dusk) of the Eiffel Tower at 3200 handheld. There’s even enough light to see detail of the people in the foreground.

I do want to deal with the noise that’s visible though. I hear good things about Noise Ninja but OBP tells me it needs some serious playing with to get decent results.

It’s not cheap though so I want to know it will work before I fork out for it.

Delayed

Slightly delayed, 1st photo from the top of Tour Montparnasse (Montparnasse 56). A foggy day so the views weren’t the best and it was very raw up on the heli-pad.

The 2nd was from the 6th floor of Galleries Lafayette, taking lunch in the cafe with views across Opera Garnier and towards the Eiffel Tower.

Still to process pictures – noise from high ISO plus unknown CR2 format from new G10.

And the moral is…

Less haste when packing! Arrived to find I’d done really well with the short, sharp approach to packing…except for not having packed half my underwear. Hmmm

Luckily, a quick trip to the shopping centre at La Défense sorted me for the week :O)

Sorting out the access to an internet connection took a little longer and probably cost me more. Having brought the ultra-light Macbook Air, I was disappointed to find the apartment had an Ethernet connection (silly me, should have realised not everywhere has wireless). Of course, the Air doesn’t have an ethernet connection. A trip to FNAC and I bought a USB-Ethernet converter and here I am back on the web. (sighs of relief all round).

Weather mostly OK, foggy on Saturday but cleared later, grey skies on Sunday but Monday started with beautiful blue skies. Later this turned to heavy downpours and we were caught more than once for a good soaking.

Possibly off to Monmatre tomorrow. Have had the Mamiya out today, and used the high ISO setting (set up by OBP) on the Canon 40D for night-time shots of the Eiffel Tower. These look pretty spectacular on the LCD, it will be interesting to see how they look given the likely noise they may suffer from.

Off to finish the red wine now, and enjoy a nice patisserie.

La Defense

From the top of Le Grande Arche

View from Centre Pompidou

The view from here – spectacular views across Paris, towards Sacre Coeur.