The best camera is the one you have with you

Imagine a cold March day in Northumberland on the north-east coast of England. There is a strong gale blowing that makes it difficult to stand up. Over to the east there is snow on the Cheviot hills. These poles mark the route back to the mainland should you get caught by the incoming tide along the Lindisfarne Causeway.

Not all photo opportunities are perfect, but the best place to take pictures is where you are. The best camera is the one you have with you.

I do a talk for Camera clubs and Photographic Societies in the UK called “Marvellous Monochrome” which is a series of before and after pictures that demonstrates the process of taking a raw colour file to an exhibition quality black and white print. I often joke that my prints have the look, smell and taste of a darkroom print. That description is actually correct because the Inkjet Paper I use is Fotospeed Platinum Baryta which has a Baryta coating as do all fibre based darkroom papers.

Here is where I started on that March day in 2009. You notice that I did not use the whole frame in the end but choose a 6×17 crop. The file in the camera was under exposed by 2 stops to cope with contrast in the highlights. I am using a 12mm lens probably about a foot from the post closest to me this increases the sense of depth back to front.

Particularly with landscape I often even-out the brightest contrast areas usually the sky to make it easier to deal with later.

On a different tack can anybody tell me if Elements 10 has a tool similar to the Patch Tool in Photoshop? I have been looking at videos on U Tube but can not tell for definite whether it does or does not. I am potentially thinking of using Elements 10 in place of CS4. I am feed up of being fleeced for £200 every 18 months by Adobe to upgrade Photoshop.

A big hello to the 10 new followers of my little blog who have joined in the past week or so, why not leave a comment?

(c) Andy Beel FRPS 2012

www.andybeelfrps.co.uk

Chimneys

Having just got Lightroom 4 I was looking for easy files to Geotag by dragging them to the new Map Module. I had forgotten I had taken these at Severn Beach in 2008.

Taken with a 35mm lens at f8 focusing on the foreground the background is still nicely soft. The sense depth in the picture is increased by the dynamic diagonal leading lines to the factory chimneys in the background. The picture was taken on a 400D at 100 ISO unfortunately this was not at all noise free. To combat this I balanced noise removal with adding of Lightroom Grain.

I have included the original unprocessed raw file (left) to demonstrate my starting files are no any different to anybody elses. Raw files from any camera are always less constrasty than Jpegs. A raw file is like an undeveloped film it can be processed in any number of different ways. A Jpeg file is processed and compressed in the camera. The black and white picture posted here was entirely processed in Lr4 without Photoshop or Silver Efex Pro 2 as trial to see what it could achieve.

Lr4 in the Develop Module is a completely different and more controllable animal to Lr3. It’s so unfortunate that it is so slow and clunky.

A big hello to all the new followers of my little blog, why not leave a comment?

(c) Andy Beel FRPS 2012

www.andybeelfrps.co.uk

Adolescent digital photo technology

Lacock Abbey was the home of William Fox Talbot the inventor of the negative / positive process of picture making. Fox Talbot invented the Calotype based on paper negatives in 1835. He was not the first to get an image on paper, the Daguerreotype invented in 1826 was a positive / positive process hence each picture was unique and could not be repeated or replicated. Fox Talbot was helped by Sir John Herschel who had invented a way of fixing the fugitive silver image on the paper with Hyposulphite of soda – Hypo.

This negative / positive chemical process was the basis of silver photography from around 1851 when the wet glass plate method was invented until the advent of the digital revolution. Negatives were made on glass plates of various sizes until 1889 when Celluloid medium format negative roll film was introduced.

Photography became democratized in 1900 with introduction of the $5 (a weeks wages) Kodak Box Brownie. As a slight aside Kodak introduced Kodachrome in 1936 and the C41 colour negative process was introduced in 1941. Kodak invented the first digital camera in 1975. Kodak sold the first 0.6mp digital compact cameras in 1995. Nikon introduced the first Dslr the D1 a 2.6mp camera in 1999. Kodak filed for bankruptcy in the US in 2011.

I hope the history lesson has been useful to demonstrate that digital photography is still very adolescent in terms of its development. Where will digital photo technology be in 50 years?

Back in March I went to Lacock Abbey with a friend of mine Duncan McEwan a tour leader with Light and Land where we saw an exhibition of the photographic work of George Bernard Shaw the English Playwright.

The feature picture of this post is the first to be processed in Lightroom 4.

A big hello to all the new followers of my little blog.

(c) Andy Beel FRPS 2012

www.andybeelfrps.co.uk

To suggest is to create…

Please look at the picture full size.

I have always been interested in the idea that

“To define is to destroy, to suggest is create”.
Stephane Mallarme

See the page on Wikipedia about this French Poet and Critic.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St%C3%A9phane_Mallarm%C3%A9

This picture “Self Portrait – Centrespace Gallery” for me is about the implied or suggested link between the face in the bottom LHS and the out of pictures in frames on the opposite wall. This link is heighten by the diagonal line of out of focus Thumbnail pictures. The idea I wanted to create was that the person behind the face is a photographer. The out of focus pictures frames are being used as a metaphor for all photographs in general.

The choice of lens, aperture and focusing distance in this picture was critical to the depth of field. In this case it was a 20mm f1.8 at f1.8 focused to the minimum distance. If I had used the same lens but say with f22 the pictures at the back would be sharp implying that I had taken them which I did not.

Very often Wide-angle lenses are used to create depth of field from back to front particularly in Landscape photography. I wanted use the properties of a fast wide-angle lens for creative purposes.

Why not think about the potential creative possibilities of lenses and widest apertures before you buy them? When buying this prime lens I had a choice of the Canon 20mm f2.8 or the Sigma 20mm f1.8. I choose the one and a third stops less depth of field with Sigma. Cost was not an issue.

A big hello to all the new followers of my little Blog.

(c) Andy Beel FRPS 2012

www.andybeelfrps.co.uk

From where I sit

Please look at the picture full size.

“From where I sit” was taken at the Centrespace Gallery in Bristol.

The idea behind this picture is that there is a bigger space beyond what you are being shown as a viewer.

Technical stuff 20mm lens f1.8 1600 ISO 40w light bulb

A big hello to all the new followers of my little blog.

(c) Andy Beel FRPS 2012

www.andybeelfrps.co.uk

Jokulsa 3

As promised this is the third of the Jokulsa triptych that has probably been posted a while ago.

As I said in the last post I often work in panels or sets of prints. This picture forms the right hand image of this panel of three.

A big hello to all the new followers of my little blog.

(c) Andy Beel FRPS 2012

www.andybeelfrps.co.uk

Andy Beel FRPS at Cymru Monochrome

I will be giving a talk called “Marvellous Monochrome” at Cymru Monochrome in Port Talbot South Wales on Monday 21st May. See the link below.

The talk demonstrates the process of making an exhibition quality monochrome print from a colour file.

Note the word process, consistently good work is made easier by working to a system that does things in the right order. This is not a case of playing around with sliders hoping to find something that might look good.

Firstly – set the black and white points – the adjustment of the Global contrast.

Secondly – selective dodging and burning (lightening and darkening)

Thirdly – Selective local contrast control.

The logic behind this process is to deal with the biggest problems first and then move to minor issues.

If you are not using a system or process in the making of monochrome prints I would urge you follow the one set out above.

I’m not sure about this picture called “Lonely Cottage”. It’s probably one of my Marmite (Vegemite) Pictures – love or hate it.

For me it expresses the essential isolation of the farmer’s family who live in this cottage in the middle of Nowhereville in Iceland. The summer in Iceland is between May and August then it goes back to very inclement weather.

It was taken as a part of a series of shots from a moving vehicle, the dense fog had just cleared enough to see what lay 100m from the road.

Post production – removal of noise at 1600 ISO, adding 1600 ASA film grain, adding a cool tone and a crop on the LHS from 3×2 to 5×4 format. The use of the 5×4 format print has taken the cottage way from the centre of the picture.

In lightroom I have saved a series of Custom Crops ie 5×4 & 6×17 (Hassleblad Xpan format)

I think I have one or two followers in S Wales apart from Les And Gareth so why not come along. See http://www.cymrumonochrome.org/

A big hello to all the new followers of my little blog.

(c) Andy Beel FRPS 2012

www. andybeelfrps.co.uk